Marvel & DC Omnibus

Mark Gruenwald wrote Captain America for ten years, longer than anyone, and this omnibus covers the stretch where he asked what the character owes his own government. This is the Streets of Poison and Bloodstone Hunt period, and it also contains the Captain America drug storyline that Marvel has never reprinted much. Gruenwald built most of the modern supporting cast — Diamondback, Crossbones, the Serpent Society — and his run is the connective tissue between Kirby's Cap and Brubaker's.

Jack Kirby created the Eternals in 1976, after returning from DC, as a bid to explain human mythology as the memory of alien visitors. Kirby wrote and drew the whole run and it was cancelled before he could finish. The Celestials — building-sized judges who arrive every few thousand years to decide whether humanity survives — are the enduring idea, and Marvel has used them ever since. It is Kirby's last great creation and it reads unlike anything else he did.

Harley Quinn's adventures in Coney Island continue in the second volume of the Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti run. Harley has established herself as Coney Island's unofficial protector, builds her own gang, and takes on threats ranging from local crime to cosmic weirdness. The series maintains the anarchic energy of the first volume while deepening the supporting cast and Harley's relationships. One of DC's most purely entertaining series of the 2010s, continuing the run that made Harley Quinn a star.

JSA by Geoff Johns Omnibus Vol. 3 closes out the original series and opens the acclaimed 2007 relaunch, Justice Society of America. It gathers the "Lightning Saga" JLA/JSA crossover and the celebrated "Thy Kingdom Come", the epic where the Superman of Kingdom Come crosses into the main DC Universe. Dale Eaglesham becomes the signature artist of the relaunch, under iconic Alex Ross covers, in the run that broke Stargirl out as a marquee character. The definitive Johns JSA reaches its high point.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote Black Panther for five years and treated Wakanda as a political problem rather than a setting: a monarchy whose subjects have started asking why it exists. The first half is a revolution against T'Challa by people with legitimate grievances, which almost no superhero comic attempts. The second half moves to a Wakandan empire in deep space, thousands of years in the future, where T'Challa is an amnesiac slave. Both halves are genuinely political rather than politically flavoured.

Doom Patrol by Gerard Way and Nick Derington: The Deluxe Edition collects the Young Animal relaunch, which opened with a sentient gyro and got stranger from there. Way writes the Doom Patrol as absurdist comedy with real feeling underneath, and Nick Derington's clean, poppy artwork makes the strangeness readable.

Aquaman: The Death of a Prince Deluxe Edition collects the 1970s run in which Black Manta murders Aquaman's infant son and the character never fully recovers. It is the darkest thing DC published about Arthur Curry for decades, drawn largely by Jim Aparo, and it is the origin of the grief that every later writer — Peter David, Geoff Johns, Jeff Parker — has had to work around.

Aquaman: The Search for Mera Deluxe Edition collects the nine-issue Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo run that first treated Aquaman as a serious dramatic character. Mera vanishes, Atlantis falls into the hands of a scheming politician named Narkran, and Arthur abandons his throne to look for his wife while Black Manta circles. It is the moment Aquaman stopped being a Silver Age curiosity.

Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis Omnibus collects the original Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson run that created the character, plus the material that followed before Alan Moore arrived. Wrightson's swamp is one of the most beautiful things ever drawn in a mainstream comic.

Thirty years of Harley Quinn in one volume, from her first appearance as the Joker's henchwoman in the animated series to the solo antihero who now outsells most of the Bat family. The anniversary collection picks the turning points rather than the best sellers, which makes it the clearest map of how the character changed.

The middle and strongest stretch of Marvel's longest-running horror series. Dracula is hunted across Europe while the book turns from monster-of-the-month into a genuine serial novel with a continuing cast. Gene Colan's shadow work here is the reason artists still study this run.

Bill Mantlo and a young Jim Lee on Alpha Flight, collected for the first time: issues #30-70 plus annuals, 1,192 pages.

Suicide Squad by John Ostrander Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the run that invented everything the concept is known for: Amanda Waller, the bomb in the neck, and the certainty that some of the team will not come back. Ostrander writes it as a Cold War espionage book that happens to use supervillains, and it remains far sharper than any adaptation of it.

Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty tell Dick Grayson's first year in the cape, and they do not pretend it went well. Robin's debut against the Mad Hatter, Mr. Freeze and Two-Face is a run of hard lessons about what Batman was really asking of a child, drawn by Javier Pulido in the clean retro line that made the book a classic.

The companion to the main House of M Omnibus, gathering every scattered tie-in of the 2005 event into a single oversized hardcover. It runs from the Scarlet Witch's breakdown in Excalibur, through the New Avengers' post-event Collective arc, to the House of M: Avengers, Civil War: House of M and Masters of Evil minis that explored the mutant-ruled timeline. The one book that saves House of M collectors from chasing dozens of loose issues.

Before Blade became a cinematic icon, he was born in the pages of Tomb of Dracula — a vampire hunter with an edge unlike any other. Marv Wolfman, the writer who created Blade, built the character from the ground up in Marvel's most influential horror comic of the Bronze Age. This omnibus collects Blade's early appearances and solo material from his formative years, drawn from the Tomb of Dracula era and surrounding titles.

The magazine half of Marvel's Dracula project, printed in black and white and written for an adult audience without the constraints of the Comics Code. Longer stories, harder edges, and a different Dracula from the one in the colour series.

Late-period Kirby with nobody editing him: a giant red tyrannosaur and a proto-human boy, told with total conviction and no irony whatsoever. Short, strange, and the purest example of what Kirby did when left alone with an idea.

Daken: Dark Wolverine collects Daniel Way and Marjorie Liu's work on Logan's son — a character who possesses all of Wolverine's physical gifts and none of his moral constraints, making Daken simultaneously the most dangerous and the most psychologically interesting Wolverine spin-off character. Way introduced Daken as an antagonist in his Wolverine run before Liu took the character into genuinely unexpected psychological territory, exploring what a lifetime of weaponized trauma produces in someone with Wolverine's DNA but none of his father's redemptive arc.

Spider-Woman has one of the most complex histories in Marvel — multiple retcons, a Skrull impersonation during Secret Invasion, and a gradual rehabilitation into one of the Avengers' most capable field agents. This omnibus gathers the complete modern Spider-Woman adventures, charting Jessica Drew's evolution from supporting character to lead. Collects 1,An oversized volume of modern Spider-Woman comics across multiple creative runs, including key appearances in Avengers titles and her solo series.

Namor the Sub-Mariner is one of Marvel's oldest characters — predating the Marvel Universe itself, created by Bill Everett in 1939. The original Prince of Atlantis stories by Stan Lee and Everett represent the foundation of the character: imperious, morally ambiguous, simultaneously hero and antagonist to the surface world. At , Volume 1 of the Namor Omnibus is one of Marvel's most substantial archival collections.

The Sentry arrived in 2000 as Marvel's answer to a question the universe had never asked: what if there was a Superman-level hero who had always existed, but everyone had forgotten him? Paul Jenkins constructed the concept as a mystery — Bob Reynolds is the most powerful hero alive, but something made all of Marvel's heroes erase their own memories of him. The series is as much psychological thriller as superhero comic.

This second omnibus completes Mike Grell's Warlord in one volume, gathering the back half of his defining run on the sword-and-sorcery series in original colors, with a new introduction by Grell and an afterword by Dan Jurgens. Travis Morgan fights to hold Skartaris together as Grell shares scripting with Sharon Wright and hands art duties to Mark Texeira and a young Dan Jurgens. Warlord stands as one of DC's foundational fantasy titles, and this edition closes the definitive collection of Grell's original work.

The other Claremont. Everyone knows the sixteen years on Uncanny X-Men; this collects what he was writing everywhere else across four decades, including the first Captain Britain series and a stretch of Doctor Strange. It is the volume that shows the range behind the reputation.