Batman: Detective Comics: The New 52 Omnibus Vol. 1-2

James Tynion IV took over Batman after Tom King and immediately escalated: The Joker War is a full assault on Bruce Wayne's fortune, his allies and the city itself, drawn by Jorge Jiménez. Tynion's premise is simple and brutal: strip Batman of his money and see what remains. Having the crossover chapters from Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood and Catwoman in the same volume matters here, because the story is deliberately told across the whole Bat-family rather than in one title.

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.

Sean Gordon Murphy pitched a Batman story set outside continuity and was given something rare: full control of script and art, and a Gotham of his own that DC has since expanded into a whole line. White Knight is the strongest recent entry point for a reader with no Batman background: no crossovers, no prior reading, one authorial voice on script and art. It also commits to its argument instead of walking it back in the last chapter, which is rare for a Batman story that questions Batman.

Before The Long Halloween, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale produced three Halloween specials for Legends of the Dark Knight between 1993 and 1995. They are where the pair worked out the seasonal structure and noir framing that would define their later work together. Haunted Knight is short, and that is its strength: three complete stories that show Loeb and Sale finding their voice in real time. Read before The Long Halloween it supplies context; read after it works as a set of character studies about fear and obligation. For collectors of the Loeb/Sale run, it is the missing first volume.

The Killing Joke was published in 1988 as a one-shot in which the Joker sets out to prove that one bad day is all it takes to break anyone. Bolland finishes his own art and the control is the point: the Joker is terrifying because the drawing never flinches. The recolouring is genuinely different from the 1988 version, flatter, colder, with the flashbacks in near-monochrome, and it is the reason this edition exists. It remains the most cited Joker story ever published.

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.

Patrick Gleason wrote and drew Robin: Son of Batman after years drawing Damian Wayne in Batman and Robin, giving him a solo book about atonement. The premise is the Year of Blood: Damian retracing the atrocities the League of Assassins made him commit as a child and undoing each one. Gleason knows the character better than anyone, and having him on script and art gives the book a coherence solo Robin series rarely achieve.

Batman and Spawn crossed over twice in 1994, once from each publisher, with Frank Miller and Doug Moench writing and Todd McFarlane and Klaus Janson drawing. The 1994 books are a document of the moment Image was outselling DC and the two companies had to negotiate as equals. The 2022 one-shot is the reason to buy it now: McFarlane and Capullo, the two definitive Spawn and Batman artists, on the same book for the first time.

Who's Who, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Every character DC owned, one per page, drawn by the artist most associated with them. Who's Who was published monthly in the 1980s as a loose leaf encyclopedia and it is still the best single record of what the DC universe contained before Crisis rearranged it. The second half of DC's illustrated directory, running through the rest of the alphabet and into the post Crisis updates. Same format, same idea: one character per page, drawn by whoever owned them, from the biggest names in the line to characters nobody has used since.

Elseworlds: Superman Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the alternate-reality Superman stories: what if the rocket had landed somewhere else, in another century, in another country. Includes Speeding Bullets, Kal and the other classics of the line.

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.

Detective Comics #1000: The Deluxe Edition collects the thousandth issue of the longest-running comic in America, with short stories by most of the writers and artists who have defined Batman over the last forty years.

The Joker: 80 Years of the Clown Prince of Crime collects eight decades of the character in one volume, from his first appearance in 1940 through the Silver Age camp, the Bronze Age return to menace and the modern era. An anthology rather than a run.

House of Mystery: The Bronze Age, collected as a pack of 3 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the start of DC's great horror anthology after the Comics Code loosened, hosted by Cain and drawn by a roster including Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams and Alex Toth. Short stories with twist endings, and some of the best art of the era. House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 2 collects more of DC's great horror anthology, hosted by Cain and drawn by a roster that reads like a list of the best artists of the era. Short, sharp stories with twist endings, from the period when DC horror was at its peak. The third Bronze Age volume of DC's horror anthology, where Cain introduces short stories that run from genuinely nasty to openly comic. This is the era when the Comics Code loosened and the artists on these books, Wrightson, Aparo, Toth and Kaluta, were allowed to draw what they wanted.

Elseworlds: Superman, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Elseworlds: Superman Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the alternate-reality Superman stories: what if the rocket had landed somewhere else, in another century, in another country. Includes Speeding Bullets, Kal and the other classics of the line. Elseworlds: Superman Omnibus Vol. 2 continues the alternate-reality Superman collection with more of the line's out-of-continuity stories, from historical settings to outright fantasy. Take the last son of Krypton, land the rocket somewhere else, and follow the logic wherever it goes, no continuity, no consequences.

Elseworlds: Superman Omnibus Vol. 2 continues the alternate-reality Superman collection with more of the line's out-of-continuity stories, from historical settings to outright fantasy. Take the last son of Krypton, land the rocket somewhere else, and follow the logic wherever it goes, no continuity, no consequences.