Marvel & DC Omnibus

JSA by Geoff Johns Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the 1999 relaunch that made the Justice Society one of DC's flagship titles. Launched by James Robinson and David S. Goyer and quickly defined by Geoff Johns, it reassembles comics' original super-team around a legacy premise: Golden Age veterans mentoring a new generation. This volume introduces Stargirl, a character Johns created in memory of his sister, and delivers the signature early arcs, from "Justice Be Done" to "The Return of Hawkman" and "Virtue and Vice." Art by Stephen Sadowski and Rags Morales.

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow The Deluxe Edition collects Tom King and Bilquis Evely's eight-issue western in space, told by a teenage girl named Ruthye who hires Supergirl to help her hunt her father's killer across the galaxy. Kara is not the narrator, and seeing her through someone else's eyes is exactly what makes the book work. Evely and colourist Mat Lopes produced some of the most beautiful pages DC has published this decade.

Kara Zor-El spends the second half of the New 52 run angry enough to be handed a Red Lantern ring, which is exactly as bad an idea as it sounds. Red Daughter of Krypton is the stretch where the series finally works out what to do with a Supergirl who does not want to be a symbol.

A girl hires Supergirl to help her hunt the man who killed her father, and the journey across eight worlds turns into an argument about whether revenge is worth what it takes. King and Evely wrote the Supergirl story the film was built on, and it is a western more than a superhero comic.

Robin: The Bronze Age collects the years when Dick Grayson stopped being Batman's sidekick and went to college, appearing as a solo lead for the first time. These stories are the reason Nightwing exists: DC spent a decade establishing that Dick Grayson could carry a book alone before they gave him a new identity. Much of this material has never been collected before, and it is the direct bridge between Robin and the Teen Titans era that followed.

Suicide Squad relaunched for the New 52 with the premise intact: convicts sent on missions they are not expected to survive, with bombs in their necks. The Amanda Waller one-shot is the best thing here, a full issue explaining how she became the person who runs the programme, and why the government lets her. This is also the run where Harley Quinn's New 52 redesign appeared, which became the version the films used and made her a franchise.

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.

Swamp Thing by Nancy A. Collins Omnibus collects the acclaimed horror-novelist's run on the character, the first extended female-authored Swamp Thing, following the legendary tenures of Alan Moore and Rick Veitch. Collins steers the title into darker Southern-gothic territory: Swamp Thing and Abby's family life, ecological menace and the return of old enemies like Anton Arcane. A key early-Vertigo horror chapter, collected complete with bonus material including the unpublished "Arcane Blood" proposal. Art by Phil Hester, Scot Eaton and Russ Braun.

The Authority Omnibus Vol. 2 follows the team's dangerous space between rescue and political force, shaped by intervention, power, violence and the uncomfortable line between protection and control. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

Harley Quinn & the Gotham City Sirens Omnibus collects the complete Gotham City Sirens run, putting Harley Quinn, Catwoman and Poison Ivy at the centre of their own Gotham team book. Across Gotham City Sirens #1-26 and Catwoman #83, the volume follows a trio built on friendship, secrets and bad decisions rather than another Batman-led storyline.

Geoff Johns and James Robinson reintroduced Hawkman in 2002, a character whose continuity had become so tangled that DC had spent years avoiding him. The reincarnation premise is turned into a romance where only one person remembers the relationship, which is a genuinely uncomfortable idea and the run does not soften it. Johns also finally made Hawkman's continuity legible, which had defeated every writer for two decades.

Hitman by Garth Ennis and John McCrea Omnibus Vol. 1 collects one of DC's great hidden-gem runs. Tommy Monaghan is a Gulf War veteran turned contract killer in the Cauldron, a rough Irish corner of Gotham; a alien bite leaves him with X-ray vision and telepathy, and he sets himself up as the hitman who specializes in killing super-people. Ennis and McCrea, years before their creator-owned fame, blend savage dark comedy with genuine pathos and one of comics' great supporting casts, the regulars of Noonan's bar. Brutal, funny and unexpectedly moving.

The Books of Magic Omnibus Vol. 1 collects Neil Gaiman's original miniseries and the long-running series that followed it, in which a bespectacled London boy called Tim Hunter is told he could become the greatest magician of his age. John Ney Rieber and Peter Gross turned that premise into one of Vertigo's most sustained coming-of-age stories.

The Books of Magic Omnibus Vol. 2 continues Tim Hunter's story as the consequences of his choice catch up with him. John Ney Rieber and Peter Gross push the series further from fantasy adventure and closer to a study of a teenager carrying more power than judgement.

Books of Magic Omnibus Vol. 3 closes out Tim Hunter's Vertigo run, including the later Hunter: The Age of Magic material. It is the end of one of the imprint's longest continuous stories about growing up with power you did not ask for.

The Dead Boy Detectives Omnibus collects the adventures of Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland, two dead schoolboys who refused to move on and set up as detectives instead. Created by Neil Gaiman in Sandman, they became one of the most durable spin-offs of that universe, and later a Netflix series.

The Sandman: Overture Deluxe Edition collects the prequel Neil Gaiman wrote twenty-five years after the original series, explaining what left Morpheus weakened enough to be captured in Sandman #1. J.H. Williams III draws it, and the pages are among the most elaborate ever printed in a mainstream comic.

The Sandman: The Deluxe Edition Book Three collects the middle stretch of Neil Gaiman's series, including Brief Lives, in which Dream and his sister Delirium go looking for their missing brother and the consequences reshape the rest of the story.

The Sandman: The Deluxe Edition Book Four collects the run into The Kindly Ones, the longest and darkest arc of the series, in which everything Dream has done across seventy issues comes back for payment. Marc Hempel's stylised artwork divided readers and is now regarded as the right choice.

The Sandman: The Deluxe Edition Book Five closes the series with The Wake and the final stories, in which the Dreaming buries its king and the people whose lives he touched get their last word. It is one of the few long-form comics that ends exactly as well as it began.

The Nice House on the Lake: The Deluxe Edition collects James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno's horror series, in which ten friends are invited to a lakeside house by a man they have all known for years, and the world ends while they are inside. It won an Eisner and is one of DC Black Label's best-received books.

The story that made Vertigo. An occult order tries to capture Death and catches her brother instead, and when Dream of the Endless finally escapes after seventy years he has to rebuild a kingdom that fell apart without him. Book One is where Gaiman goes from writing a horror comic to writing the thing everyone else has been copying since.

Dream goes to Hell to free a woman he condemned there, and comes back to find that Lucifer has handed him the key to the whole place. Book Two contains Season of Mists and A Game of You, the point at which the series stops being about horror and starts being about responsibility and the cost of never changing your mind.