New X-Men by Grant Morrison Omnibus

Arthur Adams drew relatively little for Marvel and influenced almost everyone who came after. This gathers all of it: the Longshot debut, the X-Men annuals that made his reputation, and a large section of pencils, covers and unused art.

The other Claremont. Everyone knows the sixteen years on Uncanny X-Men; this collects what he was writing everywhere else across four decades, including the first Captain Britain series and a stretch of Doctor Strange. It is the volume that shows the range behind the reputation.

The complete X-Tinction Agenda crossover in one oversized hardcover. Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson reunite X-Men, X-Factor and New Mutants against Cameron Hodge and the mutant-enslaving state of Genosha, with early Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld art. The turning point that closes the 80s era and sets up the 90s relaunch.

The fourth volume covers Ultimate Comics X-Men, the relaunch that followed Ultimatum, in which mutants are hunted openly and the United States is falling apart. Nick Spencer and Brian Wood write this as dystopia rather than superheroics: internment camps, a mutant secession movement and Kitty Pryde leading a nation. Ultimate Fallout is also where Miles Morales first appears, which makes this volume more historically loaded than its cover suggests.

The third Ultimate X-Men omnibus takes the series to its end, and the end here is literal: Ultimatum wipes out most of the Ultimate universe's cast in five issues. Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk is the reason to own this: Damon Lindelof's six-issue miniseries, notorious for taking three years to finish and for a first page that shows Wolverine torn in half. Ultimatum then closes the line, and Requiem is the funeral. It is a genuine ending, which superhero comics rarely offer.

The second Ultimate X-Men omnibus covers the post-Millar years, with Brian Michael Bendis, Brian K. Vaughan and Robert Kirkman each taking the book in turn. Vaughan's run is the strongest stretch of the series: the Hellfire Club, Ultimate Longshot and the arc where Xavier's methods stop looking defensible. Because the Ultimate universe has no reset button, decisions made here stay made — which gives the middle of the run more weight than most relaunched titles ever manage.

Ultimate X-Men launched in 2001 as part of Marvel's attempt to restart its universe for readers who had never bought a comic, with Mark Millar rewriting the team from scratch and no continuity behind it. The Ultimate line is the clearest entry point Marvel has ever built: no back issues, no reboots to explain, and a Magneto written as an actual terrorist rather than a tragic antagonist. Millar's version is also the closest the comics ever came to the tone of the first X-Men films, which is why it still gets recommended to new readers.

Jonathan Hickman's own X-Men title is the spine of the Krakoan era: the book where the nation's founders explain, issue by issue, what they have actually built. Hickman writes each issue as a self-contained argument rather than a chapter: a Summers family home on the moon, a trade negotiation, a Krakoan holiday. The Giant-Size one-shots are where the resurrection protocol's costs get examined, and Storm's in particular is the best single issue of the era.

Grant Morrison took over Doom Patrol in 1989, a cancelled team book about disfigured heroes, and turned it into the strangest thing DC has ever published under its own name. This is the run that launched Morrison's career: the Brotherhood of Dada, Danny the Street, Flex Mentallo and Crazy Jane, whose sixty-four personalities each have a different power. It is surrealism played completely straight, and it is also the direct origin of Vertigo as an imprint.

This omnibus gathers the twenty-first century Phoenix stories: every attempt Marvel has made to bring Jean Grey back, and the event that used the Force as a weapon against the Avengers. Grant Morrison's Here Comes Tomorrow, Avengers vs. X-Men and Phoenix Resurrection in one volume is a genuinely useful pairing: the first imagines a future without her, the second turns five X-Men into gods, and the third finally brings the original Jean back after fourteen years. It is the complete modern argument about the character.

Batman by Grant Morrison, collected complete as a pack of 3 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Vol. 1 opens Morrison's Batman saga with Batman & Son, The Black Glove and Batman R.I.P. It introduces Damian Wayne, pushes Bruce Wayne through psychological pressure and starts the larger mystery that reshapes the Dark Knight across three omnibus volumes. Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Vol. 2 follows the saga after Batman R.I.P., with Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne operating as Batman and Robin while Bruce Wayne fights his way back through time. It collects the middle movement of Morrison's run, where legacy and identity become the main engine of the story. Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Vol. 3 closes Morrison's Batman project with Batman Incorporated. Bruce Wayne turns Batman into a global network, drawing allies around the world into the fight against Leviathan and pushing the symbol far beyond Gotham.

The final third of Morrison's Batman is Batman Incorporated: Bruce Wayne going public as the franchise's financier and recruiting a Batman for every country. The idea — that Batman's real superpower is money and organisation — is the most modern thing anyone has done with the character. It also ends with Damian's death, which Morrison had been building toward since the first volume and which DC did not undo for years. This is the payoff of the whole seven-year argument.

The middle third of Morrison's run is the part where Bruce Wayne is not in it: presumed dead, travelling backwards through history while Dick Grayson wears the cowl. Dick and Damian invert the classic dynamic — a light Batman and a violent Robin — and it is the most purely enjoyable stretch of the run. Frank Quitely draws the opening. Putting the two series in reading order is the reason to own this: published separately, the two halves kept explaining each other out of sequence.

Grant Morrison spent seven years on Batman treating every story ever published as canon, including the ones nobody wanted to remember, and then built a single argument out of all of it. Morrison's premise is that a man who has survived everything published since 1939 would have to be extraordinary, and Batman R.I.P. is the stress test. Damian arrives here as an insufferable ten-year-old assassin and leaves as one of DC's most valuable characters. Everything in the Bat-books for the next decade starts in this volume.

Grant Morrison's Animal Man is the 1988 run that made Buddy Baker famous and ends with the character meeting his own writer. The final issue, in which Buddy sits down with Morrison and asks why his family was killed, is one of the most discussed comics ever published. The run is also genuinely angry about animal cruelty, which almost no superhero book has attempted before or since.

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.