Scooby Apocalypse Omnibus

Who's Who, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Every character DC owned, one per page, drawn by the artist most associated with them. Who's Who was published monthly in the 1980s as a loose leaf encyclopedia and it is still the best single record of what the DC universe contained before Crisis rearranged it. The second half of DC's illustrated directory, running through the rest of the alphabet and into the post Crisis updates. Same format, same idea: one character per page, drawn by whoever owned them, from the biggest names in the line to characters nobody has used since.

Dark Nights: Death Metal Omnibus collects the sequel to Metal and every tie-in: the Batman Who Laughs has won, Perpetua rules a broken multiverse, and Wonder Woman leads what is left of the resistance. Snyder and Capullo use it to settle DC's entire continuity problem at once, and it ends with the multiverse rebuilt as the Infinite Frontier.

Brightest Day Omnibus collects the year-long series that followed Blackest Night, in which twelve heroes and villains return from the dead and none of them know why. Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi use it to rebuild Aquaman, Firestorm, Hawkman and Martian Manhunter at once, and it contains the Aquaman material that led directly into the New 52 relaunch.

DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus collects the 1996 crossover in which the two universes fought, plus the Amalgam books — a full month of comics from a merged reality where Batman and Wolverine are one character called Dark Claw, and Superman and Captain America are Super-Soldier. A genuine one-off in comics history, collected complete.

Insomnia puts every hero on Earth to sleep at once and traps them inside their own worst nightmare. Knight Terrors is the rare crossover where the tie-ins are the point: each one takes a character apart using the thing they will not look at, and this omnibus collects the whole event in reading order.

Ditko created Spider-Man and Doctor Strange and then spent decades at DC building characters nobody asked him for: the Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, Hawk and Dove, Stalker. This omnibus collects all of it, and it is the strangest looking superhero work of its era.

Everything Kirby made at DC in the 1970s that was not the Fourth World, in one volume: Kamandi, OMAC, the Demon, Sandman, Kobra and the war stories. He was writing, drawing and editing all of it at once, at an age when most creators are repeating themselves.

Darkseid cannot beat Earth's heroes, so he sets out to make the public stop believing in them instead. Legends is the first event DC ran after Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the fallout created the Suicide Squad, the Justice League International and the Flash everyone knows today.

Justice League International, collected as a pack of 3 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Justice League International is the 1987 relaunch that rebuilt the League after Crisis on Infinite Earths with the most unlikely roster DC has ever assembled. Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire wrote it as workplace comedy and it works because the threats stay real. Maguire's facial acting is the reason the jokes land at all, and Batman as the exasperated adult in the room is one of the best uses of the character DC has managed. Justice League International Omnibus Vol. 2 focuses on the Giffen and DeMatteis era, with the Justice League shaped by global superhero politics, office comedy, awkward friendship and danger that cuts through the jokes. The appeal is not only continuity; it is watching a specific DC period find its tone, cast and visual rhythm. Justice League International was the 1987 relaunch that made the League funny: Batman and Green Lantern stuck with Booster Gold, Blue Beetle and a UN charter. Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire made a comedy that still takes the threats seriously, and Maguire's facial expressions are the reason the jokes land. The Blue Beetle and Booster Gold friendship created here has outlived every subsequent reboot, which is unusual for anything that started as a punchline.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Five Years Later, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. The Legion always assumed the 30th century was a utopia. Five Years Later opens with the utopia gone, the team disbanded and the survivors older, poorer and compromised. Giffen and the Bierbaums rebuilt the series as dense political science fiction and split the fanbase permanently. The second half of the Five Years Later run takes the Legion through the Terra Mosaic and into the reboot that ended it. The Bierbaums keep writing after Giffen leaves, Stuart Immonen arrives as an artist nobody had heard of, and the series finishes by rewriting its own continuity out of existence.

Justice League International was the 1987 relaunch that made the League funny: Batman and Green Lantern stuck with Booster Gold, Blue Beetle and a UN charter. Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire made a comedy that still takes the threats seriously, and Maguire's facial expressions are the reason the jokes land. The Blue Beetle and Booster Gold friendship created here has outlived every subsequent reboot, which is unusual for anything that started as a punchline.

Justice League International is the 1987 relaunch that rebuilt the League after Crisis on Infinite Earths with the most unlikely roster DC has ever assembled. Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire wrote it as workplace comedy and it works because the threats stay real. Maguire's facial acting is the reason the jokes land at all, and Batman as the exasperated adult in the room is one of the best uses of the character DC has managed.

Justice League International Omnibus Vol. 2 focuses on the Giffen and DeMatteis era, with the Justice League shaped by global superhero politics, office comedy, awkward friendship and danger that cuts through the jokes. The appeal is not only continuity; it is watching a specific DC period find its tone, cast and visual rhythm.

Keith Giffen and Matthew Clark relaunched Doom Patrol in 2009, returning the team to superheroics without losing the strangeness the book is known for. Giffen had written the team before and knew the balance: Robotman gets the jokes, Negative Man gets the horror, and Rita Farr gets the dignity. The Metal Men back-up strip that ran with it is also here, and it is some of the most purely fun material DC published that year.

The Legion always assumed the 30th century was a utopia. Five Years Later opens with the utopia gone, the team disbanded and the survivors older, poorer and compromised. Giffen and the Bierbaums rebuilt the series as dense political science fiction and split the fanbase permanently.