Marvel & DC omnibus editions

The second Danny Ketch omnibus carries Howard Mackie's run into the character's most turbulent stretch: the revelations about his link to Johnny Blaze, and the crossovers that turned Ghost Rider into the centre of 1990s Marvel horror. The official Marvel listing gives 1,312 pages and collects Ghost Rider (1990) #25-40 plus the Spirits of Vengeance run and the Rise of the Midnight Sons and Siege of Darkness crossovers.

This 1,384-page omnibus gathers the cosmic Silver Surfer saga that built toward Infinity Gauntlet. Jim Starlin and Ron Marz shepherded the Surfer through the late 1980s and early 1990s cosmic revival, a period that reestablished Thanos and renewed Adam Warlock's importance. The official Marvel listing collects Silver Surfer (1987) #34-66, Silver Surfer Annual (1988) #3-4, The Thanos Quest (1990) #1-2 and Infinity Gauntlet (1991) #1-6. Art by Ron Lim.

John Byrne wrote and drew She-Hulk in the late eighties and made her the only Marvel character who knows she is in a comic. Byrne breaks the fourth wall constantly and structurally: She-Hulk argues with the letterer, walks between panels and complains about the plot. It predates Deadpool by years and is funnier, and the run is also a genuine argument about how superhero comics are made.

PRH positions this omnibus around Oliver Queen after death and return, with Brad Meltzer and Phil Hester sending Green Arrow through a story of past, present and future. It is a character road story as much as a superhero collection. This is a strong Green Arrow shelf because it treats resurrection as a beginning rather than a reset. It gives readers the Kevin Smith and Brad Meltzer era in one place, with Oliver Queen's history, doubts and purpose driving the collection.

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.

The third New Teen Titans omnibus covers the transition from the original series to the second volume, at the height of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez's run. The relaunch into a second series was DC's first direct-market-only title, printed on better paper for comic shops rather than newsstands, a commercial experiment that changed how the industry distributed comics. The stories themselves cover the aftermath of The Judas Contract, which is the run's most famous storyline.

The second Excalibur omnibus covers the years after Alan Davis leaves, when the book cycles through creative teams and finally settles into something darker. This is the transitional volume, and it carries the crossover chapters with the main X-Men books that the earlier era avoided. It also collects four specials that have never been reprinted elsewhere, which for a title as scattered as Excalibur is the main reason to buy the omnibus rather than hunt issues.

Marv Wolfman's Fantastic Four run represents the final pre-Byrne era — the creative tenure immediately before John Byrne's major reinvention of the team. Wolfman introduced the Frightful Four's most ambitious membership configuration, developed the Nova connection between his simultaneous run on that character and the FF, and used the team format to explore large-scale cosmic threats that his successor Byrne would later ground in more character-focused directions.

Wolverine & the X-Men followed Schism, with Logan opening a school in Westchester and discovering that running one is harder than fighting. The premise is comedy — the least responsible X-Man as headmaster — and Aaron plays it that way while taking the students seriously. Chris Bachalo and Nick Bradshaw draw it, and the Hellfire Club as a group of murderous twelve-year-olds is the best villain idea of the era.

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.

The sixth and final Hama Wolverine omnibus covers the conclusion of his marathon run, bringing Logan's bone-claw era to an end with the revelations that would lead to his adamantium restoration and addressing the accumulated mysteries about Logan's true origins that Hama had been layering across years of storytelling. No Hama Wolverine volume arrives without earned emotional weight — by this point in the run, Hama had spent nearly a decade building the supporting cast and ongoing storylines that made this one of Marvel's most sustained single-author runs of the 1990s.

Kurt Busiek and George Pérez rebuild Avengers as a character-led team book after the turmoil of the 1990s, restoring scale, continuity and emotional clarity without making the run feel like nostalgia alone.

The second Golden Age Superman omnibus covers the early 1940s, when the character was still a social crusader rather than a cosmic one. Siegel and Shuster's Superman punches slumlords and threatens corrupt officials, and he cannot fly or survive artillery. That gap between this character and the modern one is the whole interest, and it is why these stories keep getting rediscovered as unexpectedly political.

Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 6 continues the earliest Superman tradition, where the character is still close to his rough, populist roots: direct action, corrupt systems, bold morality and Joe Shuster's foundational heroic language. The charm is historical, but the energy is still blunt and lively.

Joe Kelly turns Deadpool from a loud mercenary into a damaged man who desperately wants proof that he can be better. Blind Al, Weasel and Siryn give him people to fail; Taskmaster, Typhoid Mary and T-Ray make sure every attempt at redemption hurts. The jokes land because the consequences do not disappear.

Joe Kelly turns Deadpool from a loud mercenary into a damaged man who desperately wants proof that he can be better. Blind Al, Weasel and Siryn give him people to fail; Taskmaster, Typhoid Mary and T-Ray make sure every attempt at redemption hurts. The jokes land because the consequences do not disappear.

Superstar creator Rob Liefeld returns to Deadpool for his biggest epic yet! Wade Wilson has been shooting, stabbing and otherwise annoying people for a long time. He's made a lot of enemies. But one he can't quite place is the brutal Thumper, who keeps showing up out of the blue to pound him into jelly!

The second Wolverine omnibus covers the late eighties solo series, when Logan was running a bar in Madripoor under the name Patch and pretending nobody recognised him. The Madripoor era is the character at his most enjoyable: a crime story where everyone knows who Patch is and nobody says it. Meltdown, drawn by Jon J. Muth and Kent Williams in full painted art, is one of the most visually ambitious things Marvel published that decade and is otherwise almost impossible to find.

Rick Remender's Captain America — one of the most creatively ambitious runs of the Marvel NOW! era, collected in a single omnibus. Remender stranded Steve Rogers in the dimension of Dimension Z for years of subjective time, aging him, breaking him, and rebuilding him in ways no previous writer had attempted.

The fifth Fantastic Four omnibus continues Roy Thomas's run through the transition to Len Wein and other writers, covering the period when Marvel was experimenting with the team's format — including the Thing's solo focus, the shifting relationship dynamics post-Medusa's team membership, and the introduction of new antagonists that would define later FF eras. This volume documents the book's creative search for a post-Kirby identity before Byrne's eventual major reimagining.

Bill Mantlo and Bob Layton defined Iron Man for the late 1970s in a run that pushed Tony Stark toward harder moral questions while delivering consistently entertaining superhero fiction. Mantlo's plotting was ambitious and Layton's pencils — clean, kinetic, and ideally suited to mechanical detail — gave the armored Avenger a visual signature that persisted for years afterward. This omnibus collects a transitional era that laid critical groundwork for the Michelinie-Layton 'Demon in a Bottle' era that followed. For collectors building a complete Iron Man archive, this volume fills an important gap in the character's development.

Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme launched in 1988 and gave the character his longest-running solo title, ninety issues across a decade. Peter Gillis and Roy Thomas rebuild the magical side of the Marvel Universe from scratch here, with Strange having lost most of his power and having to earn it back. It is the run that established the modern rules of Marvel magic — the Vishanti, the balance of realms — that every later writer has worked within.

The third Fantastic Four omnibus continues Lee and Kirby at full stride, in the years when the book was introducing a new permanent concept almost every month. The density is the point: the Kree and Annihilus both become the basis for decades of Marvel cosmic storytelling, and Adam Warlock's debut here leads directly to the Infinity Gauntlet twenty years later. Franklin Richards' birth is also the first time a superhero team acquired a baby and kept it.

The third Claremont Wolverine omnibus covers the series' transition period as the Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Mutants events reshaped the X-Men landscape, requiring Wolverine's solo book to operate in direct response to seismic changes in the main X-Men line. Claremont used this period to deepen Logan's physical and psychological wounds from the Mutant Massacre, explore his complex feelings about the Xavier Institute's direction under Magneto, and introduce new supporting characters that would define the solo series through the Hama era that followed.