Phoenix: The Death and Rebirth of Jean Grey Omnibus

PRH presents this as Brian Michael Bendis colliding the past and present of the X-Men. The premise is simple and sharp: the original young team sees the modern mutant world, and the modern X-Men have to live with that mirror. This is the Bendis-era entry shelf for readers who want the emotional engine of the original five in the present day. It works as both a character experiment and a pressure test for modern X-Men continuity.

The Phoenix Force is the X-Men's most reused idea, and this second omnibus follows what Marvel did with it in the decade after Jean Grey's death on the moon. This is the volume that contains Days of Future Past (#141-142) and the resurrection in Fantastic Four #286 that undid the Dark Phoenix Saga's ending, along with Rachel Summers inheriting the Phoenix and taking it to Excalibur. If you want to understand why the Phoenix keeps coming back, the machinery is here.

Phoenix Omnibus Vol. 1 follows Jean Grey from cosmic transformation to emotional catastrophe, with Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and John Byrne turning X-Men adventure into something more intimate: power, love, fear and the cost of losing control.

Grant Morrison took over Doom Patrol in 1989, a cancelled team book about disfigured heroes, and turned it into the strangest thing DC has ever published under its own name. This is the run that launched Morrison's career: the Brotherhood of Dada, Danny the Street, Flex Mentallo and Crazy Jane, whose sixty-four personalities each have a different power. It is surrealism played completely straight, and it is also the direct origin of Vertigo as an imprint.

Grant Morrison took over X-Men in 2001 and rebuilt it as science fiction about a species: the school opened to hundreds of students, mutants became a culture with fashion and drugs, and the costumes went black. Morrison's premise is that mutants are winning demographically and nobody has noticed, which reframes the whole franchise. Genosha's destruction in the first issue kills sixteen million people and the book never lets you forget it. Frank Quitely, Igor Kordey and Chris Bachalo draw it, and every X-Men run since has been either extending this or reacting against it.

Batman by Grant Morrison, collected complete as a pack of 3 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Vol. 1 opens Morrison's Batman saga with Batman & Son, The Black Glove and Batman R.I.P. It introduces Damian Wayne, pushes Bruce Wayne through psychological pressure and starts the larger mystery that reshapes the Dark Knight across three omnibus volumes. Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Vol. 2 follows the saga after Batman R.I.P., with Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne operating as Batman and Robin while Bruce Wayne fights his way back through time. It collects the middle movement of Morrison's run, where legacy and identity become the main engine of the story. Batman by Grant Morrison Omnibus Vol. 3 closes Morrison's Batman project with Batman Incorporated. Bruce Wayne turns Batman into a global network, drawing allies around the world into the fight against Leviathan and pushing the symbol far beyond Gotham.

The final third of Morrison's Batman is Batman Incorporated: Bruce Wayne going public as the franchise's financier and recruiting a Batman for every country. The idea — that Batman's real superpower is money and organisation — is the most modern thing anyone has done with the character. It also ends with Damian's death, which Morrison had been building toward since the first volume and which DC did not undo for years. This is the payoff of the whole seven-year argument.

The middle third of Morrison's run is the part where Bruce Wayne is not in it: presumed dead, travelling backwards through history while Dick Grayson wears the cowl. Dick and Damian invert the classic dynamic — a light Batman and a violent Robin — and it is the most purely enjoyable stretch of the run. Frank Quitely draws the opening. Putting the two series in reading order is the reason to own this: published separately, the two halves kept explaining each other out of sequence.

Grant Morrison spent seven years on Batman treating every story ever published as canon, including the ones nobody wanted to remember, and then built a single argument out of all of it. Morrison's premise is that a man who has survived everything published since 1939 would have to be extraordinary, and Batman R.I.P. is the stress test. Damian arrives here as an insufferable ten-year-old assassin and leaves as one of DC's most valuable characters. Everything in the Bat-books for the next decade starts in this volume.

Grant Morrison's Animal Man is the 1988 run that made Buddy Baker famous and ends with the character meeting his own writer. The final issue, in which Buddy sits down with Morrison and asks why his family was killed, is one of the most discussed comics ever published. The run is also genuinely angry about animal cruelty, which almost no superhero book has attempted before or since.

PRH presents this as Grant Morrison's bold New 52 reimagining of Superman. The run starts from a more raw, early-career Man of Steel and builds toward stranger, larger threats without losing the idea of Superman as a social and moral force. This is the compact shelf for Morrison's New 52 Superman: part origin energy, part cosmic experiment, part statement about what Superman means when the myth is rebuilt from the street upward.