Dan Abnett

Superman/Batman, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Superman/Batman Omnibus Vol. 1 is built around the simplest DC contrast and one of its strongest: Superman and Batman together, friends despite everything that should make them opposites. Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness lean into scale, speed and iconography, making the partnership feel huge without losing the personal spark. Superman/Batman ran for eighty-seven issues on a simple format: the two characters narrating the same events in alternating captions, each convinced the other is doing it wrong. The dual narration is the reason the book works, the reader sees both men misreading each other in real time. This second volume includes the Sons of the Father arc and the Annuals, which are self-contained stories by rotating creative teams and among the most enjoyable single issues DC published that decade.

Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Guardians of the Galaxy assembled the team the films are based on, out of characters Marvel had abandoned decades earlier. Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Drax and Gamora as a dysfunctional unit is entirely this run's invention — none of them had worked together before. Abnett and Lanning write it as military science fiction with jokes, and it is the culmination of their whole cosmic Marvel project from Annihilation onward.

When Annihilus led his Annihilation Wave out of the Negative Zone, the Marvel cosmic universe was never the same. Keith Giffen orchestrated a sprawling, brutal war story that swept away decades of status quo and repositioned characters like Nova, Silver Surfer, and Drax as serious cosmic powerhouses. This omnibus collects the complete Annihilation saga — the prologue one-shots, the Silver Surfer, Super-Skrull, Nova, and Ronan tie-in miniseries, and the main six-issue Annihilation event series.

Following the original Annihilation wave, the Marvel cosmic universe faced a second devastating threat: the Phalanx, a techno-organic collective seizing control of the Kree Empire and everything beyond. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning crafted the event that would define cosmic Marvel for a generation.

The original Guardians of the Galaxy were a 31st-century team created in 1969, with nothing in common with the modern line-up beyond the name. This is where Vance Astro, Yondu, Charlie-27 and Martinex come from, and the Avengers issues here are the Korvac Saga chapters featuring them. It is a genuine piece of Marvel history that the films' success made suddenly relevant again, and most of it is otherwise out of print.

Superman/Batman ran for eighty-seven issues on a simple format: the two characters narrating the same events in alternating captions, each convinced the other is doing it wrong. The dual narration is the reason the book works, the reader sees both men misreading each other in real time. This second volume includes the Sons of the Father arc and the Annuals, which are self-contained stories by rotating creative teams and among the most enjoyable single issues DC published that decade.

Suicide Squad relaunched for the New 52 with the premise intact: convicts sent on missions they are not expected to survive, with bombs in their necks. The Amanda Waller one-shot is the best thing here, a full issue explaining how she became the person who runs the programme, and why the government lets her. This is also the run where Harley Quinn's New 52 redesign appeared, which became the version the films used and made her a franchise.