Marvel & DC Deluxe Editions

Mark Waid and Dan Mora took the oldest team-up in superhero comics and made it feel new by refusing to make it grim. Their World's Finest is set in a bright, slightly retro past where Batman and Superman still trust each other, Robin is a boy wonder again and the Doom Patrol, the Devil Nezha and the Metal Men all get their turn.

Tom King and Phil Hester go back to 1961 and tell Gotham's original sin without Batman in it. Private investigator Slam Bradley takes the kidnapping case of Helen Wayne, heir to the Wayne fortune, and what he finds is a city already rotten with police corruption and racial violence long before anyone put on a cape.

A white collar criminal fakes insanity to dodge prison and lands in Arkham Asylum, where the joke stops being funny about four hours in. Dan Slott and Ryan Sook tell Arkham from the inside as a prison drama, with Batman appearing only when the place has already done its work.

Ego is Bruce Wayne sitting in the cave arguing with Batman about whether either of them should exist. Darwyn Cooke drew it in 2000 and it remains the cleanest statement anybody has made about what the character costs the man, collected here with the rest of his Batman and Catwoman work.

After Jason Todd is murdered, Batman starts working alone, angry and out of control, and Alfred calls Nightwing because nobody else will say it to his face. Marv Wolfman uses Dick Grayson's own past to explain what Batman does to the people he takes in, and what the man who killed the Waynes has been doing since.

The Batman Who Laughs has won, the Earth is a scrapyard ruled by dark multiverse versions of everyone, and Wonder Woman has to put a chainsaw through it. Snyder and Capullo close their decade of Batman with the loudest book either of them has drawn, and it is deliberately ridiculous.

Rafael Grampá writes and draws his own Gotham, a city so filthy and so detailed that Batman looks like part of the architecture. It is a Black Label book about a serial killer, and the reason to buy it is that nobody draws like Grampá.

Ten years after Batman was last seen, Gotham has rotted and a fifty-five year old Bruce Wayne puts the suit back on because he cannot help it. Frank Miller's 1986 series is the book that changed what superhero comics were allowed to be, for better and for worse.

New York City: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles face the battle of a lifetime, fighting not only the fearsome Foot Clan and their leader, the Shredder, but also the alien forces of General Krang, which is exactly Krang’s plan. Now a single dimensional warp can rid him of both of his greatest rivals in one fell swoop!

Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman, a deluxe celebration of the series that gave DC its name: the very first Batman story, the debuts of Robin, Batgirl, Batwoman and Bat-Mite, and the first Two-Face, Riddler and Man-Bat stories.

An oracle tells Wonder Woman that the Justice League will die fighting a dragon, so she takes the League out of the fight herself, one member at a time, and goes alone. Christopher Moeller painted the entire book, and it remains the best argument that Diana is the most dangerous person on the team.

Diana has given up the identity, Donna Troy is wearing the costume, and the villains show up to take advantage of a Wonder Woman who is not the real one. Heinberg and the Dodsons wrote the relaunch that had to answer, in public, what the character is actually for.

The Flash: The Rebirth Deluxe Edition Book 1 opens Joshua Williamson's run, in which a Speed Force storm gives half of Central City super-speed and Barry Allen has to work out who to train, who to stop and who is lying to him. Art by Carmine Di Giandomenico.

In 2011 DC cancelled its entire line and restarted fifty two titles from issue one on the same day. Ten years later this anniversary volume collects the first issues that mattered, which is the only honest way to look at a relaunch that produced both Snyder's Batman and a lot of things nobody finished.

All the greatest DC heroes from across time and space join forces to stop a being more powerful than any they've ever faced--a mysterious being known as the Anti-Monitor who has begun a crusade across time to bring about the end of all existence.35 YEARS AGO, WORLDS LIVED, WORLDS DIED-- AND COMICS WERE NEVER THE SAME.

Welcome to Elseworlds, heroes you know, worlds you don’t! This special line of comics reinvasions classic DC heroes in wildly different universes and contexts. In Dark Knights of Steel, readers get a chance to meet the familiar heroes of the Justice League in a medieval fantasy setting! From Eisner Award-winning writer Tom Taylor (Nightwing, DCeased) and rising artist Yasmine Putri comes an Elseworlds epic about a hero from a distant world, a dark knight crusader, and an Amazon warrior set in a world of steel and magic.

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely wrote All Star Superman outside continuity in 2005, with a single premise: Superman is dying and has twelve labours left. Morrison treats every era of the character as true at once, the Silver Age absurdities, the Golden Age social crusader, the modern icon, and Quitely draws him as physically calm in a way nobody else manages. Issue #10 is widely considered the best single Superman comic ever published. It requires no prior reading at all.

Superman: Birthright The Deluxe Edition collects Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu's twelve-issue retelling of Superman's origin, the version that reframed Clark Kent as a young man travelling the world as a journalist before he ever puts on the suit. Waid's key idea — that Clark can see the living aura around every creature, and therefore cannot bear to let anything die — is the warmest explanation anyone has given for why Superman does what he does.

Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? The Deluxe Edition collects Alan Moore and Curt Swan's farewell to the Silver Age Superman — the last story of that continuity before Crisis on Infinite Earths swept it away. Moore called it an imaginary story and then made it the most final one ever told: the villains stop playing, the supporting cast dies, and Superman has to decide what he is willing to do about it.

World's Finest: The Deluxe Edition collects Dave Gibbons and Steve Rude's prestige miniseries, in which Superman and Batman swap cities and discover how badly each one's methods fit the other's problems. Rude draws it in a warm, classical register that makes it feel like the best version of a Silver Age team-up.

Superman: Emperor Joker The Deluxe Edition collects the storyline in which the Joker steals Mister Mxyzptlk's reality-warping power and remakes the universe as a joke at Superman's expense. It is the rare Superman story where the threat is genuinely unanswerable, and it is very funny until it is not.

Superman: Camelot Falls: The Deluxe Edition collects Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco's run, built on an uncomfortable proposition: that by solving humanity's problems Superman is preventing it from growing up, and that his presence will end in catastrophe.

Superman: Up in the Sky: The Deluxe Edition collects Tom King and Andy Kubert's series about a single question: a girl has been taken somewhere across the galaxy, and Superman leaves Earth to find her even though the odds say he should not. Each chapter is a self-contained trial on the way.

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? The Deluxe Edition collects Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber's series, a densely packed comedy in which Jimmy dies, fakes his death, marries a stranger, moves to Gotham and investigates his own murder. It was Eisner-nominated and is unlike anything else DC publishes.