JLA by Mark Waid Omnibus

The second New 52 Justice League omnibus covers the back half of Geoff Johns' run, when the team's internal politics became the plot. Trinity War is the crossover where three Justice League teams fight each other over a murder none of them committed, and it is the best structured event DC published in the New 52. Johns also finally writes the Superman and Wonder Woman relationship as a decision with consequences rather than a marketing beat.

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.

Injustice: Gods Among Us, collected complete as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Injustice 2 keeps asking what happens after a world has already been broken by its heroes. Tom Taylor returns to a DC universe where trust is scarce, power has consequences and every alliance carries the memory of Superman’s regime. The result is not just a fighting-game tie-in; it is a sharp alternate-DC political thriller about rebuilding after tyranny. Injustice: Gods Among Us Omnibus Volume 1 collects the opening three-year block of the Injustice saga in one huge hardcover, giving DC readers a brutal alternate-universe shelf built around Superman's fall, Batman's resistance and a world under authoritarian pressure.

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.

Grant Morrison relaunched the Justice League in 1997 with the original seven members and a simple thesis: they are gods, and the stories should be that size. Morrison writes each arc as an escalation that should be impossible to top and then tops it: angels, an invading White Martian fleet, and a villain who has already won by page one. Earth 2 with Quitely is the standout, a world where evil always wins, and the League cannot fix it. It is the template for every League run since.

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.

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.

Justice League by Scott Snyder Book Two Deluxe Edition continues the run as the Legion of Doom gains ground and the League has to consider whether the rules of reality can be rewritten in their favour. Jorge Jimenez handles most of the art.

Mark Waid's third Flash omnibus keeps Wally West moving through the part of the run where legacy becomes pressure, not just inspiration. The speed is still there, but the real pull is emotional: Wally balancing love, responsibility, fear and the impossible standard of being the Flash. It is a continuation for readers who want the DC hero behind the lightning, not just the lightning itself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Adam Strange: Between Two Worlds The Deluxe Edition collects the miniseries that rebuilt DC's pulp science-fiction hero, stranded on Earth after Rann vanishes and desperate to get back to a wife and daughter nobody believes exist.

Greg Rucka writes Frank Castle as a force moving through other people’s lives. Detectives hunt the Exchange, wounded Marine Rachel Cole is pulled into his war, and a grounded crime story keeps widening until Spider-Man, Daredevil and the Avengers can no longer ignore what the Punisher is doing to New York.