The Mighty Thor Omnibus Vol. 5

Jason Aaron wrote Thor for seven years, and his opening question was simple: what happens to a god when he stops being worthy of his own hammer. God of Thunder opens with Gorr the God Butcher across three timelines at once — young Thor, present Thor and King Thor — which is the best Thor story anyone has written and the direct source for the fourth film. Jane Foster then takes the hammer while dying of cancer, and Aaron refuses to make that easy.

One of the absolute pinnacles of American superhero comics. Simonson introduces Beta Ray Bill (a horse alien who proves himself worthy of Mjölnir), brings back Surtur as a cosmic menace, transforms Thor into a frog, and elevated the character's mythology to unseen heights. If you're only going to read one Thor in your life, make it this one.

The second Aaron omnibus completes the run: Jane Foster's tenure ends, Thor gets his hammer back, and the War of the Realms finally arrives after six years of build-up. Aaron plants the War of the Realms in his first year and pays it off in his last, which almost nobody at Marvel gets to do. King Thor is the ending: the last god at the end of the universe, closing the three-timeline structure he opened with. It is one of the few complete, self-contained superhero runs of the era.

The second Heroes Return omnibus takes Dan Jurgens' Thor to its end, through the storyline where Thor conquers Earth and rules it. The Reigning arc is the reason to own this: Thor decides humanity would be better governed than protected, takes over, and Marvel lets him hold the position for a year and a half. It is a genuinely uncomfortable run, and the ending — Ragnarok, and Asgard's deliberate destruction — is one of the few permanent endings the character has had.

Donny Cates and Nic Klein took over Thor immediately after Jason Aaron, with Thor newly crowned King of Asgard and completely unsuited to the job. The premise is that ruling is harder than fighting, and Cates keeps finding ways to make it worse: the Black Winter, Donald Blake returning as a villain, and Thor's father problems becoming policy problems. Klein's art is the other reason — his Asgard looks like a real place with weather.

J. Michael Straczynski relaunched Thor in 2007 after Asgard had been destroyed and the character absent from Marvel for three years. Straczynski's move was to rebuild Asgard as a floating town in rural Oklahoma, with gods as immigrants in the American Midwest, and it is the best Thor premise since Kirby. Kieron Gillen then takes over and writes Loki's turn, and Siege closes Marvel's Dark Reign era from Asgard's point of view.

The second Mighty Thor omnibus continues the Lee and Kirby run at the point where Asgard stops being a backdrop and becomes the subject. Kirby's late-sixties Thor is where his cosmic period begins — the designs, the machinery, the gods drawn as forces rather than people — and it leads directly into the Fourth World he built at DC. Everything Marvel has done with Asgard since is working from these pages.

The fourth Mighty Thor omnibus covers the early seventies, after Kirby left and Marvel had to work out what Thor was without him. Gerry Conway and John Buscema take over, and the run turns toward long cosmic quests — the search for Odin, the Ego-Prime storyline, Mephisto — while keeping the Asgardian supporting cast intact. Buscema's Thor is more classical than Kirby's, and this stretch is where the character settles into the form he kept for a decade.

House of Mystery: The Bronze Age, collected as a pack of 3 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the start of DC's great horror anthology after the Comics Code loosened, hosted by Cain and drawn by a roster including Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams and Alex Toth. Short stories with twist endings, and some of the best art of the era. House of Mystery: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 2 collects more of DC's great horror anthology, hosted by Cain and drawn by a roster that reads like a list of the best artists of the era. Short, sharp stories with twist endings, from the period when DC horror was at its peak. The third Bronze Age volume of DC's horror anthology, where Cain introduces short stories that run from genuinely nasty to openly comic. This is the era when the Comics Code loosened and the artists on these books, Wrightson, Aparo, Toth and Kaluta, were allowed to draw what they wanted.

Robin: The Bronze Age collects the years when Dick Grayson stopped being Batman's sidekick and went to college, appearing as a solo lead for the first time. These stories are the reason Nightwing exists: DC spent a decade establishing that Dick Grayson could carry a book alone before they gave him a new identity. Much of this material has never been collected before, and it is the direct bridge between Robin and the Teen Titans era that followed.

Deadman Omnibus collects the run that made Neal Adams's reputation. Boston Brand is a trapeze artist murdered mid-performance, granted the power to possess the living until he finds his killer. Adams's photorealistic figures and broken panel layouts were unlike anything else DC published in 1968.

The Phantom Stranger Omnibus collects the 1970s run of DC's least explained character: a man who appears where something is wrong, helps, and leaves without ever saying who he is. Jim Aparo's moody artwork and a rotating cast of writers made it one of the definitive horror-adjacent books of the era.

Kirby left the Fourth World unfinished when DC cancelled it, and for twenty years other people tried to end it for him. This second omnibus collects what came after: the returns, the continuations and the eventual conclusion of the New Gods, from the 1970s through to the writers who inherited Apokolips.

The third Bronze Age volume of DC's horror anthology, where Cain introduces short stories that run from genuinely nasty to openly comic. This is the era when the Comics Code loosened and the artists on these books, Wrightson, Aparo, Toth and Kaluta, were allowed to draw what they wanted.

The companion anthology to House of Mystery, hosted by Abel instead of Cain, and the book where Swamp Thing first appeared as a one off horror story. Monsters, witches and revenge tales drawn by the best artists DC had, at the moment the Code stopped being able to stop them.

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.