Death and Return of Superman Omnibus (2022 Edition)

In 1992 DC killed Superman and the story made the evening news. Thirty years later this edition collects it as a single book. Doomsday is the rare villain who works precisely because he has no personality — no motive, no dialogue, just forward motion — and the escalating panel counts across the final issues are one of the smartest formal tricks in mainstream comics. Whatever you think of the stunt, it is the best-selling comic story ever published.

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely wrote All Star Superman outside continuity in 2005, with a single premise: Superman is dying and has twelve labours left. Morrison treats every era of the character as true at once — the Silver Age absurdities, the Golden Age social crusader, the modern icon — and Quitely draws him as physically calm in a way nobody else manages. Issue #10 is widely considered the best single Superman comic ever published. It requires no prior reading at all.

PRH presents this as Grant Morrison's bold New 52 reimagining of Superman. The run starts from a more raw, early-career Man of Steel and builds toward stranger, larger threats without losing the idea of Superman as a social and moral force. This is the compact shelf for Morrison's New 52 Superman: part origin energy, part cosmic experiment, part statement about what Superman means when the myth is rebuilt from the street upward.

Injustice began as a tie-in to the fighting game and became one of DC's longest-running alternate universes, built on a single irreversible act: the Joker tricks Superman into killing Lois Lane and their unborn child. Injustice works because it takes its premise seriously: the heroes who side with Superman have reasons, and the ones who oppose him lose. It is the most accessible DC alternate universe on the shelf, with no continuity required, and this omnibus replaces three years of scattered digital-first collections with a single volume.

The United States has had its own Superman since 1945, kept in a hangar and used when the official one would say no. Snyder and Jim Lee use him to ask what Superman is for in a country that would rather have a weapon, and Lee draws the biggest pages of his career doing it.

Superboy Prime raises an army of every villain the Legion ever fought, so the Legion answers by fielding three versions of itself from three timelines at once. Johns and Perez drew every Legionnaire who has ever existed onto the same page and somehow kept it readable.

The Joker steals Mister Mxyzptlk's power, takes control of reality, and spends every day destroying Batman and putting him back together for the next morning. Emperor Joker is the crossover where the Superman books went as far as they could go and then explained why the Joker could never win.

Superman is dying, and instead of fighting it he spends the time left settling his affairs: telling Lois the truth, curing cancer, and answering the one question his father never got to ask. All-Star Superman is the argument that the character works best when he has nothing left to prove.

In 1992 DC killed Superman and the story made the evening news. Thirty years later this edition collects it as a single book. Doomsday is the rare villain who works precisely because he has no personality — no motive, no dialogue, just forward motion — and the escalating panel counts across the final issues are one of the smartest formal tricks in mainstream comics. Whatever you think of the stunt, it is the best-selling comic story ever published.

Superman: The Triangle Era, collected complete as a pack of 3 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Superman: The Triangle Era Omnibus Vol. 1 begins DC's 1990s weekly Superman machine, where Action Comics, Adventures of Superman, Superman and Man of Steel function as one coordinated reading order. The numbered triangles turn the line into a continuous serial rather than separate titles. Jurgens, Ordway, Stern and Simonson build the dense ecosystem that leads toward Death of Superman and the most interconnected Superman publishing era. Second volume with the central arcs of the Triangle Era experiment: the time when editorial coordination between the four Superman titles was at its creative peak, with weekly crossover sagas and consequences that spanned months. The heart of an entire decade of the character's history, culminating in the run-up to the Death of Superman. Roger Stern, Dan Jurgens, and Louise Simonson write complementary threads that reward reading in publication order. The most ambitious Superman publishing experiment ever attempted. Superman: Triangle Era Omnibus Vol. 3 keeps the 1990s Superman machine moving through linked weekly storytelling, where Clark's personal life, Metropolis, supporting cast and superhero threats all feed into one another. Dan Jurgens, Louise Simonson, Roger Stern, Jon Bogdanove and Tom Grummett make the line feel like a living city.

The second Dan Jurgens Action Comics omnibus continues his Rebirth run, with Superman balancing a family, a legacy and threats that keep escalating. Jurgens writes Superman as a working father, which is the version he has always been best at, and the run keeps returning to the question of what Clark owes Jon. The Mr. Oz storyline — the mystery of who has been watching Superman since Rebirth began — resolves here, and the answer is one DC had been holding for years.

The Triangle Era is the name collectors give to the period when Superman's four monthly titles were numbered as one continuous weekly story. This third volume covers the aftermath of his death. This is Reign of the Supermen: four claimants to the name, none of them clearly Clark Kent, and a mystery that ran across every title for months. Hunter/Prey is the sequel to the death itself. It is the most commercially successful Superman story ever published, and the triangle numbering means it only reads properly collected like this.

The second Heroes Return omnibus takes Dan Jurgens' Thor to its end, through the storyline where Thor conquers Earth and rules it. The Reigning arc is the reason to own this: Thor decides humanity would be better governed than protected, takes over, and Marvel lets him hold the position for a year and a half. It is a genuinely uncomfortable run, and the ending — Ragnarok, and Asgard's deliberate destruction — is one of the few permanent endings the character has had.

Thor returned from Heroes Reborn in 1998 with Dan Jurgens writing and John Romita Jr. drawing, and a new premise: Thor bonded to a paramedic named Jake Olson. Jurgens' run rebuilt Asgard's supporting cast from scratch and introduced the Thor/Jake Olson dynamic that carried the book for years. It is also the most accessible Thor era of its decade: no prior reading required, and the mortal identity gives the god somewhere to come back down to.

Second volume with the central arcs of the Triangle Era experiment: the time when editorial coordination between the four Superman titles was at its creative peak, with weekly crossover sagas and consequences that spanned months. The heart of an entire decade of the character's history, culminating in the run-up to the Death of Superman. Roger Stern, Dan Jurgens, and Louise Simonson write complementary threads that reward reading in publication order. The most ambitious Superman publishing experiment ever attempted.

Superman: The Triangle Era Omnibus Vol. 1 begins DC's 1990s weekly Superman machine, where Action Comics, Adventures of Superman, Superman and Man of Steel function as one coordinated reading order. The numbered triangles turn the line into a continuous serial rather than separate titles. Jurgens, Ordway, Stern and Simonson build the dense ecosystem that leads toward Death of Superman and the most interconnected Superman publishing era.