Adam Kubert

Ben Reilly has fallen from grace and become Chasm, consumed by hatred for Peter Parker. Madelyne Pryor has returned as the Goblin Queen, wielding dark magic and old grudges. Together they tear open a rift between the living and the dead, unleashing hell on New York City. Only Spider-Man and the X-Men can stop them in this modern crossover event by Zeb Wells and Adam Kubert. Includes the complete Dark Web and its tie-ins, collected in a single volume. A clean, contained event with genuine consequences.

Avengers by Jonathan Hickman Omnibus Vol. 2 is the collapse half of Hickman's Marvel architecture. Infinity, the Illuminati and Time Runs Out turn the Avengers from Earth's greatest team into people making impossible choices while parallel universes die around them. The book matters because it is the direct road to Secret Wars: cosmic scale, moral compromise and long-form science-fiction plotting inside the Marvel Universe.

The sixth and final Hama Wolverine omnibus covers the conclusion of his marathon run, bringing Logan's bone-claw era to an end with the revelations that would lead to his adamantium restoration and addressing the accumulated mysteries about Logan's true origins that Hama had been layering across years of storytelling. No Hama Wolverine volume arrives without earned emotional weight — by this point in the run, Hama had spent nearly a decade building the supporting cast and ongoing storylines that made this one of Marvel's most sustained single-author runs of the 1990s.

Hama's fifth Wolverine omnibus covers the peak of his run — the period when the revelations about Logan's true past began to accumulate, the bone-claw Wolverine era began after Magneto stripped his adamantium, and the series navigated the most significant physical change to the character since his creation. Hama made the bone-claw period work by refusing to treat the powerdown as a tragedy, instead using Logan's raw, unenhanced state as an opportunity to demonstrate what made Wolverine dangerous had nothing to do with metal.

Ultimate X-Men Omnibus Vol. 2 is where the line becomes less pure Millar blockbuster and more character machine. Brian K. Vaughan brings warmth and structure after the harder Weapon X material, using Gambit, Longshot, Rogue and the wider Ultimate universe to test whether these versions can become more than edgy remixes of familiar mutants.

Ultimate X-Men Omnibus Vol. 1 is the mutant franchise rebuilt for the early-2000s Ultimate line: sharper politics, younger characters and no decades of continuity protecting anyone. Mark Millar and Adam Kubert make Xavier's school feel like a dangerous experiment, with Wolverine, Magneto and Weapon X recast through a more paranoid post-9/11 superhero lens.

Onslaught — the psychic entity born from Xavier and Magneto — threatens to destroy the Marvel Universe in this massive crossover event. The X-Men must ally with the Avengers, Fantastic Four and every hero in the Marvel Universe to stop their former mentor turned world-ending threat. The event culminates in the apparent sacrifice of the Avengers and Fantastic Four, launching the Heroes Reborn initiative. This omnibus collects the complete event including all tie-ins from across the Marvel line.

Two of the best modern Spider-Man stories by Chip Zdarsky in a single omnibus. His Spectacular Spider-Man run brings back the classic street-level Peter Parker energy with a humanist approach to characters. Life Story is genuinely revolutionary: Peter Parker ages in real time from the 1960s to the present day, with each decade reimagining key Marvel events through the lens of an ageing hero. One of the most original ideas in Spider-Man publishing history. 936 pages with art by Adam Kubert.

The Ultimate relaunch of the foundational Marvel team with a teenage genius Reed Richards, a college Johnny Storm, a young scientist Sue Storm and a Ben Grimm as his childhood best friend. Adam Kubert on absolute form: one of the best Marvel cartoonists of the 2000s. Co-scripted with Brian Michael Bendis.

Closing of the longest run ever written about the Hulk: 12 uninterrupted years of Peter David on the title. It collects the final arcs of the run, the process of defusion of the Hulk's personalities and the narrative closure of all the threads that David had opened for more than a decade. End of the cycle.