And can you get them in trade paperback?

I thought of....

Crisis On Infinite Planets- streamlines the history of DC comics and kills of characters.

What Ever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow - what could be a great final Superman story.

what are some good others....no spoilers please...cause I want to read them!

Swamp Thing (old and new... the Wein/Wrightson issues are beautiful!)
Hellblazer
Sandman
The Watchmen

Honorable mentions go to The Doom Patrol, old and new, and... The Inferior Five!!!

Did I play right?

V for Vendetta mini series.
Batman Year 1.
Dark Knight Returns mini series.

I'm pretty sure they're all available in TPB.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was actually kind of lame. Management wanted a cohesive DC Universe, so they killed off all the story lines and characters they didn't like.

Weren' they giant sequels to Crisis?

Does anyone know about this?

Do the Dark Knight stories really count here? I mean, they were really good stories, with the first being one of the best ever told in comic format. However, were they "important" in DC history? They both took place in the future, so it's not like they had an impact on anything which was going on at the time.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the stories aren't good, or aren't worth picking up. B/c you should get 'em both. They're really good.

But someone could probably read all existing issues of Batman, Superman, etc, without having read the Dark Knight books & not miss a thing.

Kindom Come?

Surprised no one mentioned this yet. Great story involving many of DC's great heroes and what would happen when the next generation of super-powered-beings gets out of control.

Do you mean was there a sequel to Crisis? Technically yes. DC still had some continuity errors left over from Crisis (specifically Hawkman and others), so they created Zero Hour, a 5(?) part series that went from #4-#0. Spoilers coming up:



Needless to say it wasn't that good and DC still feels the effects of it to this day (although they have somewhat rectified it, but not as perfectly as many would like).


"Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" is an excellent 2-part story that closed out 2 long-time Superman titles (one of them changed their titles, the other was cancelled) before the Crisis re-booting of Superman (when Superman was put back to #1). I am not sure you can even get this in paperback form. You would have to search these two issues out. It was a fitting end (and would be a fitting end) to Superman.

Another big one would be the mini-series "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"...the original and the new one. There is a movie coming out next year for this series. I would also recommend the graphic novel "The Killing Joke" which is simply one of the best one-shot Batman/Joker stories ever.

This is another excellent one with artwork done by Alex Ross. You may want to read The Kingdom before this though so you know what has happened before. Kingdom Come can stand on its own though.

I thought Kindome Come was much better than the Kingdom. The Kingdom seemed like a lame attempt on DC's part to capitalize on the success of Kingdom Come. Kingdom Come was an epic story, and I don't throw that term around a lot. The Kingdom, while not bad, was just eh, for me at least.

Young Justice just elected a new leader.

Batman: A Death In the Family

(killed off major character........you know who)

Legends

(Wally West first appearance in flash costume.....only assumes the role in Crisis, doesn't actually wear the costume, plus other occurences)

If we are including limited series, then:

Batman: The Killing Joke

Ah. Well most of the better writing in mainstream DC has traditionally been in Batman, while the majority of it occupies Vertigo.

Batman: The Long Holloween and it's sequel, Dark Victory are two recent standouts. The first Batman: Black & White anthology was brilliant (I haven't checked out the second one yet).
Some other good titles are Starman and Hitman, both of which have recently ended and the whole runs of both will be available in TPB format.

As far as Vetigo goes, people have already mentioned Swamp Thing. Also check out Animal Man, Books of Magic, Preacher, The Invisibles and Hellblazer. The all but too short runs of Shade and Uncle Sam were pretty good too. Miss anything?

Oh God, I left Preacher out of my list. Boy am I hanging my head in shame now.

Batman getting his back broken by Bane. Bats came back Darker and changed his costume.

Supes getting married

Morpheus'/Sandman's return back in the 90's

Green Arrow: LONGBOW HUNTERS........ Ollie giving up his trick arrows and later, I think it was in the series when Black Canary was tortured and it caused her to be infertile. Then Ollie's son showing up with the Asian babe. right? it's been a awhile...

Firestorm becoming the DC universe's Fire elemental costume change and all. Red Tornado ws the Air Elemental. I forget who was water and earth.

NO MAN'S LAND which spawned a New Batgirl and Batman's respect for The Huntress

The whole run of No Man's Land (start with Contasion(sp)), is available in TPB. The ending is a bit dissapointing but the run is good, about as good as any of the best Batman.

Lucky for me all the great recent DC stuff is available in TPB form as I stopped collecting back in '96. There's alot of crap from DC available in TPB too (I'm not sure why they bother). I was pretty much a DC guy, with an occasional Marvel title (Peter David's run on The Hulk, etc).

We could add Astro City to the list, because DC bought up Image. Most of the best stuff is from the independants now anyways.

i can tell you that "whatever happened to the man of tomorrow" is available in reprint form because it is sitting on my bookshelf.

Sugar & Spike.