Batman/Superman: World's Finest: Deluxe Edition Vol. 2

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.

The Man Who Laughs is Ed Brubaker and Doug Mahnke's account of Batman's first encounter with the Joker, written as a direct continuation of Frank Miller's Year One. Brubaker writes the Joker as a public health emergency rather than a nemesis — poisoned reservoirs, televised threats, a city that does not yet know what it is dealing with — and Mahnke draws the victims' faces, which is the detail everyone remembers. Made of Wood is the other draw: a genuine detective story with the Golden Age Green Lantern.

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.

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.

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 Black Mirror was Scott Snyder’s first major DC work, published while Bruce Wayne was absent and Dick Grayson was wearing the cowl. It established Snyder as a Batman writer and led directly to his New 52 run with Greg Capullo. This is Gotham written as horror rather than crime: the threat is a quiet, articulate young man who explains himself calmly, and the tension comes from a father who already knows what his son is. It also makes the strongest case ever published for Dick Grayson as Batman, which is why it stands alone even for readers who skip the surrounding continuity.

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.

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale followed their Halloween specials with a thirteen-issue murder mystery set during Batman’s early years, when Gotham still belonged to the Falcone family and the costumed criminals were only beginning to appear. It was conceived as a direct sequel to Frank Miller’s Year One and became the template for a generation of Batman crime stories. The Long Halloween is one of the few Batman stories that works equally as detective fiction and as tragedy: the mystery holds up, but the real subject is a good man being destroyed in slow motion. Tim Sale’s silhouettes and Gregory Wright’s seasonal colour make each chapter feel like a different month. It is the book Christopher Nolan drew on most heavily for The Dark Knight, and it remains the standard recommendation for a reader’s second Batman purchase after Year One.

Twenty years after the Kansas disaster of Kingdom Come, a survivor takes the power of the gods and starts killing Superman once a day, every day, across time. Waid returns to his own future and uses it to introduce Hypertime, the idea DC spent the next decade arguing about.

Ra's al Ghul steals Batman's contingency plans for killing every member of the Justice League and uses them, one by one, exactly as written. Mark Waid turned the team's biggest asset into its worst betrayal, and the fallout defined how the League treated Batman for the next twenty years.

Mark Waid and Dan Mora took the oldest team-up in superhero comics and made it feel new by refusing to make it grim. Their World's Finest is set in a bright, slightly retro past where Batman and Superman still trust each other, Robin is a boy wonder again and the Doom Patrol, the Devil Nezha and the Metal Men all get their turn.

Legion of Super-Heroes by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson Omnibus collects the relaunch that reframed the Legion as a youth movement: thousands of teenagers across the galaxy following an ideal, with the actual team as its public face. It is the most accessible entry point the Legion has ever had.

Absolute Power Omnibus collects Mark Waid and Dan Mora's event and its tie-ins, in which Amanda Waller finally does what she has been building towards for years: strips every metahuman on Earth of their powers at once and leaves the heroes to fight back with nothing. Collected complete in a single oversized hardcover.

Superman: Birthright The Deluxe Edition collects Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu's twelve-issue retelling of Superman's origin, the version that reframed Clark Kent as a young man travelling the world as a journalist before he ever puts on the suit. Waid's key idea — that Clark can see the living aura around every creature, and therefore cannot bear to let anything die — is the warmest explanation anyone has given for why Superman does what he does.

JLA by Mark Waid Omnibus follows Mark Waid's high-concept Justice League stories, shaped by large superhero problems built around intelligence, teamwork and impossible choices. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

Superman/Batman ran for eighty-seven issues on a simple format: the two characters narrating the same events in alternating captions, each convinced the other is doing it wrong. The dual narration is the reason the book works — the reader sees both men misreading each other in real time. This second volume includes the Sons of the Father arc and the Annuals, which are self-contained stories by rotating creative teams and among the most enjoyable single issues DC published that decade.