Marvel & DC omnibus editions

George Pérez wrote and drew Wonder Woman after Crisis on Infinite Earths, rebuilding the character from the Greek myths up. This second omnibus covers the run's later years. Pérez treats the Amazons as an actual civilisation with politics and religion, and Diana as a diplomat rather than a soldier. This volume contains the war with the Amazons of Bana-Mighdall and the Cheetah's origin, and Pérez's page compositions are as dense as anything in his Teen Titans work.

Batman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 3 follows Batman and Robin's early world, shaped by Robin's rhythm, theatrical villains, brisk cases and Gotham becoming a repeatable stage for danger. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

The third Sandman omnibus gathers everything Neil Gaiman wrote around the main series: the prequel, the spin-offs and the two stories about Death. Overture is the prequel Gaiman wrote twenty years later with J.H. Williams III, explaining the exhaustion that led to Morpheus' capture in issue #1, and it is some of the most beautiful art ever printed in a superhero-adjacent comic. The Death stories are also the most accessible entry point to the whole mythology.

Mark Waid's third Flash omnibus keeps Wally West moving through the part of the run where legacy becomes pressure, not just inspiration. The speed is still there, but the real pull is emotional: Wally balancing love, responsibility, fear and the impossible standard of being the Flash. It is a continuation for readers who want the DC hero behind the lightning, not just the lightning itself.

Dark Crisis is DC's 2022 event, opening with the Justice League dead and the DC Universe left to the heroes who were never good enough to join. The Worlds Without a Justice League specials are the best part: each dead hero trapped in a personal paradise they have to recognise as false. It is also the event that restored the multiverse DC had spent a decade compressing, and Nightwing carrying the League is the arc that made him a lead again.

Grant Morrison's Animal Man is the 1988 run that made Buddy Baker famous and ends with the character meeting his own writer. The final issue, in which Buddy sits down with Morrison and asks why his family was killed, is one of the most discussed comics ever published. The run is also genuinely angry about animal cruelty, which almost no superhero book has attempted before or since.

Planetary is Warren Ellis and John Cassaday's twenty-seven issue series about a team of archaeologists investigating the secret history of the twentieth century. Every issue takes a genre, pulp heroes, kaiju films, Hong Kong ghost stories, superhero comics themselves, and treats it as a real historical event that was covered up. Cassaday redraws his entire style each time to match. It is one of the few comics that is genuinely about comics without being cynical, and it has an ending.

The Sandman Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the first half of Neil Gaiman's landmark series, the story of Dream of the Endless, ruler of the realm of sleep, from his captivity and escape through the rebuilding of his kingdom. It is horror, myth, history and literary fantasy in one voice, and it made comics respectable as literature: issue #19, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," became the first comic ever to win a World Fantasy Award. Painted covers by Dave McKean, art by Sam Kieth, Kelley Jones, P. Craig Russell and more. The foundational Vertigo masterpiece in a single oversized volume.

Forever Evil is the New 52 event in which the Justice League is removed from play and the Crime Syndicate, their evil counterparts from another Earth, takes over the world. Making Luthor the protagonist is the whole idea, and Geoff Johns commits to it: he is not redeemed, he is simply the only person competent enough to win. The volume also introduces the New 52 version of the Crime Syndicate and gives Batman one of his best scenes of the era, alone against Ultraman.

JLA by Mark Waid Omnibus follows Mark Waid's high-concept Justice League stories, shaped by large superhero problems built around intelligence, teamwork and impossible choices. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

The second half of James Tynion IV's Batman, written after The Joker War and built around a Gotham where fear itself becomes municipal policy. Fear State is Tynion's best structural work: Scarecrow weaponising civic anxiety while Simon Saint sells Gotham a surveillance state as the cure. It also introduces Ghost-Maker and gives Peacekeeper-01 a genuinely nasty arc. Volume 2 is where the run stops reacting to The Joker and starts arguing about what policing Gotham should look like.

The New Titans is the later era of Wolfman's run, after the team had grown up and the book had to work out what adult Titans looked like. The Batman issues are A Lonely Place of Dying, the crossover in which Tim Drake works out Batman's identity and argues his way into the Robin costume, and this volume gives you the Titans half of it, which the Batman collections leave out. It is the best-integrated crossover DC published that decade.

Justice League International is the 1987 relaunch that rebuilt the League after Crisis on Infinite Earths with the most unlikely roster DC has ever assembled. Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire wrote it as workplace comedy and it works because the threats stay real. Maguire's facial acting is the reason the jokes land at all, and Batman as the exasperated adult in the room is one of the best uses of the character DC has managed.

Superman: Our Worlds at War Omnibus Vol. 1 throws Superman and the wider DC universe into a conflict big enough to feel like a real planetary crisis. Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke and the Superman line use cosmic scale to test Clark's role as protector when the threat is not just a villain, but war itself.

Earth 2: The New 52 Omnibus Vol. 1 follows an alternate DC world after its icons are gone, shaped by legacy, war, replacement heroes and families trying to grow in the wreckage. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

The Question by Dennis O'Neil and Denys Cowan is a martial-arts crime series about a faceless journalist who gets beaten nearly to death in issue #1 and has to learn how to fight. O'Neil writes Vic Sage as a man doing philosophy badly and improving at it, with Richard Dragon training him and Zen koans opening every issue. Cowan's Hub City is one of the ugliest and most convincing fictional cities in comics. It is a genuinely adult book that DC has never quite replicated.

Justice League Dark: Rebirth Omnibus collects James Tynion IV's complete run, in which Wonder Woman assembles a team of magicians because magic itself is dying and the ordinary Justice League is useless against it. Zatanna, Constantine, Swamp Thing, Detective Chimp and Man-Bat, against threats the main League cannot even perceive.

New Krypton is the storyline in which a hundred thousand surviving Kryptonians arrive on Earth and Superman stops being the last of his kind. The premise is the best Superman question anyone has asked recently: what does he do when his people arrive and they are not like him. The Kryptonians are militaristic, entitled and legally separate, and Superman has to choose between them and Earth. It ran across every Superman title for two years and only reads properly collected.

Animal Man by Tom Veitch and Steve Dillon Omnibus collects the stretch between Morrison and Delano, with Steve Dillon on art before he became famous for Preacher. It is the most overlooked corner of one of DC's strangest series.

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus brings the rare cross-publisher meetings back into one oversized volume: Superman and Spider-Man, Batman and Captain America, the X-Men and Teen Titans, Punisher crossovers and the DC/Marvel battles that were out of print for decades.

Dark Nights: Metal Omnibus collects Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's event and every tie-in, in which Batman's obsessive investigating tears open the Dark Multiverse and lets seven nightmare versions of himself into reality. It is the story that gave DC the Batman Who Laughs, and it is deliberately the loudest, most excessive thing Snyder and Capullo ever made together.

Batman teams up with a different DC hero every issue and Bob Haney writes each one as if continuity were a rumour he had heard once. The result is the loosest, fastest Batman comic ever published, and Jim Aparo draws almost all of it.

Batman by Paul Dini Omnibus, his Batman comics collected in one volume for the first time: Detective Comics #821-852, Batman: Streets of Gotham, Catwoman's revenge on Hush and Detective Comics #1000, by the co-creator of Harley Quinn.

Scott Snyder relaunched Swamp Thing for the New 52 alongside his Batman run, turning Alec Holland into the reluctant avatar of a green kingdom at war with rot. Rotworld is the crossover with Jeff Lemire's Animal Man, and reading the two together is the point, the Animal Man chapters are included here for exactly that reason. Yanick Paquette's page layouts, with borders that grow like plants, are among the most beautiful in DC's modern output.