Marvel & DC omnibus editions

Absolute Power Omnibus collects Mark Waid and Dan Mora's event and its tie-ins, in which Amanda Waller finally does what she has been building towards for years: strips every metahuman on Earth of their powers at once and leaves the heroes to fight back with nothing. Collected complete in a single oversized hardcover.

Elseworlds: Justice League Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the out-of-continuity stories that put the Justice League in other worlds and other centuries: Victorian London, the Wild West, medieval fantasy. No continuity, no consequences, just premises followed to their conclusion.

Kara Zor-El spends the second half of the New 52 run angry enough to be handed a Red Lantern ring, which is exactly as bad an idea as it sounds. Red Daughter of Krypton is the stretch where the series finally works out what to do with a Supergirl who does not want to be a symbol.

Robin: The Bronze Age collects the years when Dick Grayson stopped being Batman's sidekick and went to college, appearing as a solo lead for the first time. These stories are the reason Nightwing exists: DC spent a decade establishing that Dick Grayson could carry a book alone before they gave him a new identity. Much of this material has never been collected before, and it is the direct bridge between Robin and the Teen Titans era that followed.

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.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard Traveling Heroes Omnibus collects the run that brought politics into mainstream superhero comics. Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams sent a cosmic policeman and a left-wing millionaire across America to argue about racism, poverty and addiction, and comics were never quite the same afterwards.

Teen Titans: The Bronze Age Omnibus collects the run in which DC's sidekicks tried to be relevant to actual teenagers, with Bob Haney writing slang no teenager ever used and Nick Cardy drawing some of the most elegant pages of the era.

Swamp Thing by Nancy A. Collins Omnibus collects the acclaimed horror-novelist's run on the character, the first extended female-authored Swamp Thing, following the legendary tenures of Alan Moore and Rick Veitch. Collins steers the title into darker Southern-gothic territory: Swamp Thing and Abby's family life, ecological menace and the return of old enemies like Anton Arcane. A key early-Vertigo horror chapter, collected complete with bonus material including the unpublished "Arcane Blood" proposal. Art by Phil Hester, Scot Eaton and Russ Braun.

The Authority Omnibus Vol. 2 follows the team's dangerous space between rescue and political force, shaped by intervention, power, violence and the uncomfortable line between protection and control. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

Harley Quinn & the Gotham City Sirens Omnibus collects the complete Gotham City Sirens run, putting Harley Quinn, Catwoman and Poison Ivy at the centre of their own Gotham team book. Across Gotham City Sirens #1-26 and Catwoman #83, the volume follows a trio built on friendship, secrets and bad decisions rather than another Batman-led storyline.

Geoff Johns and James Robinson reintroduced Hawkman in 2002, a character whose continuity had become so tangled that DC had spent years avoiding him. The reincarnation premise is turned into a romance where only one person remembers the relationship, which is a genuinely uncomfortable idea and the run does not soften it. Johns also finally made Hawkman's continuity legible, which had defeated every writer for two decades.

Hitman by Garth Ennis and John McCrea Omnibus Vol. 1 collects one of DC's great hidden-gem runs. Tommy Monaghan is a Gulf War veteran turned contract killer in the Cauldron, a rough Irish corner of Gotham; a alien bite leaves him with X-ray vision and telepathy, and he sets himself up as the hitman who specializes in killing super-people. Ennis and McCrea, years before their creator-owned fame, blend savage dark comedy with genuine pathos and one of comics' great supporting casts, the regulars of Noonan's bar. Brutal, funny and unexpectedly moving.

The Books of Magic Omnibus Vol. 1 collects Neil Gaiman's original miniseries and the long-running series that followed it, in which a bespectacled London boy called Tim Hunter is told he could become the greatest magician of his age. John Ney Rieber and Peter Gross turned that premise into one of Vertigo's most sustained coming-of-age stories.

The Books of Magic Omnibus Vol. 2 continues Tim Hunter's story as the consequences of his choice catch up with him. John Ney Rieber and Peter Gross push the series further from fantasy adventure and closer to a study of a teenager carrying more power than judgement.

Books of Magic Omnibus Vol. 3 closes out Tim Hunter's Vertigo run, including the later Hunter: The Age of Magic material. It is the end of one of the imprint's longest continuous stories about growing up with power you did not ask for.

The Dead Boy Detectives Omnibus collects the adventures of Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland, two dead schoolboys who refused to move on and set up as detectives instead. Created by Neil Gaiman in Sandman, they became one of the most durable spin-offs of that universe, and later a Netflix series.

Keith Giffen and Matthew Clark relaunched Doom Patrol in 2009, returning the team to superheroics without losing the strangeness the book is known for. Giffen had written the team before and knew the balance: Robotman gets the jokes, Negative Man gets the horror, and Rita Farr gets the dignity. The Metal Men back-up strip that ran with it is also here, and it is some of the most purely fun material DC published that year.

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.