Dark Nights: Death Metal Omnibus

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.

Brightest Day Omnibus collects the year-long series that followed Blackest Night, in which twelve heroes and villains return from the dead and none of them know why. Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi use it to rebuild Aquaman, Firestorm, Hawkman and Martian Manhunter at once, and it contains the Aquaman material that led directly into the New 52 relaunch.

DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus collects the 1996 crossover in which the two universes fought, plus the Amalgam books — a full month of comics from a merged reality where Batman and Wolverine are one character called Dark Claw, and Superman and Captain America are Super-Soldier. A genuine one-off in comics history, collected complete.

Insomnia puts every hero on Earth to sleep at once and traps them inside their own worst nightmare. Knight Terrors is the rare crossover where the tie-ins are the point: each one takes a character apart using the thing they will not look at, and this omnibus collects the whole event in reading order.

Ditko created Spider-Man and Doctor Strange and then spent decades at DC building characters nobody asked him for: the Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, Hawk and Dove, Stalker. This omnibus collects all of it, and it is the strangest looking superhero work of its era.

Everything Kirby made at DC in the 1970s that was not the Fourth World, in one volume: Kamandi, OMAC, the Demon, Sandman, Kobra and the war stories. He was writing, drawing and editing all of it at once, at an age when most creators are repeating themselves.

Darkseid cannot beat Earth's heroes, so he sets out to make the public stop believing in them instead. Legends is the first event DC ran after Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the fallout created the Suicide Squad, the Justice League International and the Flash everyone knows today.

In 2011 DC cancelled its entire line and restarted fifty two titles from issue one on the same day. Ten years later this anniversary volume collects the first issues that mattered, which is the only honest way to look at a relaunch that produced both Snyder's Batman and a lot of things nobody finished.

Batman Eternal was DC's attempt at a weekly Batman series: fifty-two issues published in a year, plotted by Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV with a rotating writing team. The premise is a slow-motion demolition of Gotham's institutions: Jim Gordon imprisoned for a crash he did not cause, Falcone back in the city, and Batman losing the police force, Arkham and eventually Wayne Enterprises. A weekly schedule forces a plot that never idles, and at fifty-two issues in one volume it reads closer to a season of television than to a comic run.

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.

Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV wrote Justice League as cosmology: the Source Wall breaks and the forces that built the universe start taking sides. The premise is that the Justice League have been fighting the wrong war: the Legion of Doom is trying to unmake reality's rules rather than rob a bank. The Batman Who Laughs is included here for good reason, it is the best thing to come out of the era and it reads as the run's real antagonist.

Absolute Batman: The Deluxe Edition Vol. 1 collects the opening run of the series that relaunched Batman with everything taken away. In the Absolute Universe Bruce Wayne has no fortune, no manor and no Alfred — only a working-class Gotham that failed him and whatever he can build with his own hands. Written by Scott Snyder with art by Nick Dragotta, it was the biggest DC launch in years.

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo defined Batman for the New 52 era, and this pack brings their entire run together in two oversized omnibus volumes. It opens with The Court of Owls, a secret society hidden inside Gotham's history, runs through Death of the Family and Zero Year, and closes with Endgame, the definitive Joker war, plus Superheavy and Bloom. One of the most acclaimed and best-selling Batman runs of the modern era, collected complete.

Justice League by Snyder & Tynion, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV wrote Justice League as cosmology: the Source Wall breaks and the forces that built the universe start taking sides. The premise is that the Justice League have been fighting the wrong war: the Legion of Doom is trying to unmake reality's rules rather than rob a bank. The Batman Who Laughs is included here for good reason, it is the best thing to come out of the era and it reads as the run's real antagonist. The second Snyder and Tynion omnibus takes the Justice League run to its conclusion, through the Year of the Villain and the rise of the Batman Who Laughs. The Batman Who Laughs stops being a crossover villain here and becomes the character DC built a whole line around: a Bruce Wayne infected by the Joker who is smarter than either. Hell Arisen is where he wins, briefly and completely, and it leads directly into Dark Nights: Death Metal.

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo relaunched Batman for the New 52 in 2011 and stayed for fifty issues, producing the best-selling Batman run of the modern era. The Court of Owls does something few writers manage: it adds a piece of Gotham history that feels like it was always there. Death of the Family then brings back a faceless Joker aimed at the whole Bat-family, and Zero Year retells the origin without repeating Year One. Capullo's Gotham is the visual reference point for the decade that followed.

The second Snyder and Capullo omnibus takes their run to its end, through Endgame and Superheavy, and asks what Gotham does when Batman is genuinely gone. Endgame is the best Joker story of the modern era: no theatricality, no motive, just a threat that treats Batman as a natural phenomenon to be studied. Superheavy then puts Jim Gordon in a mech suit as a city-sanctioned Batman, which is a far better idea than it sounds. It closes the run properly rather than handing off mid-arc.