Marvel & DC Omnibus

Chris Claremont assembles a dream team of artists — John Romita Jr., Arthur Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith and Dave Cockrum — for this massive fifth omnibus collecting issues #194-209 plus the complete Longshot and Nightcrawler limited series. The Juggernaut makes an earthshaking return, the second Lifedeath story explores Storm's journey without powers, and the Asgardian Wars crossover sends the X-Men and New Mutants into Norse mythology. Nathan Summers is born and Rachel Summers grapples with the Phoenix Force, while Barry Windsor-Smith crafts the defining Wolverine solo tale Wounded Wolf. This volume also introduces Longshot, the lucky six-fingered warrior from the Mojoverse, in Arthur Adams' career-making limited series that became an instant classic.

Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 4 catches the Claremont era in a rich, unstable stretch, with Arthur Adams, John Romita Jr. and the art team giving the mutant world sharp visual range. The team’s relationships, fears and transformations keep expanding, making the volume feel like long-form character drama disguised as superhero adventure. For collectors, the attraction is the density of the Claremont period: every relationship has history, every transformation leaves residue, and the superhero plots keep feeding a larger emotional machine.

Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol. 3 keeps Chris Claremont’s mutant epic moving through space, intimacy and team fracture, with Dave Cockrum and Paul Smith giving the book different kinds of elegance. It is a volume where the X-Men feel both cosmic and painfully personal, often within the same arc. This is Claremont’s X-Men as a living ensemble: space opera can sit next to quiet character damage, and the book trusts the reader to care about both with equal intensity.

Closing of the historic Claremont-Lee collaboration. After editorial differences over creative direction, Claremont left the X-Men after 16 years of uninterrupted writing — the longest continuous run on a superhero title in history. Jim Lee briefly took over the script before leaving to found Image Comics alongside Todd McFarlane and others. A moment of historic transition for Marvel and for American comics that changed the industry forever.

First volume of the 1991 relaunch with Claremont and Jim Lee. Issue #1 of the new series sold 8.1 million copies: the best-selling comic in history. Jim Lee on X-Men is absolute visual reference material: the characters as they were drawn for the next decade, the look that inspired the '90s animated series and subsequent films.

John Byrne joins Claremont on art and together they create some of the most important stories ever written at Marvel: Days of Future Past and the Dark Phoenix Saga. Jean Grey, possessed by the cosmic entity Phoenix, becomes the greatest threat in the universe and sacrifices her life to save the X-Men. Absolute must-read.

Start of the longest and most acclaimed run ever written about the X-Men: 16 uninterrupted years of Chris Claremont. With Dave Cockrum visually redesigning the team, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus and Wolverine are introduced and consolidated as the new X-Men. This volume includes the first appearances and development of characters who would define Marvel for decades. Absolute starting point of the modern mutant universe and required reading for any serious Marvel collector.

X-Men: The Hidden Years Omnibus returns to the gap between classic X-Men eras, with Roy Thomas and John Byrne giving the original team new adventures that feel deliberately close to the Silver Age mood. The pleasure is continuity repair with affection: familiar voices, old-school danger and a missing chapter filled in with care. The book is deliberately old-school, and that is its charm. Byrne and Thomas use the missing-years premise to add movement without trying to make the original team something it never was.

X-Men 2099 Omnibus moves the mutant idea into Marvel’s future line, where identity, rebellion and corporate pressure replace the familiar school structure. John Francis Moore, Scott Lobdell and Ron Lim build a team that feels connected to the X-Men myth without simply repeating Xavier’s dream in another costume. For collectors, the hook is the distance from the mansion. The 2099 setting lets mutant conflict become cyberpunk pressure, with teams and identities shaped by a world that has already sold too much of its future.

Marc Guggenheim (showrunner of Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow) brings his sense of TV pacing to the comic: each issue with its emotional arc, each arc with its climax, and the whole working as a serialised season. Focus on individual characters and the ethical dilemmas that define mutants. Good gateway to the modern format.