Marvel Comics

Ultimate X-Men Omnibus Vol. 4 brings Marvel's alternate mutant universe into its harsher endgame. After Ultimatum, the surviving mutants are not simply a streamlined version of the classic X-Men; they are people trying to live in a broken political landscape where fear has already won too much ground. It is a closing stretch built on survival, identity and consequences.

Daniel Way's Deadpool run launched in 2008 and defined the character for a generation of readers who came to Marvel through the film era — it's the run that pushed the fourth-wall breaking and comedic irreverence to their most extreme expression, making Deadpool one of Marvel's best-selling characters in the process. Way's first volume drops the mercenary into the Secret Invasion event and then into a sustained antagonistic relationship with Norman Osborn's Dark Reign, finding endless comedy in Deadpool's attempts to be taken seriously as a professional assassin.

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.