Marvel & DC Omnibus

The massive event where the Hulk takes his revenge on Earth's heroes - and maybe break the world itself! Hulk versus the world, in an epic story of anger unbound! Exiled by his so-called friends, the Hulk has raged, bled and conquered on the alien planet Sakaar. Now, he returns to Earth to wreak terrible vengeance on Iron Man, Mister Fantastic, Doctor Strange and Black Bolt - and anyone else who gets in the way!

Writer and author Bruce Jones’ acclaimed, smash-hit run! Blamed for the televised murder of a child, Bruce Banner becomes Public Enemy No. 1 — hounded by society, hunted by the law and targeted by a mysterious third party with a sinister agenda all its own…one that cuts to the very heart of Banner’s strange affliction!

Writer and author Bruce Jones' acclaimed, smash-hit run! Blamed for the televised murder of a child, Bruce Banner becomes Public Enemy No. 1 - hounded by society, hunted by the law and targeted by a mysterious third party with a sinister agenda all its own…one that cuts to the very heart of Banner's strange affliction!

The Question by Dennis O'Neil and Denys Cowan is a martial-arts crime series about a faceless journalist who gets beaten nearly to death in issue #1 and has to learn how to fight. O'Neil writes Vic Sage as a man doing philosophy badly and improving at it, with Richard Dragon training him and Zen koans opening every issue. Cowan's Hub City is one of the ugliest and most convincing fictional cities in comics. It is a genuinely adult book that DC has never quite replicated.

Ed Brubaker spent eight years on Captain America and turned Bucky Barnes from a continuity embarrassment into the most interesting character in the book. This omnibus collects the conclusion. The Winter Soldier series is the payoff of the whole run: Russian sleeper agents waking up, Doctor Doom, and Bucky forced to choose between his own freedom and Natasha's. Brubaker writes it as cold-war espionage rather than superheroics, and this is the volume where he finishes the story he started in 2005.

Justice League Dark: Rebirth Omnibus collects James Tynion IV's complete run, in which Wonder Woman assembles a team of magicians because magic itself is dying and the ordinary Justice League is useless against it. Zatanna, Constantine, Swamp Thing, Detective Chimp and Man-Bat, against threats the main League cannot even perceive.

The Mighty Thor Omnibus Vol. 3 is the post-Kirby transition where John Buscema becomes the visual anchor for Asgard. The book matters because Thor has to keep mythic weight after Kirby leaves, and Buscema answers with anatomy, solemn staging and classical power. It is a visual evolution shelf for classic Thor, preserving the moment where John Buscema's solemn power carries Asgard after Kirby's explosive foundation.

New Krypton is the storyline in which a hundred thousand surviving Kryptonians arrive on Earth and Superman stops being the last of his kind. The premise is the best Superman question anyone has asked recently: what does he do when his people arrive and they are not like him. The Kryptonians are militaristic, entitled and legally separate, and Superman has to choose between them and Earth. It ran across every Superman title for two years and only reads properly collected.

The Man Who Laughs is Ed Brubaker and Doug Mahnke's account of Batman's first encounter with the Joker, written as a direct continuation of Frank Miller's Year One. Brubaker writes the Joker as a public health emergency rather than a nemesis, poisoned reservoirs, televised threats, a city that does not yet know what it is dealing with, and Mahnke draws the victims' faces, which is the detail everyone remembers. Made of Wood is the other draw: a genuine detective story with the Golden Age Green Lantern.

Dan Slott's She-Hulk turned Jennifer Walters back into a working lawyer, at a firm whose entire practice is superhuman law. The premise generates cases nobody else could write: back issues admissible as legal precedent, a client suing over a resurrection, and Two-Gun Kid as an associate. Slott keeps the comedy without making the law a joke, and it is the run that made She-Hulk a lead character rather than a guest.

Animal Man by Jamie Delano and Steve Pugh Omnibus collects the run that followed Grant Morrison, in which Buddy Baker's connection to the animal kingdom becomes something closer to body horror and his family life falls apart around it. Delano took the strangest book at DC and made it stranger.

Animal Man by Tom Veitch and Steve Dillon Omnibus collects the stretch between Morrison and Delano, with Steve Dillon on art before he became famous for Preacher. It is the most overlooked corner of one of DC's strangest series.

Under the Red Hood undid the most permanent death in Batman’s history. Judd Winick brought Jason Todd back not as a redemption story but as an indictment, and the arc has shaped every Batman and Robin story written since. Winick refuses to let Batman answer that question comfortably, and the book is stronger for it. At 544 pages this is the complete storyline rather than the abridged version, including Annual #25’s explanation of the resurrection, and it reads as the direct sequel to A Death in the Family.

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus brings the rare cross-publisher meetings back into one oversized volume: Superman and Spider-Man, Batman and Captain America, the X-Men and Teen Titans, Punisher crossovers and the DC/Marvel battles that were out of print for decades.

Batman: Year One Deluxe Edition collects Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's definitive retelling of Bruce Wayne's first year under the cowl, and of Lieutenant James Gordon's first year in a police department that is entirely corrupt. Lean, cold and grounded, it is the story that set the tone for every modern Batman origin, from the comics to the films. This deluxe hardcover adds Miller's complete script, Mazzucchelli's pencil breakdowns and more than forty pages of behind-the-scenes material.

Batman: Arkham Asylum The Deluxe Edition collects Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's painted graphic novel, one of the strangest and best-selling Batman books ever published. On April Fool's Day the inmates take the asylum and demand Batman walk in alone; interleaved with that night is the diary of Amadeus Arkham, the psychologist who built the place after his mother's death. McKean's mixed-media artwork, paint, photography and collage, makes it unlike any other Batman comic.

All-Star Batman by Scott Snyder: The Deluxe Edition collects Snyder's complete post-New 52 run, in which he hands Batman a different A-list artist every arc and sends him out of Gotham. It opens with Batman driving Two-Face across the country while every bounty hunter and civilian in America tries to stop him, and keeps escalating from there. Art by John Romita Jr., Jock, Sean Murphy, Afua Richardson, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Tula Lotay.

Batman: The Cult Deluxe Edition collects Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson's brutal 1988 mini-series, back in print for the first time in over a decade. Batman is captured by Deacon Blackfire, a charismatic preacher building an army in Gotham's sewers, and is starved, drugged and broken until he begins to believe. It is the story of Batman losing, and of what it costs him to come back.

Batman: Sword of Azrael Deluxe Edition collects the origin of Jean-Paul Valley, the assassin conditioned from birth by the Order of St. Dumas and destined to wear the cowl. Written by Dennis O'Neil and drawn by a young Joe Quesada, it is the book that set up Knightfall, and the reason the man who replaced Batman was never going to give the job back quietly.

The Batman Who Laughs: The Deluxe Edition collects Scott Snyder and Jock's New York Times bestselling mini-series, in which the Batman of a dead universe — infected by the Joker's toxin and gifted with the ability to think exactly like him — comes to the main DC Earth with a plan for Bruce Wayne specifically. Includes The Grim Knight, the origin of his equally lethal lieutenant.

Dark Nights: Metal Omnibus collects Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's event and every tie-in, in which Batman's obsessive investigating tears open the Dark Multiverse and lets seven nightmare versions of himself into reality. It is the story that gave DC the Batman Who Laughs, and it is deliberately the loudest, most excessive thing Snyder and Capullo ever made together.

Absolute Batman: The Deluxe Edition Vol. 1 collects the opening run of the series that relaunched Batman with everything taken away. In the Absolute Universe Bruce Wayne has no fortune, no manor and no Alfred — only a working-class Gotham that failed him and whatever he can build with his own hands. Written by Scott Snyder with art by Nick Dragotta, it was the biggest DC launch in years.

Batman by Chip Zdarsky Omnibus Vol. 2 continues the run that stranded Bruce Wayne on a Failsafe-ruined Gotham and kept raising the stakes from there. Zdarsky writes a Batman whose contingency plans keep turning into the threat, with art by Jorge Jimenez and others.

Batman: Beyond the White Knight The Deluxe Edition continues Sean Murphy's White Knight universe, jumping forward to a Neo-Gotham where an older Bruce Wayne must reckon with what his methods built. Murphy writes and draws it himself, and this edition adds the Red Hood chapters covering Jason Todd's lost years.