Marvel & DC omnibus editions

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.

Hal Jordan first wore a Green Lantern ring in 1959, in a reinvention that turned a 1940s crime-fighter with a magic lantern into science fiction with an interstellar police force behind it. This is where the mythology gets built piece by piece: Sinestro, Star Sapphire, the Guardians of the Universe and the idea that the ring runs on willpower. Gil Kane's figure work is the other reason to read it, he drew flight better than anyone in the era, and the designs have barely changed since.

Wonder Woman: Rebirth by Greg Rucka Omnibus collects Rucka's return to the character, built around a problem no other writer had dared name: after years of reboots, Diana's own memories no longer agree with each other. The run alternates between a present-day investigation and a retold origin, with art by Liam Sharp and Nicola Scott, and turns continuity chaos into the actual subject of the story.

Wonder Woman by John Byrne Omnibus collects the run in which Byrne wrote and drew Diana himself, introduced Cassie Sandsmark as Wonder Girl, and killed Diana off to make her a goddess on Olympus. It is the most eventful stretch of 1990s Wonder Woman and the source of characters still in use today.

The original Wonder Woman, written by the psychologist who invented the lie detector and drew on his own theories about submission, dominance and a better world run by women. Marston and Harry G. Peter's comics are far stranger than their reputation and this is where they start.

The sixth and final Golden Age volume covers the handover: Marston is dead, Robert Kanigher takes the book over, and Harry G. Peter keeps drawing it until the end of the era. It is the last stretch of the original Wonder Woman before the Silver Age reinvented her.

The third Silver Age volume runs the series into the late 1960s, where the impossible romances and the Wonder Family finally give way to the changes that would strip Diana of her powers entirely. Kanigher keeps writing it at full speed until the very end.

Joshua Williamson wrote The Flash for six years, the longest run since Mark Waid, and this volume covers its conclusion. Issue #750 is the anniversary special that brings back every Flash at once, and the finale pays off the Forces cosmology Williamson spent years building, Speed, Strength, Sage and Still. Barry Allen's relationship with Wally West is the emotional spine, and the ending gives both of them somewhere to go.