Marvel & DC Omnibus

Batman and Spawn crossed over twice in 1994, once from each publisher, with Frank Miller and Doug Moench writing and Todd McFarlane and Klaus Janson drawing. The 1994 books are a document of the moment Image was outselling DC and the two companies had to negotiate as equals. The 2022 one-shot is the reason to buy it now: McFarlane and Capullo, the two definitive Spawn and Batman artists, on the same book for the first time.

In 1966 Batman was a prime-time television phenomenon: Adam West and Burt Ward, painted sound effects and a rogues' gallery played by Hollywood guest stars. DC brought that universe back as an ongoing comic. This is the whole run in one volume, and the rare Batman book you can hand to anyone: no continuity to catch up on, no crossovers, just self-contained stories.

Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV wrote Justice League as cosmology: the Source Wall breaks and the forces that built the universe start taking sides. The premise is that the Justice League have been fighting the wrong war: the Legion of Doom is trying to unmake reality's rules rather than rob a bank. The Batman Who Laughs is included here for good reason, it is the best thing to come out of the era and it reads as the run's real antagonist.

Grant Morrison and Mark Millar wrote The Flash together in the late nineties, immediately after Mark Waid, with Wally West already established as the fastest man alive. The Human Race is the standout: an alien gambler challenges the Flash to a race across the universe with Earth as the stake, and Morrison writes it as pure high concept. The Black Flash, death itself, running to catch up, is the other lasting idea, and DC has used it ever since.

The second Green Lantern Corps omnibus covers Blackest Night and its aftermath from the Corps' point of view, away from Earth and from Hal Jordan. The Corps takes the worst of Blackest Night, their own dead rise, and they are the ones who buried them, and this volume carries the emotional weight the main event could not. Kyle Rayner's arc in particular is the best material the character has ever had, and it is largely absent from the Green Lantern omnibus editions.

In 1992 DC killed Superman and the story made the evening news. Thirty years later this edition collects it as a single book. Doomsday is the rare villain who works precisely because he has no personality, no motive, no dialogue, just forward motion, and the escalating panel counts across the final issues are one of the smartest formal tricks in mainstream comics. Whatever you think of the stunt, it is the best-selling comic story ever published.

Ta-Nehisi Coates took over Captain America straight after Secret Empire, with the country still processing that a HYDRA version of Steve Rogers had governed it. The run is about a symbol that no longer commands automatic trust. Coates writes Cap as a man arguing with his own myth: framed for murder, driven underground, and forced to work out what the shield means when the people it represents no longer agree on anything. The Power Elite and a reborn Red Skull give the run an antagonist that cannot be punched, which is the point.

Begun in black and white for a British anthology in 1982 and finished in colour for DC, V for Vendetta sets anarchy against fascism in a near-future Britain. Moore refuses to make his protagonist comfortable: V is a terrorist and the book never resolves that for the reader. David Lloyd stripped out sound effects, thought balloons and motion lines, leaving only what a camera would catch. The Guy Fawkes mask left the book and entered the street, which very few comics can claim.

The first time Rom the Spaceknight's Marvel run has been collected in one book. Bill Mantlo turned a Parker Brothers electronic toy into a genuine Marvel Universe saga, threading the Dire Wraiths through S.H.I.E.L.D., the X-Men and Doctor Strange, while Sal Buscema drew the entire run. It gathers the origin and Rom's arrival on Earth across his first twenty-nine issues, a Bronze Age cult classic locked out of print for decades by licensing disputes.

The book that finally brings Marvel's cult Micronauts back into print from the very first issue. Bill Mantlo built a full cosmic mythology out of Mego's toy line, and Michael Golden's landmark art made it one of the most striking Marvel debuts of its era. This first omnibus gathers the run's opening arcs, from the flight out of the Microverse to the Baron Karza war, long expensive and hard to find on the back-issue market.

The concluding half of Marvel's Bronze Age cult favourite: Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema drive Rom the Spaceknight's war against the Dire Wraiths to its finish, exposing the shapeshifters' invasion across the wider Marvel Universe before Rom finally regains his humanity. Long out of print in single issues, the Rom run stayed unreprinted for decades due to licensing, making this omnibus the only complete way to own the ending.

This second omnibus opens with the explosive six-part origin of the Microverse, then follows Commander Rann and his rebels as they race to find three keys and stop the mad King Argon, cross into the X-Men's Danger Room pursued by the metamorph Huntarr, and confront the returning Baron Karza. It gathers the deep-cut stretch of Bill Mantlo's cult run that Marvel kept out of print for decades, drawn by Pat Broderick, Gil Kane and Butch Guice.

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons took a set of discarded Charlton characters in 1986 and used them to ask what costumed power would actually do to a country. The nine-panel grid, the recurring symbols and the symmetry of chapter five make the structure part of the argument, and the prose sections are not optional, they carry a third of the story. Watchmen is the book almost every deconstruction since is answering, and the deluxe format restores John Higgins' colour choices that cheap paper flattened.

Tom Taylor's DCeased delivers the Anti-Life Equation as a digital virus and lets it move through the Justice League at the speed of their own abilities. The horror comes from competence turned against itself: Superman flies, so the infection flies. Unlike most zombie crossovers Taylor writes the losses as losses, spending pages on relationships before he destroys them. It needs no continuity and it is the best-selling book of its kind DC has published.

Before Watchmen Omnibus collects all ten prequel series DC published to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, in one oversized hardcover. Whatever you think of the idea, the talent assembled is extraordinary: Darwyn Cooke on Minutemen and Silk Spectre, Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo on Rorschach, J. Michael Straczynski on Dr. Manhattan, plus Amanda Conner, Adam Hughes, Joe Kubert and Jae Lee.

Nightwing: Rebirth is Tim Seeley's run, which returned Dick Grayson to the costume after years as a spy and moved him to Blüdhaven to build a life outside Gotham. Seeley writes Dick as the one member of the Bat-family who is genuinely well-adjusted, which is a harder character to make interesting and he manages it. The Blüdhaven material gives him a city, a supporting cast and problems that are his own rather than Batman's leftovers, and it is the run every later Nightwing writer builds on.

Paul Jenkins and Sean Phillips took over Hellblazer after Garth Ennis and pushed it toward the quieter, sadder register the character had never been allowed. Jenkins' run is where Constantine stops winning: the schemes get smaller, the friends stay dead, and the best issues are about failure rather than trickery. Sean Phillips' art, muted, grubby, entirely unglamorous, is the visual template he would later carry to Criminal and Sleeper.

Ram V's Detective Comics run is a horror story in three acts: Batman questioning his own mortality while genuine demons start appearing in Gotham. The premise turns the character's own iconography against him: Batman has spent decades pretending to be a demon, and the run asks what happens if one has been living in him all along. It is the most formally ambitious Detective run in years, and Albuquerque's art carries the tone rather than illustrating it.

John Constantine first appeared in Swamp Thing #37 in 1985 and got his own title two years later, becoming the character DC has adapted into film, television and animation more than any other Vertigo creation. The early run establishes the format everything since has used: Constantine's magic is mostly lying, his friends die because they know him, and the horror is usually political. Jamie Delano wrote Thatcher's Britain as a haunting, which gives these issues a specificity that later runs traded for mythology.

Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo's Nightwing won an Eisner and is the most acclaimed run the character has ever had, built on Dick Grayson inheriting a fortune and deciding to give it away. Redondo's art is the reason this run is famous: issue #87's single-shot chase drawn as one continuous panel, and layouts that keep finding new ways to show movement. Taylor writes Dick as relentlessly decent, which in a Bat-book is a genuinely radical choice. It reads perfectly well without the first volume.

Brainiac is Superman's oldest intellectual equal, and this omnibus tracks his transformation from a green-skinned alien with a ray gun into a genuine cosmic threat. The post-Crisis Brainiac is the version everything since has been built on: not a robot but a mind that occupies bodies, collects cities and treats Superman as a specimen. Reading the arcs in sequence shows a deliberate rebuild rather than a series of guest appearances, which is not obvious when they are read separately.

Garth Ennis wrote Hellblazer for three years in the early nineties and produced the run most people mean when they talk about John Constantine. Dangerous Habits is the story where Constantine cons three lords of Hell into saving his life because none of them will let the others have his soul, and it is the single best trick the character has ever pulled. Ennis also writes his friendships better than anyone: the pub scenes are the reason the horror lands.

Gotham Central is one of the finest comics DC has ever published: a police procedural set in Gotham City, following the Major Crimes Unit as they investigate murders, kidnappings and crimes in a city where Batman exists. Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker write cops who resent Batman's existence while simultaneously depending on him, a fundamental tension that makes every case morally complex. Michael Lark's noir art defines the visual language of Gotham as a real city rather than a superhero backdrop. An absolute masterpiece.

Flashpoint is the DC event where one impossible choice turns the whole world wrong. Barry Allen wakes in a reality without the Justice League as he knows it, with Thomas Wayne as Batman, Atlantis and Themyscira at war, and every familiar piece of the DC universe bent into a darker shape. This anniversary omnibus is the full earthquake: the central event, the altered world around it and the road toward the New 52.