Marvel & DC Omnibus

Justice League International is the 1987 relaunch that rebuilt the League after Crisis on Infinite Earths with the most unlikely roster DC has ever assembled. Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire wrote it as workplace comedy and it works because the threats stay real. Maguire's facial acting is the reason the jokes land at all, and Batman as the exasperated adult in the room is one of the best uses of the character DC has managed.

Hama's fifth Wolverine omnibus covers the peak of his run — the period when the revelations about Logan's true past began to accumulate, the bone-claw Wolverine era began after Magneto stripped his adamantium, and the series navigated the most significant physical change to the character since his creation. Hama made the bone-claw period work by refusing to treat the powerdown as a tragedy, instead using Logan's raw, unenhanced state as an opportunity to demonstrate what made Wolverine dangerous had nothing to do with metal.

The third Bronze Age omnibus covers the late seventies, when Gerry Conway took over the Justice League and gave it the longest continuous run of its classic era. Conway wrote the League for years and used the length: long-running subplots, a rotating roster and the arrival of Zatanna as a permanent member. The JLA/JSA crossovers in this stretch are also the most ambitious of the run, bringing in the Legion of Super-Heroes and the New Gods across multiple Earths.

Iron Man debuted in Tales of Suspense #39 in 1963 as a Cold War arms manufacturer who builds a suit to escape captivity and keep his damaged heart beating. The origin is here in full, along with the first appearances of Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, the Mandarin, Black Widow and Hawkeye. The grey armour becomes gold and then red-and-gold across these issues, and Tony Stark's heart condition is a genuine limitation rather than backstory — he can die by running out of power.

This is the complete Jeff Parker era, when the Thunderbolts stop being a super-team and become a work-release program. Luke Cage is handed a Raft cellblock of killers — Juggernaut, Crossbones, Ghost and Moonstone, with the swamp-god Man-Thing as their teleporter — and sent out to clean up disasters in exchange for reduced sentences. The run then mutates mid-stream: the squad is stranded in time and rebranded Dark Avengers, closing out both series in a single volume.

The fourth Mighty Thor omnibus covers the early seventies, after Kirby left and Marvel had to work out what Thor was without him. Gerry Conway and John Buscema take over, and the run turns toward long cosmic quests — the search for Odin, the Ego-Prime storyline, Mephisto — while keeping the Asgardian supporting cast intact. Buscema's Thor is more classical than Kirby's, and this stretch is where the character settles into the form he kept for a decade.

Avengers: The Gathering collects the material that Kurt Busiek and George Pérez used to set up their major Avengers run — the prelude issues, the Thunderbolts crossover material, and the gathering of heroes following the extended period when the main Avengers were missing after the Onslaught event. Busiek's preparatory work established the emotional and narrative foundation for one of the best-received Avengers creative runs in the team's history.

Thor debuted in Journey into Mystery #83 in 1962, and the Lee and Kirby run that followed built Asgard as a working mythology inside the Marvel Universe. The Tales of Asgard back-ups are the reason this volume matters: five pages a month in which Kirby drew Norse mythology with no superhero content at all, and they are among the best things he ever did. Everything the films use — the Warriors Three, the Rainbow Bridge, Loki's motivations — is invented here.

The fourth Avengers omnibus contains the Kree-Skrull War, the storyline that invented the Marvel cosmic event. The Kree-Skrull War runs nine issues with Neal Adams on much of the art, and it is the first time Marvel let a story sprawl across space, involve two alien empires and put the Avengers on trial for it. The Defenders crossover is the other landmark — the first Marvel inter-title crossover, which every event since has copied.

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.

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.

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.

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: 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.

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.

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: 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 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.

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.