Batman by Darwyn Cooke: Absolute 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.

Ego is Bruce Wayne sitting in the cave arguing with Batman about whether either of them should exist. Darwyn Cooke drew it in 2000 and it remains the cleanest statement anybody has made about what the character costs the man, collected here with the rest of his Batman and Catwoman work.

Superman: Kryptonite: The Deluxe Edition collects Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale's story of the first time Superman encountered kryptonite, and of what it means for someone who has never been vulnerable to discover that he can be hurt.

America in the 1950s has outlawed its masked heroes, and the ones still working answer to nobody. Darwyn Cooke draws the gap between the Golden Age and the Silver Age as a country deciding whether it still believes in anything, and then lets Hal Jordan, Barry Allen and the Martian Manhunter answer the question.

Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier in Absolute format, with new story pages, annotations, alternate sequences and a large sketch gallery. From the end of the Golden Age heroes to the birth of the Justice League, set in 1950s America.

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.

Before Watchmen Omnibus collects all ten prequel series DC published to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, in one oversized hardcover. Whatever you think of the idea, the talent assembled is extraordinary: Darwyn Cooke on Minutemen and Silk Spectre, Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo on Rorschach, J. Michael Straczynski on Dr. Manhattan, plus Amanda Conner, Adam Hughes, Joe Kubert and Jae Lee.