Marvel & DC Omnibus

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.

PRH describes this as the final volume of Peter David's ever-evolving X-Factor. The book moves from the endgame of the 2005 series into All-New X-Factor, shifting from survival and loss to a new team model with corporate backing. This is the closing shelf for David's long modern X-Factor project. It is useful for readers who want the run's full shape: investigation, trauma, team collapse and reinvention rather than a simple superhero squad status quo.

Futures End was DC's 2014 weekly series, set five years after the present day in a future the New 52 was heading toward. The Five Years Later month is the interesting experiment: every DC book skipped ahead simultaneously, showing where each character ended up, and then went back. Some of those futures were later made canon and some were quietly dropped, which makes the volume a snapshot of DC's plans at a specific moment.

Cosmic X-Men gathers the storylines where the team leaves Earth entirely: the Shi'ar Empire, the Starjammers, the Brood and the Summers family's very complicated space genealogy. The X-Men's space material is usually scattered across decades and hard to follow; putting it in one volume makes the through-line visible — the Shi'ar keep coming back because the Summers family will not stop marrying into their problems. It also contains the run that gave Carol Danvers her cosmic power set.

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.

The Silver Age Superman is the version most people picture: the Fortress of Solitude, Krypto, the bottle city of Kandor and a supporting cast that grew every month. This is where Superman's mythology gets built: Brainiac and Kandor in Action #242, Bizarro, Supergirl's arrival, and the Phantom Zone. The stories are constructed as puzzles rather than fights, Superman usually wins by working something out, which is a very different character from the one who preceded and followed.

Charlie Huston's 2006 Moon Knight relaunch was a deliberate act of creative violence against the character's previous incarnations. Huston wrote Marc Spector as a broken man — knees shattered, psychology fractured, the multiple personalities no longer a quirk but a crisis — and the result was one of the darker modern Moon Knight runs Marvel had published.

Excalibur was the X-Men book set in Britain, launched by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis with a cast assembled from survivors: Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Summers, Captain Britain and Meggan. This third volume is the Warren Ellis stretch, when the book drops the whimsy and becomes a story about black ops, Britain's superhuman bureaucracy and Pete Wisdom. Including Pryde and Wisdom matters: it is where the Kitty and Wisdom relationship gets its own miniseries and is otherwise very hard to find.

Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason wrote Green Lantern Corps as a workplace book: the Corps as an interstellar police force with shifts, politics and casualties. Tomasi and Gleason are the reason the Corps works as an ensemble rather than as Hal Jordan's supporting cast: Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner get genuine arcs, and the alien Lanterns are written as people with jobs. It runs alongside the Johns material and covers the parts his book had no room for.

The fourth Bronze Age omnibus takes the Justice League into the early eighties, the last years before Crisis on Infinite Earths changed everything. The Leaf Candy mini comic is a genuine curiosity, a promotional giveaway that has never been collected anywhere else. The main run includes the New Gods crossover in #183-185, which is Gerry Conway writing Darkseid at full scale, and the Firestorm and Titans tie-ins that show DC's line starting to interconnect.

Geoff Johns wrote Avengers between the Busiek era and Disassembled, with Olivier Coipel on art. It is the run that asked whether a superhero team can act as a global authority without becoming one. The premise is sharp: every capital city on Earth vanishes and the nations turn to the Avengers, while Thor ascends to Asgard's throne and starts answering prayers directly — putting him at odds with Iron Man and Captain America. Johns writes the standoff as politics rather than a fight, and Coipel's art here is the reason he later got House of M.

Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness delivered one of the most visually spectacular Hulk runs in the character's history, built around a simple but electrifying premise: a Red Hulk. The mysterious Rulk tore through the Marvel Universe, defeating Thor, Iron Man, and the Watcher himself in rapid succession, and no one knew who was under the red skin. This omnibus collects the full Loeb run that launched the Red Hulk concept and triggered a wave of gamma-powered characters. McGuinness's art is pure kinetic energy — oversized, dynamic, and designed for maximum impact. It's a blockbuster run that prioritizes spectacle, delivered with genuine craft.

The third and final Johns omnibus covers Brightest Day, the New 52 relaunch and the arrival of Simon Baz, closing a run that had reshaped the franchise entirely. The last act is Johns' most ambitious: Sinestro wearing a green ring, Hal Jordan stripped of his, and the Guardians deciding the Corps was a mistake all along. The New 52 issues are also unusual in that they ignore the reboot almost entirely, which lets Johns finish the story he started in 2004 on his own terms.

William Messner-Loebs wrote The Flash for four years after Crisis on Infinite Earths, taking Wally West from Barry Allen's replacement to a character with his own life. Messner-Loebs wrote Wally as broke, insecure and a worse hero than his predecessor, which is the honest version and the one Mark Waid later built on. Greg LaRocque draws most of it. Much of this run has been out of print for decades, which makes the omnibus the only realistic way to read it.

The X-Men's greatest spacefaring adventures - starring the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, the Starjammers and S. W. O. R. D.! The Uncanny X-Men have a proud history of cosmic storytelling - dating back to Jean Grey's emergence as Phoenix that first caught the attention of Lilandra, Empress of the Kree! Now, vital chapters of the Phoenix saga - including fateful clashes between the X-Men and the awesome forces of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard - are collected alongside other star-spanning epics!

Industry giant Robert Kirkman (Invincible, The Walking Dead) leaves his mark on the ULTIMATE X-MEN! If one man is capable of disrupting the carefully controlled world of Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, it's Ultimate Cable! He comes from a tragic future, and his sinister secrets will shock the X-Men to their very core.

The blockbuster final chapter of the first era of ULTIMATE X-MEN! The world was on the brink of destruction. Countless heroes died. The X-Men are gone. The true history of the X-Gene has been revealed, and now mutants have been branded as terrorists and are being hunted as criminals. But there is hope - in the form of an unlikely group of young heroes gathered together to save tomorrow.

Kieron Gillen masterminds a tumultuous era for the X-Men! Beast and Abigail Brand must save the alien-monitoring S. W. O. R. D. agency when Henry Peter Gyrich stages a coup! But down on Earth, how will the X-Men explain themselves when the public learns Magneto has joined the team? Making matters worse, a Breakworld warship arrives on a vengeance-filled mission - and when Asgardian black magic empowers the Juggernaut, he becomes more unstoppable than ever!

The beloved 90s X-Men crossover event that sent shockwaves through the comics industry collected together into one omnibus! Charles Xavier is dead — killed twenty years in the past during a freak time-travel accident — and the world that has arisen in his absence is dark and dangerous indeed. The Darwinian conqueror Apocalypse rules with an iron fist, ruthlessly enforcing his dictum that only the strong shall survive — and in Apocalypse’s long shadow, hidden among a downtrodden humankind, are a group of ragtag freedom fighters led by Xavier’s oldest friend, Magneto: the Amazing X-Men!

The beloved 90s X-Men crossover event that sent shockwaves through the comics industry collected together into one omnibus! Charles Xavier is dead — killed twenty years in the past during a freak time-travel accident — and the world that has arisen in his absence is dark and dangerous indeed. The Darwinian conqueror Apocalypse rules with an iron fist, ruthlessly enforcing his dictum that only the strong shall survive — and in Apocalypse’s long shadow, hidden among a downtrodden humankind, are a group of ragtag freedom fighters led by Xavier’s oldest friend, Magneto: the Amazing X-Men!

Completing the epic first chapter of mutantkind's Krakoan age! The New Mutants are back from space, and they've brought intergalactic trouble for the X-Men! Meanwhile, the seafaring Marauders reel from a devastating loss, X-Force discovers a growing problem that threatens to destroy everything they've built, and Betsy Braddock and Excalibur are caught in the middle when Britain goes to war with Krakoa!

A tumultuous era for Marvel's mutants sees two momentous unions: an X-Men/Avengers team-up and the wedding of Jean Grey and Cyclops! The blood ties run deep between the X-Men and Avengers - and only by working together can they prevent Magneto's Acolytes from destroying the war-torn nation of Genosha!

The thrilling saga that commemorated the X-Men's 30th anniversary, collected in its entirety! As Magneto's Acolytes amp up their attacks on Homo sapiens everywhere, the X-teams join forces to put an end to their mad crusade against humanity once and for all. But, as a mysterious disease begins creeping through the mutant community, claiming the lives of hated foe and dear friend alike, which X-Man will buckle under the strain?

One of the X-Men's - and the entire Marvel Universe's - greatest threats begins to emerge and rear its head, in this prelude to the monumental and iconic Onslaught Saga! Onslaught is coming! But first the X-Men must survive his herald: the punishing and powerful Post! Archangel and Wolverine join Doctor Strange on a quest for a mystical cure to Psylocke’s grievous, Sabretooth-inflicted injuries — but Warren too has wounds, both physical and psychological.