The Incredible Hulk Omnibus Vol. 3

Al Ewing reinterprets the Hulk as a horror comic. Radical premise: by day Banner is dead, by night he returns. Mixes body horror, existential reflection, political critique and superheroic action in one package. Art by Joe Bennett in line with Bernie Wrightson on Swamp Thing. Eisner-nominated, critically acclaimed contemporary cult work.

Peter David wrote the Hulk for twelve years, longer than any other writer, and this first omnibus is where he starts turning a monster comic into a book about dissociation. David's first move is to bring back the grey Hulk as a Las Vegas enforcer with Banner's cunning and none of his restraint, which is the version most readers had never seen. This volume also contains his complete early collaboration with Todd McFarlane, drawn right before McFarlane went to Spider-Man.

Hulk: Maestro by Peter David Omnibus gathers three decades of the Hulk's darkest what-if. The Maestro is a future Bruce Banner who kept the Hulk's raw power and his own intelligence but lost the conscience that held the monster back. It begins with Future Imperfect (1992), Peter David and George Perez's landmark story where the present-day Hulk is thrown a century forward to face the tyrant he could become, and closes with the modern origin trilogy — Maestro, War and Pax and World War M — that shows exactly how he crossed that line. A complete study of a hero fully embracing villainy.

Donny Cates and Ryan Ottley reimagined the Hulk for a new era with a concept that is both simple and genuinely disturbing: Bruce Banner has trapped the Savage Hulk inside a mental construct resembling a massive starship, piloting him like a weapon. The Starship Hulk premise allowed Cates to explore the Banner/Hulk relationship in a fresh way while Ottley — best known for his decade-long run on Invincible — brought explosive, large-scale action that pushed the book's visual ambition to new heights. This is one of the most distinctive modern Hulk runs, collecting a complete creative vision in a single oversized volume.

The fourth Peter David omnibus takes his Hulk run to its end, through the years when Banner lost the Hulk entirely and the book had to work out what was left. The final stretch is genuinely bleak: Betty Ross dies, the merged personality fractures, and David writes an issue about grief that has almost no action in it. His departure from the title was public and acrimonious, which makes the ending here the real conclusion of a twelve-year run rather than a handover.

The Hulk debuted in 1962 and was cancelled after six issues. Marvel then spent the rest of the decade finding him a home in Tales to Astonish until he could carry a title again. The six-issue original series is where Lee and Kirby work out what the character is — grey in #1, changing at nightfall, then turning green and losing the schedule — and the Tales to Astonish run is where Ditko and Kirby settle him into the Marvel Universe. It is the full, messy origin rather than the tidy version.

The second Incredible Hulk omnibus covers Peter David's most celebrated stretch, when the Hulk's personalities merged and the book became a study of an integrated mind under pressure. The Pantheon arrives, Doc Samson integrates grey, green and Banner into one person, and issue #400 pays off the Leader's long campaign. David spends the rest of the volume testing whether the merger holds against the Abomination, the U-Foes and Freedom Force. It is the run's centre of gravity.

This omnibus gathers Peter David's later Hulk work: the stories he returned to write after leaving the monthly title, spread across two decades. The End is the centrepiece: the last man on Earth is Bruce Banner, and he cannot die because the Hulk will not let him. It is eight pages of premise and thirty of consequence, and it is the bleakest thing Marvel has published about the character. The rest of the volume is David revisiting a run he clearly never finished with.

Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin bring Luke Skywalker’s first adventure to comics in Marvel’s original adaptation of A New Hope. Luke, Leia, Han Solo and their allies confront Darth Vader and the Death Star, with scenes that never reached the screen. This 50th anniversary Deluxe Edition collects the six-part adaptation in an oversize hardcover.

Justice League of America: The Bronze Age, collected as a pack of 4 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Justice League of America: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1 opens a more textured era for the League, still heroic and direct but increasingly shaped by shifting casts, social unease and a DC universe learning to carry more continuity. Gardner Fox, Dennis O'Neil, Len Wein, Mike Friedrich and Dick Dillin bridge classic team adventure with a richer 1970s mood. The second Bronze Age Justice League omnibus covers the early 1970s, when the team left their secret New England cave for a satellite in orbit and the stories went cosmic. This is where the JLA/JSA team-ups settle into their yearly rhythm and the multiverse becomes a working part of DC's storytelling rather than an occasional gimmick. It is also the era that established the League as DC's legends rather than just its biggest team. The third Bronze Age omnibus covers the late seventies, when Gerry Conway took over the Justice League and gave it the longest continuous run of its classic era. Conway wrote the League for years and used the length: long-running subplots, a rotating roster and the arrival of Zatanna as a permanent member. The JLA/JSA crossovers in this stretch are also the most ambitious of the run, bringing in the Legion of Super-Heroes and the New Gods across multiple Earths. The fourth Bronze Age omnibus takes the Justice League into the early eighties, the last years before Crisis on Infinite Earths changed everything. The Leaf Candy mini comic is a genuine curiosity, a promotional giveaway that has never been collected anywhere else. The main run includes the New Gods crossover in #183-185, which is Gerry Conway writing Darkseid at full scale, and the Firestorm and Titans tie-ins that show DC's line starting to interconnect.

The third Amazing Spider-Man omnibus covers the transition from Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. to Gerry Conway, and the two issues that ended the Silver Age of the character. Issues #121-122 are here: the Green Goblin, Gwen Stacy and the George Washington Bridge. Nothing in superhero comics had done that before, and the industry treats it as the moment the genre stopped guaranteeing happy endings. The volume also contains the six-armed Spider-Man arc and the first appearances of Morbius and the Punisher.

Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus Vol. 5 continues Peter Parker's Bronze Age stretch after the first Clone Saga, with Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas and Ross Andru shaping a Spider-Man who feels older, more socially rooted and increasingly defined by relationships. Mary Jane, Aunt May, the Daily Bugle and a changing Marvel New York give the run its texture.

The Hidden Years was John Byrne's attempt to fill the gap in X-Men history: the years between issue #66 in 1970 and Giant-Size X-Men in 1975, when the original title ran reprints and the team officially did nothing. Byrne writes and draws it in deliberate period style, using the original five X-Men and continuity he had to reverse-engineer from scattered guest appearances. It is a genuine curiosity: a modern comic pretending to be a lost one, made by someone who knew the era well enough to make the seams invisible.

The second Doctor Strange omnibus covers the character's first solo title, launched in 1968 after Strange Tales split into two books. This is where Strange gets an origin issue — #169 is still the definitive telling — and where Marvel tried to make him a costumed superhero, which failed commercially and was reversed. Marvel Feature #1 is also here: the first Defenders story, which gave the character somewhere to belong for the next decade.

The second Daredevil omnibus covers the late sixties and early seventies, when Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway took over and the book moved Matt Murdock to San Francisco. This is the run where the Black Widow becomes a co-lead — the book was retitled Daredevil and the Black Widow for part of it — and where the character stops being a Spider-Man variant. The Iron Man crossover is also the first appearance of the Zodiac cartel, which Marvel used for decades afterwards.

The second Incredible Hulk omnibus covers Peter David's most celebrated stretch, when the Hulk's personalities merged and the book became a study of an integrated mind under pressure. The Pantheon arrives, Doc Samson integrates grey, green and Banner into one person, and issue #400 pays off the Leader's long campaign. David spends the rest of the volume testing whether the merger holds against the Abomination, the U-Foes and Freedom Force. It is the run's centre of gravity.