Paul Levitz

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 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 fifth New Teen Titans omnibus takes Wolfman's run into its later years, when the team had fractured and the survivors were rebuilding. This stretch contains the Titans Hunt build-up and the reintroduction of Danny Chase, and it is where Wolfman starts writing the team as adults with jobs rather than teenagers. Eduardo Barreto's art is the underrated element, cleaner and more grounded than Pérez, and better suited to where the stories had gone.

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.

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.

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.

Aquaman: The Death of a Prince Deluxe Edition collects the 1970s run in which Black Manta murders Aquaman's infant son and the character never fully recovers. It is the darkest thing DC published about Arthur Curry for decades, drawn largely by Jim Aparo, and it is the origin of the grief that every later writer — Peter David, Geoff Johns, Jeff Parker — has had to work around.

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.

Darkseid's curse comes due, the Legion loses members permanently and Levitz spends five hundred pages showing what a superhero team looks like when the losses stick. The Curse is the run that followed The Great Darkness Saga and is the better half of the two.

Someone is stealing the most powerful beings in the universe and nobody can work out who. The Great Darkness Saga keeps its villain hidden for most of its length, and when the answer arrives it is the single best use anyone has made of Darkseid outside Kirby's own comics.

Easy Company fights its way across Europe and nobody comes home a hero. Joe Kubert drew Sgt. Rock for thirty years and the stories he wrote himself are the hardest of them, war comics that refuse the adventure and keep asking what the men are actually for.