Marvel & DC omnibus editions

Doom Patrol: The Silver Age Omnibus collects the original run by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani, in which a group of accident survivors nobody wants are assembled by a man in a wheelchair, months before the X-Men did the same thing. It also ends with the team dying, which nobody did in 1968.

Aquaman by Peter David Omnibus collects the run that rebuilt the character from scratch in the 1990s: the beard, the harpoon hand, the temper. Peter David took a hero who had become a punchline and turned him into an angry, funny, genuinely dangerous king, and almost every modern take on Aquaman — including the films — starts from what he did here. Over 1,500 pages in a single oversized hardcover.

The Swamp Thing by Ram V & Mike Perkins Omnibus collects the acclaimed run that introduced Levi Kamei, a new Swamp Thing caught between the Green and a body that keeps changing without his consent. Ram V writes ecological horror with a migrant's perspective on belonging, and Mike Perkins draws plant matter as something genuinely alien. Multiple Eisner nominations and one of DC's best-reviewed recent series.

Swamp Thing by Mark Millar and Phil Hester Omnibus collects the final Vertigo run, in which Millar takes the character to the end of his story: Swamp Thing is told he is destined to become the elemental force that ends the world, and spends the run trying to work out whether that is a prophecy or a threat.

Six villains who cannot work with anybody else keep taking jobs together, and Gail Simone spends the second half of the run making you care about every one of them before the bill arrives. The finale is one of the bleakest endings DC has published and it is fully earned.

Harleen collects Stjepan Sejic's painted retelling of how Dr. Harleen Quinzel became Harley Quinn, told entirely from her point of view. She is a serious clinician with a grant, a thesis about empathy and a growing suspicion that Gotham's justice system creates the monsters it punishes. The Joker does not seduce her so much as agree with her, and that is what makes the book frightening.

Batwoman Omnibus collects the run that gave Kate Kane her definitive form, starting with Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III's Elegy. Williams changes art style with every shift in register, painted when Batwoman is on the page, clean line when Kate is, and it remains one of the most formally ambitious superhero comics ever published.

Amanda Waller keeps sending convicts on missions the government will deny, and in the second omnibus the bill starts arriving: congressional hearings, defections, and a body count among characters readers had come to like. Ostrander wrote the political thriller everyone else has been copying since.

Hitman by Garth Ennis and John McCrea Omnibus Vol. 2 collects the second half of the run, where the jokes stop being free. Tommy Monaghan is a contract killer in Gotham with minor psychic powers and a bar full of friends, and Ennis spends this volume methodically taking them away. It contains 'Of Thee I Sing', widely considered one of the finest Superman stories ever written.

This second omnibus completes Mike Grell's Warlord in one volume, gathering the back half of his defining run on the sword-and-sorcery series in original colors, with a new introduction by Grell and an afterword by Dan Jurgens. Travis Morgan fights to hold Skartaris together as Grell shares scripting with Sharon Wright and hands art duties to Mark Texeira and a young Dan Jurgens. Warlord stands as one of DC's foundational fantasy titles, and this edition closes the definitive collection of Grell's original work.

Kirby's longest solo run: forty issues of a boy crossing a post-apocalyptic America ruled by intelligent animals, inventing a new civilisation every few pages. The most sustained showcase of his imagination working without a brake.

Lucifer Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the first half of Mike Carey's Sandman spin-off, in which the retired Devil is offered a favour by Heaven and uses it to create a universe of his own, purely to prove he is not part of anyone else's plan. Free will treated as a war, with Peter Gross on art.

Lucifer Omnibus Vol. 2 collects the second half of Mike Carey's run, in which the created universe starts to fail, the war with Heaven becomes unavoidable, and Lucifer has to decide whether independence is worth what it costs everyone around him. It ends on one of the most satisfying final issues Vertigo ever published.

The Invisibles Omnibus collects Grant Morrison's entire countercultural conspiracy epic in one volume: a cell of anarchist agents fighting a secret war against the forces that manufacture consensus reality. Magic, time travel, pop philosophy and 1990s paranoia, running for nearly sixty issues and reportedly a direct influence on The Matrix.

100 Bullets Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the first fifty-eight issues of Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's Eisner-winning crime series. A man called Agent Graves offers strangers an attaché case containing a gun, a hundred untraceable bullets and irrefutable proof of who ruined their life. What starts as an anthology of revenge turns into something much larger.

Deadman Omnibus collects the run that made Neal Adams's reputation. Boston Brand is a trapeze artist murdered mid-performance, granted the power to possess the living until he finds his killer. Adams's photorealistic figures and broken panel layouts were unlike anything else DC published in 1968.

The Phantom Stranger Omnibus collects the 1970s run of DC's least explained character: a man who appears where something is wrong, helps, and leaves without ever saying who he is. Jim Aparo's moody artwork and a rotating cast of writers made it one of the definitive horror-adjacent books of the era.

Young Justice Omnibus Vol. 2 continues Peter David's run through its later, darker stretch, as the team gains members, loses its innocence and heads towards the events that would fold them into the Teen Titans. The comedy stays, but the stakes stop being theoretical.

Power Girl: New Beginnings and Old Friends Omnibus collects the Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Amanda Conner run, which took a character usually treated as a punchline and made her the lead of a genuinely funny superhero comic. Conner's comic timing is the reason it still gets recommended.

The Warlord by Mike Grell Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the sword-and-sorcery series Grell wrote and drew about a US Air Force pilot who falls through a polar opening into Skartaris, a hollow-earth world of dinosaurs and warring city-states. It was DC's answer to Conan and outlasted most of its imitators.

House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 2 collects more of DC's great horror anthology, hosted by Cain and drawn by a roster that reads like a list of the best artists of the era. Short, sharp stories with twist endings, from the period when DC horror was at its peak.

House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the start of DC's great horror anthology after the Comics Code loosened, hosted by Cain and drawn by a roster including Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams and Alex Toth. Short stories with twist endings, and some of the best art of the era.

Dashiell Bad Horse comes back to the Prairie Rose reservation after fifteen years away, working undercover for the FBI against the tribal boss who runs the new casino. Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera wrote the best crime comic of its decade by refusing to let anyone in it be simply guilty or simply innocent.

Bad Horse finally knows who killed his mother, and knowing it does not save anybody. The second omnibus takes Scalped through its last thirty issues, where every character has to pay for the choices made in the first half and Aaron refuses to hand out a single clean ending.