Deathstroke: The Terminator Omnibus

Deathstroke: The New 52 Omnibus focuses on Slade Wilson's New 52 era, with Deathstroke shaped by contracts, age, reputation, violence and the cost of staying useful as a weapon. The appeal is not only continuity; it is watching a specific DC period find its tone, cast and visual rhythm.

Christopher Priest wrote Deathstroke for fifty issues, treating Slade Wilson as a case study in how a man justifies being a contract killer to his own family. Priest structures it the way he structured Black Panther, out of sequence, with the reader always a step behind, and the subject is family rather than mercenary work. Slade's children are the real cast, and the run's best issues are arguments rather than fights. It is one of the strongest DC runs of its decade.

Deathstroke: The Terminator by Marv Wolfman Omnibus Vol. 2 continues the run by the character's co-creator, in which Slade Wilson gets his own series and turns out to work better as a lead than anyone expected of a Teen Titans villain.

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.

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.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 1 follows the beginning of the Wolfman and Pérez Titans era, shaped by Robin, Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, Beast Boy, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash finding a shared emotional engine. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

The New Titans is the later era of Wolfman's run, after the team had grown up and the book had to work out what adult Titans looked like. The Batman issues are A Lonely Place of Dying, the crossover in which Tim Drake works out Batman's identity and argues his way into the Robin costume, and this volume gives you the Titans half of it, which the Batman collections leave out. It is the best-integrated crossover DC published that decade.

In 1988 DC set up a 900 number and let readers vote on whether Jason Todd, the second Robin, would survive. By a margin of 72 votes out of more than ten thousand, they chose to kill him. Jim Starlin and Jim Aparo wrote and drew the outcome, and DC did not reverse it for almost twenty years. Pairing the two arcs is the point: the first shows the cost, the second shows what Batman becomes without it. Read together they explain why Batman spent two decades unable to talk about Jason, and they set up Under the Red Hood directly. This is foundational continuity rather than a curiosity, and the deluxe format is the cleanest way to own it.

After Jason Todd is murdered, Batman starts working alone, angry and out of control, and Alfred calls Nightwing because nobody else will say it to his face. Marv Wolfman uses Dick Grayson's own past to explain what Batman does to the people he takes in, and what the man who killed the Waynes has been doing since.

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.