Today in "THIS BOOK IS HUGE": DC Comics' The New 52 Omnibus, a hardcover that collects all 52 first issues of DC's line-wide reboot. Mercury Arts Editor Alison Hallett dropped this monstrosity my desk yesterday, splintering my desk in half, sending a THUDD throughout the entire office, and rupturing space-time as we knew it.

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This thing seems both ridiculously complete (considering how mediocre many of the "New 52" books were, I can't imagine anyone feeling the need to own the first issue of every single one) and ridiculously incomplete (since these are all just the first issues—the starts of stories—none of these issues really stand on their own). That's not to say there aren't good, even great stories in here—Grant Morrison and Rags Morales' Action Comics, Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette's Swamp Thing, and Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman's Animal Man were all smart, great, and fun—but you're also getting stuff like Catwoman, Voodoo, and Red Hood and the Outlaws, so as the collection as a whole goes, it's pretty uneven. It's safe to say your mileage, from issue to issue, will vary pretty widely.

Then again, it weighs like 10 pounds, it's like three inches thick (over 1200 pages), and it could easily be used to maim, or even kill, a small child. So that's something. It goes on sale on December 13 for $150.