Absolute Batman: The Dark Knight - Master Race (New Edition)

The animated-continuity Batman comics, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. The Batman Adventures was the comic spun off from Batman: The Animated Series, written for the same audience and, as it turned out, for everyone else too. Mad Love alone justifies the volume: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's Harley Quinn origin, which won an Eisner and became the version DC has used ever since. The rest is the animated house style at its best, clean, self-contained stories that work for a child and hold up for an adult, which is rarer than it sounds. The Batman & Robin Adventures followed The Batman Adventures, continuing the animated-series comic after Robin joined the cast and the show's design changed. The Lost Years is the reason collectors chase this: it fills the gap between the original series and The New Batman Adventures, explaining where Dick Grayson went and how Tim Drake arrived. The rest is the same discipline as the first omnibus, short, complete stories with no continuity homework, aimed at any age.

Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27 in 1939 as a pulp vigilante with a gun, and within two years had acquired a sidekick, a code against killing and most of the rogues' gallery still in use today. Everything the character is built on was invented in about eighteen months, and this is that stretch. The Joker and Catwoman both appear in Batman #1, which is one of the strongest single issues in comics history by sheer consequence. The stories are short and strange, and read closer to pulp fiction than to modern superhero comics.

The Batman Adventures was the comic spun off from Batman: The Animated Series, written for the same audience and, as it turned out, for everyone else too. Mad Love alone justifies the volume: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's Harley Quinn origin, which won an Eisner and became the version DC has used ever since. The rest is the animated house style at its best, clean, self-contained stories that work for a child and hold up for an adult, which is rarer than it sounds.

Batman: Knightfall Omnibus Vol. 1 begins the Bane saga by turning Gotham into a gauntlet. Arkham's inmates are loose, Batman is forced through fight after fight, and Bane waits for exhaustion to do what brute strength alone cannot: make the Dark Knight break.

No Man's Land is the year DC declared Gotham dead. After the earthquake of Cataclysm, the United States government evacuates the city, dynamites the bridges and leaves whoever stays behind to divide the ruins into territories. The premise strips Batman of everything except the city itself: no infrastructure, no law, and gang leaders marking blocks with spray paint. It is also where Cassandra Cain becomes Batgirl. Volume 1 is the opening third of the crossover, in reading order across every Bat-title, which is the only way it works.

Batman by Paul Dini Omnibus is Batman as detective first and superhero second. Dini brings compact Gotham mysteries where the case matters as much as the costume, and where villains such as Hush, Riddler and Harley Quinn stay personal rather than decorative.

War Games was DC's answer to a simple question: what happens if every gang in Gotham loses its leader on the same night. The answer is a citywide gang war that Batman started by accident. This is the crossover that kills Stephanie Brown, ends Batman's working relationship with the Gotham police and leaves the Bat-family fractured for years. It is also one of the tightest crossovers DC has published: every chapter advances the same night, and the omnibus is the only edition that keeps them in sequence.

Road to No Man's Land is the run-up to DC's biggest Batman event of the nineties. A cataclysmic earthquake levels Gotham, and these are the months in which the city falls apart before Washington writes it off entirely. This is the volume most readers skip and then need: No Man's Land makes far more sense when you have watched Bane escape, Azrael struggle for legitimacy and Gotham's infrastructure fail one system at a time. Chuck Dixon coordinates a dozen titles into a single collapse, and the omnibus finally puts the whole crossover in reading order instead of scattered across four series.

Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang rewrote Wonder Woman for the New 52 as Greek mythology rather than superheroics: a family drama where the family are gods. Chiang and Azzarello redesign the entire Greek pantheon as unnerving modern figures, and the horror register they use for the gods is unlike anything else in DC's line. It is the most critically praised Wonder Woman run of the modern era and it reads completely standalone.

Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo wrote Joker in 2008 as a crime novel: the Joker released from Arkham, reclaiming his territory, seen entirely from the point of view of a low-level henchman. Narrating from a henchman's perspective is what makes it work: the reader is as frightened as he is, and the Joker is never explained. Bermejo paints him without theatricality, scarred, physical, wearing a cheap suit, and the result is closer to Scorsese than to a superhero comic. Batman appears for four pages and it is enough.

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.

Lono was the worst man in 100 Bullets, and this is the story of him trying to stop. Azzarello and Risso send him to a Mexican mission where he works with the priest and the orphans, and then let the cartel next door find out exactly what kind of animal has been living quietly across the road.

Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo's Luthor and Joker in one slipcased Absolute Edition, each in its own hardcover: Lex Luthor: Man of Steel #1-5 and the original graphic novel Joker, with preliminary text and art for both.

100 Bullets, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. 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. 100 Bullets Omnibus Vol. 2 collects the second half of the series, where the Trust, the Minutemen and Agent Graves stop circling each other and the conspiracy resolves into open war. It also includes the full Brother Lono sequel. The ending is one of the most complete in crime comics.

Collects the entire Tangled Web anthology (2001-2003), the series that handed Spider-Man to some of comics' strongest voices and let them look away from the hero. Garth Ennis and John McCrea's Rhino two-parter, Greg Rucka and Eduardo Risso's noir, and Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo's tales sit alongside work by Brian Azzarello, Darwyn Cooke and Paul Pope, all in one hardcover.

The second Snyder and Capullo omnibus takes their run to its end, through Endgame and Superheavy, and asks what Gotham does when Batman is genuinely gone. Endgame is the best Joker story of the modern era: no theatricality, no motive, just a threat that treats Batman as a natural phenomenon to be studied. Superheavy then puts Jim Gordon in a mech suit as a city-sanctioned Batman, which is a far better idea than it sounds. It closes the run properly rather than handing off mid-arc.