David Finch

Forever Evil is the New 52 event where DC lets the villains carry the story. The Justice League has fallen, the Crime Syndicate controls Earth and Lex Luthor becomes the strategist nobody wanted to need. This 1288-page omnibus collects the main series and major tie-ins, making it the right edition for reading the whole villain-led crossover instead of only the central miniseries. The hook is simple but powerful: what happens when the worst people in the DC Universe are the only ones left to stop something worse? Geoff Johns uses that inversion to give Lex Luthor one of his strongest modern roles, while David Finch gives the event a dark, blockbuster look.

Tom King's acclaimed Batman run reimagines the Dark Knight as a figure defined by trauma rather than triumph. The opening arc, I Am Gotham, introduces two new heroes who force Bruce to question whether Batman is truly necessary. I Am Suicide takes the Bat-family into Santa Prisca for a Suicide Squad-style operation. I Am Bane is one of the most brutal confrontations in modern Batman history. War of Jokes and Riddles reimagines Gotham's most notorious criminals in a Golden Age-era conflict. Art by David Finch and Mikel Janín.

Charlie Huston's 2006 Moon Knight relaunch was a deliberate act of creative violence against the character's previous incarnations. Huston wrote Marc Spector as a broken man — knees shattered, psychology fractured, the multiple personalities no longer a quirk but a crisis — and the result was the darkest, most unsettling Moon Knight series Marvel had published.

After Avengers Disassembled, Bendis relaunches the title with a heterodox roster (Spider-Man, Wolverine, Luke Cage, Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Woman) and turns the Avengers into Marvel's most commercial team. Beginning of a decade of Bendis domination of the title: Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign and Siege start here. David Finch on art.