Marvel & DC Omnibus

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.

Justice League of America: The Silver Age Omnibus Vol. 1 focuses on the Silver Age birth of the League, with DC's major heroes shaped by team problems, impossible threats and the pleasure of seeing icons share one stage. The appeal is not only continuity; it is watching a specific DC period find its tone, cast and visual rhythm.

Jim Corrigan is a dead detective and the Spectre is what he came back as, and in the 1970s that meant murderers being turned into wood and fed through a bandsaw. Fleisher and Aparo wrote the most extreme superhero comics the Code ever allowed, and DC cancelled the run for it.

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.

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely wrote All Star Superman outside continuity in 2005, with a single premise: Superman is dying and has twelve labours left. Morrison treats every era of the character as true at once, the Silver Age absurdities, the Golden Age social crusader, the modern icon, and Quitely draws him as physically calm in a way nobody else manages. Issue #10 is widely considered the best single Superman comic ever published. It requires no prior reading at all.

Superman: Birthright The Deluxe Edition collects Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu's twelve-issue retelling of Superman's origin, the version that reframed Clark Kent as a young man travelling the world as a journalist before he ever puts on the suit. Waid's key idea — that Clark can see the living aura around every creature, and therefore cannot bear to let anything die — is the warmest explanation anyone has given for why Superman does what he does.

Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? The Deluxe Edition collects Alan Moore and Curt Swan's farewell to the Silver Age Superman — the last story of that continuity before Crisis on Infinite Earths swept it away. Moore called it an imaginary story and then made it the most final one ever told: the villains stop playing, the supporting cast dies, and Superman has to decide what he is willing to do about it.

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.

World's Finest: The Deluxe Edition collects Dave Gibbons and Steve Rude's prestige miniseries, in which Superman and Batman swap cities and discover how badly each one's methods fit the other's problems. Rude draws it in a warm, classical register that makes it feel like the best version of a Silver Age team-up.

Superman: Emperor Joker The Deluxe Edition collects the storyline in which the Joker steals Mister Mxyzptlk's reality-warping power and remakes the universe as a joke at Superman's expense. It is the rare Superman story where the threat is genuinely unanswerable, and it is very funny until it is not.

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's Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? The Deluxe Edition collects Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber's series, a densely packed comedy in which Jimmy dies, fakes his death, marries a stranger, moves to Gotham and investigates his own murder. It was Eisner-nominated and is unlike anything else DC publishes.

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.

Superman: Kryptonite: The Deluxe Edition collects Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale's story of the first time Superman encountered kryptonite, and of what it means for someone who has never been vulnerable to discover that he can be hurt.

Elseworlds: Superman Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the alternate-reality Superman stories: what if the rocket had landed somewhere else, in another century, in another country. Includes Speeding Bullets, Kal and the other classics of the line.

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.

Batman & Superman in World's Finest: The Silver Age Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the team-up series at its most inventive, when Superman and Batman shared a book every month and the plots involved body swaps, alien impostors and whatever else the writers could think of. Drawn largely by Curt Swan.

Batman & Superman in World's Finest: The Silver Age Omnibus Vol. 2 continues the team-up run deeper into the sixties, with the plots getting steadily more outlandish and the Superman-Batman partnership settling into the shape it still has today.

Superman is dying, and instead of fighting it he spends the time left settling his affairs: telling Lois the truth, curing cancer, and answering the one question his father never got to ask. All-Star Superman is the argument that the character works best when he has nothing left to prove.

The Joker steals Mister Mxyzptlk's power, takes control of reality, and spends every day destroying Batman and putting him back together for the next morning. Emperor Joker is the crossover where the Superman books went as far as they could go and then explained why the Joker could never win.

Superboy Prime raises an army of every villain the Legion ever fought, so the Legion answers by fielding three versions of itself from three timelines at once. Johns and Perez drew every Legionnaire who has ever existed onto the same page and somehow kept it readable.

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.