DC Comics, commonly referred to as the rivaling comic book powerhouse to Marvel Comics, has brought forth a myriad of legendary heroes that have become, for all intents and purposes, modern-day mythologies that bear the same spectacle and grandiosity found in real-world, ancient mythologies.
Thanks to Superman being the superhero blueprint, comic books have flourished into a captivating medium that has grown into mainstream entertainment. With the start of a fresh decade, DC Comics initiated the publishing of comics that began tying loose ends from various story arcs of years past and introducing brand new titles to their overall landscape.
10 Dark Knights: Death Metal By Scott Snyder
If you're a fan of the Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo dynamic duo and their works on New 52 Batman as well as Dark Knights: Metal, then Dark Knights: Death Metal is the follow up you'll definitely want to dive into, with this new installation bringing all previous Crisis events under one collective timeline.
While Snyder's Justice League laid out the repercussions of the Source Wall being destroyed in Dark Knights: Metal, the massive physical/metaphorical-war between Lex Luthor's Legion of Doom and the Justice League culminated with DC's Year of the Villain. With the heroes in utter defeat, The Quintessence, a tribunal of powerful cosmic beings, sends the Trinity back to the original Crisis events, each one emerging to be confronted by a triumphant Anti-Monitor, Superboy-Prime, and Darkseid, each stating that Perpetua has already altered the outcome of each event.
9 The Flash: Year One By Joshua Williamson
Year One is a branding initiative by DC that details the character origins of their various characters. It should be noted, not every origin story is a Year One, but every Year One is an origin, serving as the definitive origin from henceforth. Flash: Year One chronicles how Barry Allen came to grips with his powers and express how he truly put his mind to the task to develop the efficiency in how his powers worked.
When testing the limits of how fast he could run, Barry unwittingly breaks the time barrier, slinging himself into a future where the villain Turtle has conquered the world. Teaming up with his future-counterpart, present-day Barry is taught the finer nuances of his abilities and circumvents the Turtle's reign by repairing the timeline.
8 Shazam: The Seven Magic Lands By Geoff Johns
Geoff Johns is widely regarded as the writer that developed the Green Lantern mythos into what it is today, so following Shazam's widely accepted silver-screen debut, DC capitalized on this popularity by commissioning Geoff Johns to expand the Shazam mythos. Stumbling across The Seven Magiclands, Billy and his adoptive family venture through a nexus of realms called the Sphere of Gods where magic reigns supreme, and circumstances are a little more sinister than first led on.
From realms ruled by kids, anthropomorphic animals, and even fairy-tale characters, the Shazam Family has their work cut out for them when it's revealed that they not only have to contend with Superboy-Prime and Black Adam but Billy's "dad" as well, who now has the powers of Shazam and is mind-controlled by Mr. Mind.
7 Hill House By Joe Hill
If the horror genre strikes your fancy, then DC's imprint of Hill House is a line of comics you'll definitely find your chills and scares, and this is not just your average horror-comic book, as the creator, Joe Hill is the son of acclaimed horror author Stephen King. From supernatural dollhouses and beheadings to zombie ghost-ships, the Hill House comics are packed with intrigue and an abundant supply of spooks.
6 Injustice: Year Zero By Tom Taylor
Serving as a prequel to Tom Taylor's 2013 Injustice: Gods Among Us series which detailed the events stemming from the video game of the same name, Injustice: Year Zero brings in a fresh perspective by rolling the Justice Society of America into the greater Injustice storyline. Expressing the legacies the JSA imparted onto the JLA and the JLA unto the greater superhero landscape, the prequel has a more uplifting tone as opposed to the grim, dystopian backdrop that was the original Injustice story.
Nevertheless, this presentation of a unified and wholesome world would soon come crashing down with the Joker obtaining cosmic-level power with the Amulet of Apophis and mind-controlling Alan Scott to murder Sandman. How Year One and the original story reconcile still have yet to be revealed but it'll undoubtedly be a brain-bender once it is.
5 Joker War By James Tynion IV
As it's commonly stated, the Joker's schemes make sense to nobody but himself, so the chaos he incites 9 times out of ten is random, vaguely orchestrated, and has no real end-goal aside from perpetuating the cat-and-mouse game between him Batman. Nevertheless, Joker War forges a new concept in the Batman mythos seeing Bruce Wayne's wealth and resources seized by the Joker, giving him access to take his insane and sadistic plots to extreme levels.
To maintain a level of covertness, Bruce now resides within Gotham as opposed to the Wayne Maynor and operates on rag-tag gadgetry while fending off the Joker and his advances in shifting public perception towards turning Batman into the new Joker, and the Joker into the protector of Gotham.
4 Superman Smashes the Klan By Gene Luen Yang
Pulling inspiration from a story-arc in Superman's 1946 radio-show called "Clan of the Fiery Cross," the story follows off the heels of WWII with the main character, Lan-Shin Lee, a Chinese-American whose family has moved from Chinatown to Metropolis where her father is to start his new job at the Metropolis Health Department. Being in a racially volatile period, Lan-Shin, who employs the name "Roberta" for the sake of "easing the white people around her," chronicles her family facing a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Burning a cross on their lawn and attempting to firebomb their home, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, and Inspector Henderson help Roberta stave off the hate group, who in turn began intimidating the three. Hindered by his own self-doubt, Superman battles the Klan and his self-identity, impeding his efforts to his superhero duties.
3 Tales from the Dark Multiverse By Scott Snyder
Scott Snyder's Dark Knights Metal brought forth an intriguing story-arc seeing a merged Batman and Joker, dubbed The Batman Who Laughs, attempt to bring the positive and negative Multiverse under his wing with the help of his Dark Knights. Finding massive success with alternate reality takes of Bruce Wanye becoming twisted versions of the altruistic heroes were familiar with, Tales from the Dark Multiverse is a set of stories that would see several pivotal story-arcs throughout the DC mythos modified to embrace the worst-case-scenario in those situations.
From Jean-Paul Valley refusing to give The Batman mantle back to Bruce Wayne, to an Eradicator-powered Lois Lane taking her grief out on the superheroes, Tales of the Dark Multiverse definitely has something for everyone to find fascinating.
2 The Three Jokers By Geoff Johns
While still being fleshed out, the Three Jokers storyline has its roots back in 2015's Darkseid War when Batman usurped the Mobius Chair from Metron and discovers that there are in fact, three separate Jokers that exist across the DC landscape. Sending the Batman mythos and its fans into a frenzy, the question of "who are the three jokers?" lingered in the background for years, leaving fans to theorize what the chair meant by this revelation.
With the prospect exposed by Geoff Johns, it only makes sense to bring him back to elaborate on this idea, and thus far he's pulling out all the stops that'll make this a landmark Batman story. Revisiting the trauma of Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon, Johns has begun digging into the vulnerable and sensitive side of the Bat-Family, determining whether they are products of those horrific experiences.
1 DCeased By Tom Taylor
The zombie concept has conceived a massive fandom that has extended into multiple mediums ranging from film, books, and memorabilia. This popular concept would eventually be introduced into comics, and by extension superheroism, bringing forth some interesting stories into the Marvel and DC universes.
Although Marvel did have their Marvel Zombies event earlier in 2005 which was a relatively popular title, DCeased has proven to take the zombie-superhero cake, seeing multiple spinoffs and follow-ups this year of the original 2019 event that expand the series in a more nuanced way. In a Skynet-style takeover, a digital virus is unwittingly released by Cyborg after the insidious plot of Darkseid goes array, instigating the anti-life equation to turn all who gazed through the digital-sphere to become mindless and corrupted anti-life zombies.