Jason Aaron

Jason Aaron picked up where Garth Ennis left off on Punisher MAX and delivered a run that stands shoulder to shoulder with the master. With Steve Dillon on art, this is Frank Castle's final war: Kingpin's origin from scratch, a genuinely terrifying Bullseye, and a conclusion that closes the MAX saga in focused, devastating fashion.

Ghost Rider by Jason Aaron Omnibus collects Aaron's supernatural road-war take on Johnny Blaze and the Spirit of Vengeance.

Jason Aaron's Avengers Forever is the cosmic-scale companion to his main Avengers run — a multiverse-spanning series bringing together Avengers variants from across the Marvel omniverse to battle the Multiversal Masters of Evil, a team of the most dangerous villains from different realities assembled by a version of Doom who conquered his entire universe. Aaron used the multiverse premise to comment on the Avengers concept itself, asking what the team means when its existence replicates across every possible reality.

Wolverine & the X-Men by Jason Aaron Omnibus is the X-Men school book after Schism, with Logan trying to run a place for damaged mutant kids despite being the least obvious headmaster imaginable. Jason Aaron and Nick Bradshaw build the series around chaos, comedy, grief and responsibility. Its value is tone and cast: Quentin Quire, Kid Gladiator, Broo and the students make the Jean Grey School feel alive, absurd and emotionally risky.

The Wolverine Goes to Hell omnibus focuses specifically on Jason Aaron's opening Wolverine storyline — the arc where a mysterious enemy sends Logan's soul to Hell while his body is possessed and turned against everyone he loves. It's an audacious premise that Aaron executes with total conviction, using the separation of body and soul as a way to examine the two sides of Wolverine's nature simultaneously: the berserker and the man. The Hell sequences have a texture and mythology that previous Wolverine runs hadn't bothered to develop.

Jason Aaron's first Wolverine omnibus collects the beginning of what became the definitive 21st-century Wolverine run — starting with Wolverine Goes to Hell and building through Wolverine vs. the X-Men and Wolverine's Revenge into a sustained examination of what makes Logan tick when his body and soul are pushed to their absolute limits simultaneously.

Jane Foster takes up the mantle of Thor as she battles terminal cancer: each time she transforms, the chemo poison is nullified but the disease progresses. One of the most emotional stories in modern superhero comics — Aaron proves that the worthiness of Mjolnir is not about power but about sacrifice. Includes War of the Realms and the closing of the longest Thor run in history. Russell Dauterman delivers art that matches the epic scale of every page.

Jason Aaron kicks off his run with one of the best Thor stories ever written: God Butcher. Gorr, a villain with real reasons to hate the gods (all his people starved to death while the deities looked on), kills gods for the cosmos. Aaron turns the conflict into a reflection on faith and responsibility. Esad Ribić on the art with digital watercolour pages.