Marvel & DC Omnibus

Batman: Dark Victory Deluxe Edition collects the direct sequel to The Long Halloween, in which a new killer targets Gotham's police while Batman drifts further from the people who anchor him. It is also the book where Dick Grayson arrives, which makes it the origin of the partnership as much as a murder mystery.

Batman: Gotham After Midnight: The Deluxe Edition collects Steve Niles and Kelley Jones's horror-tinged run, in which a killer called Midnight moves through Gotham and Batman works the case across a year of holidays. Kelley Jones draws the most exaggerated, gothic Batman in print.

Batman by John Ridley The Deluxe Edition collects the Oscar-winning screenwriter's Batman work, including The Next Batman material introducing Tim Fox, and Ridley's take on what the cowl means when someone else wears it.

Batman & The Joker: The Deadly Duo: The Deluxe Edition collects Marc Silvestri's series, in which Batman and the Joker are forced to work together after Gordon is kidnapped and Harley Quinn goes missing. Silvestri writes and draws, which he rarely does.

Detective Comics #1000: The Deluxe Edition collects the thousandth issue of the longest-running comic in America, with short stories by most of the writers and artists who have defined Batman over the last forty years.

Batman by Doug Moench Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the run of a writer who spent more issues on Batman than almost anyone, across the Knightfall era and beyond, much of it drawn by Kelley Jones in his most gothic register.

Mark Waid and Dan Mora took the oldest team-up in superhero comics and made it feel new by refusing to make it grim. Their World's Finest is set in a bright, slightly retro past where Batman and Superman still trust each other, Robin is a boy wonder again and the Doom Patrol, the Devil Nezha and the Metal Men all get their turn.

The second deluxe volume of Waid and Mora's World's Finest widens the cast without losing the tone. Batman and Superman face the return of Boy Thunder, a Kryptonian threat with no easy answer and a Gotham that keeps refusing to behave, in the same bright register that made the first volume the most praised DC book of its era.

Tom King and Phil Hester go back to 1961 and tell Gotham's original sin without Batman in it. Private investigator Slam Bradley takes the kidnapping case of Helen Wayne, heir to the Wayne fortune, and what he finds is a city already rotten with police corruption and racial violence long before anyone put on a cape.

A white collar criminal fakes insanity to dodge prison and lands in Arkham Asylum, where the joke stops being funny about four hours in. Dan Slott and Ryan Sook tell Arkham from the inside as a prison drama, with Batman appearing only when the place has already done its work.

Ego is Bruce Wayne sitting in the cave arguing with Batman about whether either of them should exist. Darwyn Cooke drew it in 2000 and it remains the cleanest statement anybody has made about what the character costs the man, collected here with the rest of his Batman and Catwoman work.

Everyone who ever knew Batman comes to his funeral and each of them tells a different, contradictory story about how he died. Gaiman and Kubert wrote the eulogy DC asked for after Batman R.I.P., and turned it into a story about why this particular character never stays dead.

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.

The Batman Who Laughs has won, the Earth is a scrapyard ruled by dark multiverse versions of everyone, and Wonder Woman has to put a chainsaw through it. Snyder and Capullo close their decade of Batman with the loudest book either of them has drawn, and it is deliberately ridiculous.

The complete Death Metal event in one volume: the main series, every tie-in and the specials, in the direct market exclusive variant edition. Snyder and Capullo close out their decade of Batman with the Batman Who Laughs ruling a scrapyard Earth and Wonder Woman coming to take it back with a chainsaw.

Batman teams up with a different DC hero every issue and Bob Haney writes each one as if continuity were a rumour he had heard once. The result is the loosest, fastest Batman comic ever published, and Jim Aparo draws almost all of it.

Rafael Grampá writes and draws his own Gotham, a city so filthy and so detailed that Batman looks like part of the architecture. It is a Black Label book about a serial killer, and the reason to buy it is that nobody draws like Grampá.

Ten years after Batman was last seen, Gotham has rotted and a fifty-five year old Bruce Wayne puts the suit back on because he cannot help it. Frank Miller's 1986 series is the book that changed what superhero comics were allowed to be, for better and for worse.

New York City: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles face the battle of a lifetime, fighting not only the fearsome Foot Clan and their leader, the Shredder, but also the alien forces of General Krang, which is exactly Krang’s plan. Now a single dimensional warp can rid him of both of his greatest rivals in one fell swoop!

Someone is targeting Batman’s allies in Gotham—young and untested heroes who model themselves after the Dark Knight but don’t yet have his training or resources. With the help of Batwoman, the Caped Crusader recruits these young vigilantes, training them to be a team worthy of Gotham’s biggest threats.

A new Batman’s deadly crusade against the criminals of Gotham City begins! Bruce Wayne, battle-broken and out of commission after his epic showdown with Gotham’s famous villain Bane, has appointed a new Dark Knight to keep the bad guys at bay. Jean-Paul Valley (a.k.a. Azrael) has assumed the role of the caped crusader, but without Bruce’s integrity as a calming influence, Jean-Paul is swiftly getting out of hand, alienating both Robin and Commissioner Gordon.

Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo took over Fantastic Four in 2002 and wrote it as what it always claimed to be: a family of explorers rather than superheroes. Unthinkable is the run's peak and the best Doctor Doom story in decades: Doom wins completely, and what he does with the victory is genuinely disturbing. Waid also writes the most convincing Reed Richards anyone has managed — a man whose intelligence is a character flaw. Wieringo's art keeps the whole thing warm.

Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's Fantastic Four run applied the same widescreen action cinema approach the pair had pioneered in The Ultimates to Marvel's First Family — massive scale, cinematic set pieces, and a villain (the Old Power-wielding Skulls) designed for maximum visual spectacle. The run also contained one of comics' most emotionally effective death-and-legacy storylines, as Millar used the threat to the team's future as an opportunity to examine what the Fantastic Four's legacy would be if they were gone.

Scott Snyder relaunched Swamp Thing for the New 52 alongside his Batman run, turning Alec Holland into the reluctant avatar of a green kingdom at war with rot. Rotworld is the crossover with Jeff Lemire's Animal Man, and reading the two together is the point, the Animal Man chapters are included here for exactly that reason. Yanick Paquette's page layouts, with borders that grow like plants, are among the most beautiful in DC's modern output.