New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 1

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.

The New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez was DC's best-selling book of the early eighties and the title that turned sidekicks into leads. The Brother Blood arc is where Wolfman commits to Raven's parentage and the demonic side of the book, and Pérez draws crowd scenes nobody else could stage. This run is also the direct source for every Teen Titans adaptation since, from the cartoon to the live-action series.

The New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract Deluxe Edition collects the storyline in which Terra, a Titan the team trusted completely, is revealed to have been working for Deathstroke the whole time. It is the most famous betrayal in DC history.

Teen Titans: The Bronze Age Omnibus collects the run in which DC's sidekicks tried to be relevant to actual teenagers, with Bob Haney writing slang no teenager ever used and Nick Cardy drawing some of the most elegant pages of the era.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 4 follows the later Wolfman/Pérez Titans pressure cooker, shaped by cosmic danger, soap-opera pressure, bruised friendships and young heroes carrying consequences. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

The third New Teen Titans omnibus covers the transition from the original series to the second volume, at the height of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez's run. The relaunch into a second series was DC's first direct-market-only title, printed on better paper for comic shops rather than newsstands, a commercial experiment that changed how the industry distributed comics. The stories themselves cover the aftermath of The Judas Contract, which is the run's most famous storyline.

The fifth New Teen Titans omnibus takes Wolfman's run into its later years, when the team had fractured and the survivors were rebuilding. This stretch contains the Titans Hunt build-up and the reintroduction of Danny Chase, and it is where Wolfman starts writing the team as adults with jobs rather than teenagers. Eduardo Barreto's art is the underrated element, cleaner and more grounded than Pérez, and better suited to where the stories had gone.

Teen Titans by Geoff Johns Omnibus collects the complete run that rebuilt the team for a new generation: Superboy, Robin, Kid Flash and Wonder Girl joined by Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy as reluctant mentors. Johns writes teenagers who are genuinely afraid of becoming their predecessors, and the run contains 'The Future Is Now', still one of the best-loved Titans stories.

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.

Deathstroke: The Terminator is Slade Wilson before the modern antihero polish, moving through contracts, family damage and the hard-edged DC action of the early 1990s. Marv Wolfman and Steve Erwin make him dangerous because he is not just skilled; he is controlled, compromised and always carrying the cost of his own choices.

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.