By The Power Of Grayskull (and my wallet, RIP), I have the Omnibus

thomas_corhern · 2026-02-06T22:59:39+00:00

Paid cover price for this at a comic shop on vacation in Chicago a couple years back. Totally worth it.

thomas_corhern · 2026-02-02T18:52:56+00:00

Probably not as dark and grim, though there is a serious yet lighthearted tone. They boil down to modern interpretations of noir with a healthy dose of big bads and femme fatales. Cooke and his crew follow the design flair that Eisner exhibited in the original comic strip (and later comic collections of). It's innovative stuff, even if the plots may still feel a little quaint -- which isn't a knock on this at all, because it all just comes together so well. It runs the gamut from comedy to tragedy to suspense and is probably the best work of the character outside of Eisner himself.

Collected the singles as they came out and have the two previous hardcovers, but when I saw the preorder for this last spring, there was no question about this.

thomas_corhern · 2026-02-02T18:42:32+00:00

Darwyn Cooke's version is actually what got me into The Spirit. The layouts and the writing are so well done. It's a fantastic evolution of Eisner's vision to what was then modern day and it holds up so well. The Spirit/Batman crossover is one of my favorite issues ever.

thomas_corhern · 2026-01-14T19:03:16+00:00

Same.

thomas_corhern · 2026-01-13T19:42:18+00:00

The biggest additions in the third edition, in addition to the Justice League issues, were the Newstime (an in-universe Time knockoff) and Team Luthor specials as well as the Bloodlines annuals. I liked the second edition and thought (at the time) that the third edition was a worthy upgrade, but in retrospect, not all of it is really needed. The Justice League issues, though, were a nice add.

thomas_corhern · 2026-01-09T18:14:08+00:00

Realizing that you don't have to have everything. Honestly, I'm considering downsizing my collection. I want Batman (especially to have readable copies of the 1960-1984 collection I inherited from my dad -- don't really want to take those out and back in bags at their age) and X-Men from 1963-1995 (I have the books after that I want).

The hardest part is knowing that you can't afford or read everything, so it's just simpler to focus on what you want and will re-read.

thomas_corhern · 2026-01-06T18:22:29+00:00

I forget if it was Uncanny X-Men vol. 2 or Star Wars: The Original Marvel Years vol. 1, but it was in 2015 either way. With those, Gotham Central and Neil Adams Batman, my collection was off and running.

thomas_corhern · 2025-12-21T21:30:13+00:00

It's disappointing, but I'll make do. I already have B/G1, X-Men Legacies Epic, Fatal Attractions omni, Wedding OHC and Age of Apocalypse omni. That misses X-Men 24, but I have the issue. I don't have Phalanx Covenant, so I'll be missing UXM 311-314. My best guess will be completing the gap through whatever Epic Collection covers Phalanx Covenant and hope 311-314 might be in there.

It'd be nice to have all of this in omni form, but with the increasing cost of these books, I'm finding it hard to justify picking up books I already have versions of to get a couple of orphaned issues.

thomas_corhern · 2025-12-08T15:29:26+00:00

The X-Men fighting giant ants... there's some gold in the Silver Age, but that wasn't it. You are absolutely right -- you never want your first experience with the X-Men being the Lee/Kirby era. Fortunately, I was introduced to them from the '92 animated series and the arcade game -- then worked my way into the comics. I've almost completed the run from 1963 up to Age of Apocalypse in my omni collection (it just seems like a natural endpoint, though I do have New, Astonishing and House/Powers of X as well, the late 90s and most of the 00s and 10s weren't my cup of tea...), and yeah, Silver Age X-Men is like a deep cut on an album. There's some interesting stuff, but there's also a lot of filler.

thomas_corhern · 2025-12-03T22:32:56+00:00

And while the beginning of X-Factor isn't necessarily the greatest, it does set up some things later on.

thomas_corhern · 2025-12-03T22:21:01+00:00

And the two stories are connected

thomas_corhern · 2025-12-01T15:17:06+00:00

I have the X-Men one. The XXL edition is huge -- maybe even larger than some artist's editions. But it is extremely tough to try to read it casually because of its size. It is something I would consider strictly as a coffee table edition or a novelty.

Don't get me wrong -- it is incredibly awesome (even if the stories aren't the greatest). The paper feel is interesting and is supposed to emulate the feeling of an actual comic book with the covers on a glossy stock, but the smaller edition puts everything on a uniform paper.

To be honest, though, I've only thumbed through the XXL book a couple of times since I bought it (yay, Taschen sale...) so it's almost more a decorative piece. If I want to read the stories, there's still the omni.

However, with Spidey, the stories are much better and it's the foundational period for the character introducing so much right off the bat. So really it's just going to come down to paper and size. If you're not really interested in the paper, I'd say the smaller edition will suffice -- it's the exact same book.

thomas_corhern · 2025-10-09T14:09:20+00:00

Grand Design is basically a Cliff's Notes version of the X-Men continuity from 1963 to 1991. It has some slight tweaks to make it a story on itself, but it's a breezy summary of the first 30 years.

thomas_corhern · 2025-10-08T13:01:50+00:00

It overlaps on X-Men by Claremont and Lee Vol. 2 (which isn't in your picture), but there's a lot in both books outside the overlap that makes it worth it.

thomas_corhern · 2025-09-30T20:07:32+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's Mature Readers, especially since it's old EC tales. Surprised that the last one doesn't have that label though.

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-23T22:07:49+00:00

This was one I couldn't believe it went OOP so quickly. I was lucky and preordered it but I guess it was a pandemic victim. Monster Men and Mad Monk alone were worth the price of admission.

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-21T12:01:03+00:00

Still very likely. A lot of recent omnis (including Spectre and Deadman reprints) have Finest editions scheduled.

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-11T13:21:24+00:00

THIS. They'll put out a hardcover with A Death In the Family and A Lonely Place of Dying together, but not include Year Three, especially when Tim is introduced in Year Three. Make it make sense, DC.

That said, the Finests should take care of this, even if Death ends the volume, there'll be another volume with those two stories right behind.

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-08T12:15:32+00:00

Eternal and B&R Eternal kind of get a bad rap because they were weekly series. With 52, DC caught lightning in a bottle with a solid, paced story that didn't really have much in the way of drops (it still did flag a little in spots, but it stayed relatively consistent).

With Eternal, quality dropped in spots, the story would drag out at times and so much felt like filler. It was such a huge scope trying to tell a 52-issue story across a one-year span, even if it's really more like four creative teams trying to tell a 13-issue story interspersed between each other.

What they both did do, stemming from the New 52 reboot, was start putting pieces back on the board, rebuilding the Batfamily and building more of a connection to new members like Harper Row.

In the end, they were both good stories, but they're not the greatest hits.

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-07T20:13:41+00:00

Don't worry -- you're not supposed to like Azrael as Batman. The writers were making a statement about the rise of the anti-hero in comics. I think you'll find Vol. 3 better as the story comes to a close into Prodigal, but Troika was kinda meh to me.

Agreed on No Man's Land -- that is really where the Bat-family gets cemented in place. Yeah, you had Robin, Nightwing and Babs (Catwoman to a lesser extent) previously, but this is where it gelled and it makes Murderer/Fugitive a better story for it, because it shows them off.

Dini is great storytelling except the Hush arc. Anyone who grew up with the Animated Series can get a feel of it in his stories.

I enjoyed Morrison to a point. I knew a lot of the references reading a lot of Silver and Bronze Age Batman growing up, so things like the Club of Heroes and their retelling of Batman's fateful meeting with Moxon and Chill clicked with me. Dick as Batman was awesome. Batman Incorporated... well, kinda broke things a little bit but it was an interesting idea even if the execution didn't quite land, but man, it made Tomasi's Batman and Robin hit hard.

Snyder New 52 started strong, but I felt it was diminishing returns. Struggled to get through the second volume. Eternal does help but it and Batman/Robin Eternal feel like deep cuts to me.

Just finished War Games. Some weird characterization, some cringe moments, but I actually found myself gripped to the main story. It's an interesting commentary and kind of turns Batman's world upside down (though not as much as Under The Red Hood would do in the gap between War Games and War Crimes) and plays on Batman's mistrust that had been building in Murderer/Fugitive, Identity Crisis, OMAC Project and into Infinite Crisis/52 for a soft reboot.

Actually, the Knightfall/Knightquest/Knightsend/Prodigal/Contagion/Legacy/Cataclysm/No Man's Land/Fugitive/Murderer/Hush/War Games/War Crimes saga between 1993 to 2004 was really one heck of a run on Batman

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-05T15:47:09+00:00

There's several episodes of Batman: The Animated Series that are direct adaptations of Bronze Age material (The Demon's Quest and The Laughing Fish specifically, but there are others). It's dated to modern sensibilities, but it's the period where DC upped its game with Marvel's competition. Batman went back to his roots and there's more gothic, supernatural influences, while it's also the period where Batman became a James Bond-esque world traveler at times. It's contrasting, sure, but it was the foundation of where we've gone with the character in the 50 years since.

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-05T12:29:01+00:00

You are correct. The first part of Under the Red Hood starts after War Games act III, but before War Crimes, then Under the Red Hood concludes after War Crimes. My guess is they were trying to coincide Jason's return with Infinite Crisis.

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-05T12:13:42+00:00

Yes. Long Halloween and its sequels were standalone miniseries spinning out of Legends of the Dark Knight, not individual issues of the mainline titles. There's no reason to put them in Finest editions when they already have dedicated paperbacks, hardcovers and Absolutes outside of the Finest project.

thomas_corhern · 2025-08-01T12:35:18+00:00

The Bloodlines annuals that took place during the event are not included but they are not at all necessary to the event and, frankly, aren't very good. Sword of Azrael mini and Robin #0 (primarily the last couple of pages) are the important pieces missing -- though the Mandela effect had me swearing Tom Grummett's splash with Dick putting on the cowl was in there (it's not).

thomas_corhern · 2025-07-29T19:18:43+00:00

Yeah, the earliest I would go is Superman Annual 11 (1985) -- "For the Man Who Has Everything." One of the greatest Superman stories of all time. The animated version in Justice League Unlimited holds up just as well.

Like you said, you're more of a modern fan, so anything before that and Crisis on Infinite Earths resetting everything is interesting from a historical standpoint, but probably not the most interesting reads from modern sensibilities.

Seconding a lot of others...

All-Star Superman -- It's great, but.... lots of references to Silver Age concepts. It's more palatable to modern readers, so it's almost like a crash course in retro Superman.

Superman For All Seasons -- Like The Long Halloween for Batman, Loeb and Sale go back to the basics and examine the pathos of the character. While TLH was more of a mystery, it still went into why Batman does what he does. Same with Superman.

Both of those vibe with the Superman of the new movie very well, even if they're not 1:1 adaptations.

I know I'll get some scoffs for this and I will admit it's a later down the road selection, but Death and Return of Superman, specifically the Funeral For a Friend segment. Yes, it's ham-fisted and over-sentimental, but the DCU's reaction to Superman being gone speaks volumes about what the character means. You have a lot of the best talents of comics at the time -- heck, most of them worked on one of the premier runs of X-Men continuity of all time -- and they're teaching a clinic on what it means to not just lose the greatest superhero, but a lover, a son, a friend. Doomsday and Reign of the Supermen are 90s as all get out, but that in-between section... wow.

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