Marvel Comics

This is the complete Jeff Parker era, when the Thunderbolts stop being a super-team and become a work-release program. Luke Cage is handed a Raft cellblock of killers — Juggernaut, Crossbones, Ghost and Moonstone, with the swamp-god Man-Thing as their teleporter — and sent out to clean up disasters in exchange for reduced sentences. The run then mutates mid-stream: the squad is stranded in time and rebranded Dark Avengers, closing out both series in a single volume.

Peter David returns to the black-suit era with the fun question every symbiote reader asks: what else happened before Peter understood what the costume really was? This omnibus fills that dangerous gap with Mysterio, Hobgoblin, Doctor Strange, Kang, Knull, Hulk, Black Cat trouble and even a 2099 detour for Miguel O'Hara. It is Spider-Man symbiote material with modern pace, old-school continuity hooks and a direct road toward Venom mythology.