Marvel & DC Omnibus

Archie Goodwin's complete Iron Man tenure reaches its conclusion in this third omnibus, representing some of the finest work done on the character in the early 1970s. Goodwin continued to deepen Tony Stark's personal struggles while delivering technically inventive storytelling that pushed against the boundaries of what mainstream Marvel comics were doing.

Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti moved Harley Quinn to Coney Island and gave her a building, a gang of misfits and a life entirely separate from Batman. Separating Harley from the Joker is what made the character work as a lead, and this run is where DC committed to it. Conner's art carries the comedy, and the supporting cast of tenants and sideshow performers gives her something to protect that is entirely her own.

Dark Nights: Death Metal Omnibus collects the sequel to Metal and every tie-in: the Batman Who Laughs has won, Perpetua rules a broken multiverse, and Wonder Woman leads what is left of the resistance. Snyder and Capullo use it to settle DC's entire continuity problem at once, and it ends with the multiverse rebuilt as the Infinite Frontier.

Brightest Day Omnibus collects the year-long series that followed Blackest Night, in which twelve heroes and villains return from the dead and none of them know why. Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi use it to rebuild Aquaman, Firestorm, Hawkman and Martian Manhunter at once, and it contains the Aquaman material that led directly into the New 52 relaunch.

DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus collects the 1996 crossover in which the two universes fought, plus the Amalgam books — a full month of comics from a merged reality where Batman and Wolverine are one character called Dark Claw, and Superman and Captain America are Super-Soldier. A genuine one-off in comics history, collected complete.

Justice League: The Detroit Era Omnibus follows one of the League's strangest reinventions, shaped by a roster away from the usual icons, street-level tension and a rougher identity search. The appeal is seeing this DC period collected as one reading path, with its own tone, cast and visual rhythm.

Before Carol Danvers, before Monica Rambeau, there was Mar-Vell — the Kree warrior who became Marvel's original Captain Marvel. Created by Stan Lee and developed by Roy Thomas, Mar-Vell's adventures in the late Silver Age introduced the cosmic mythology that would underpin decades of Marvel storytelling.

Green Arrow: Year One The Deluxe Edition collects Andy Diggle and Jock's retelling of how a spoiled billionaire became a bowman on a desert island. Stripped of everything, Oliver Queen survives by hunting and then finds the island is already occupied by an opium operation using slave labour. It is lean, brutal and the direct blueprint for the Arrow television series.

Invincible Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the start of Robert Kirkman's acclaimed creator-owned superhero epic — the series behind the hit Prime Video animated show. Mark Grayson is an ordinary teenager whose father is Omni-Man, Earth's most powerful hero. When Mark's own powers arrive he becomes Invincible — right before the series delivers one of comics' great shocking twists about who his father really is. Brutal, character-driven and full of real consequences, drawn by co-creator Cory Walker and definitive artist Ryan Ottley. Includes the famous Marvel Team-Up #14 crossover with Spider-Man.

Thor returned from Heroes Reborn in 1998 with Dan Jurgens writing and John Romita Jr. drawing, and a new premise: Thor bonded to a paramedic named Jake Olson. Jurgens' run rebuilt Asgard's supporting cast from scratch and introduced the Thor/Jake Olson dynamic that carried the book for years. It is also the most accessible Thor era of its decade: no prior reading required, and the mortal identity gives the god somewhere to come back down to.

The work Kirby left Marvel to make. Four interlocking series about warring gods, free will and tyranny, built as a single story with a beginning and an end, and the book that brought Darkseid into the DC universe.

Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus Vol. 3 shows the original Superman mythology growing broader while keeping its fast, populist punch. The stories move through crime, spectacle and wartime imagination with a version of Clark who still feels like a force dropped into an unfair world rather than a distant monument.

Fantastic Four Omnibus Vol. 4 collects the close of the most influential creative run in Marvel history and the transition that followed. It gathers Fantastic Four #94-125 — Jack Kirby's final issues on the title (his last is #102) — and then continues past his departure as Stan Lee is joined by John Romita Sr. and John Buscema, with the peerless inks of Joe Sinnott. It documents the end of an era and the passing of the FF art baton, in an oversized hardcover built for these classics.

Injustice: Gods Among Us Omnibus Vol. 2 collects the second half of Tom Taylor's prequel to the videogame, as Superman's Regime hardens into open dictatorship and Batman's insurgency runs out of people willing to die for it. The series is famous for making a premise that sounds ridiculous on paper genuinely devastating.

The fifth Golden Age Superman volume covers the immediate post-war years, when America was rebuilding and the comics reflected it. The wartime propaganda drops away and the stories turn domestic: Superman dealing with housing shortages, returning veterans and a country changing shape. It is a genuinely useful historical record, and it captures the moment before television and the Comics Code changed what the character was allowed to be.

Arthur Adams drew relatively little for Marvel and influenced almost everyone who came after. This gathers all of it: the Longshot debut, the X-Men annuals that made his reputation, and a large section of pencils, covers and unused art.

Nick Spencer's Captain America — the most politically controversial Marvel run of the 2010s, beginning with the shocking revelation that Steve Rogers is a HYDRA sleeper agent. Secret Empire divided fandom but demonstrated Spencer's willingness to use superhero iconography to explore genuinely disturbing questions about how fascism operates within democratic systems. This first omnibus collects the buildup to that event and the Steve Rogers: Captain America series that redefined Cap's public role in the Marvel universe.

The second Johns omnibus contains Blackest Night, the event in which every dead character in the DC Universe returns wearing a black power ring. Blackest Night works because it is built on grief rather than spectacle: the risen dead are people the heroes failed to save, and they know exactly what to say. Ivan Reis draws the whole thing. It was DC's best-selling event of its decade and it reads far better collected than it did month to month.

Superman by Phillip Kennedy Johnson Omnibus Vol. 2 continues the run that sent Superman to Warworld to free its slaves, stripped of most of his power and with no guarantee of coming back. Kennedy Johnson writes him as a man who keeps going because stopping is not available to him.

Superman: Camelot Falls: The Deluxe Edition collects Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco's run, built on an uncomfortable proposition: that by solving humanity's problems Superman is preventing it from growing up, and that his presence will end in catastrophe.

Superman: Up in the Sky: The Deluxe Edition collects Tom King and Andy Kubert's series about a single question: a girl has been taken somewhere across the galaxy, and Superman leaves Earth to find her even though the odds say he should not. Each chapter is a self-contained trial on the way.

Superman & Batman: Generations Omnibus collects John Byrne's Elseworlds saga, which asks a simple question: what if Superman and Batman had aged in real time since 1939? Each chapter jumps a decade, and their children and grandchildren inherit the capes.

Elseworlds: Superman Omnibus Vol. 2 continues the alternate-reality Superman collection with more of the line's out-of-continuity stories, from historical settings to outright fantasy. Take the last son of Krypton, land the rocket somewhere else, and follow the logic wherever it goes, no continuity, no consequences.

The United States has had its own Superman since 1945, kept in a hangar and used when the official one would say no. Snyder and Jim Lee use him to ask what Superman is for in a country that would rather have a weapon, and Lee draws the biggest pages of his career doing it.