We all have trade paperback (TPB) collections we'd like to see. Here's one of mine:

Gallery

I find that younger readers don't really understand why older readers (such as myself) hold Crisis on Infinite Earths in such high regard. The answer I always give is that it was closure for the fans at that time. The characters that we had grown up on were about to be changed FOREVER, and Crisis was the last hurrah. It was gripping - it affected every book in the DC Universe, and entire universes were being wiped out. Entire Earths gone in an anti-matter whitewash, and if any characters survived those Earths, it was questionable if they would survive the Crisis. To pump the nostalgic feelings to their fullest, the first Who's Who was running concurrently with COIE - a twenty-six issue encyclopedic listing of all the characters and histories we were being asked to let go of.

All-Star Squadron is a true enigma in the midst of all of this. In the extra materials of Absolute COIE, DC included several memos from Roy Thomas. They were presented as "Roy was the biggest help for Crisis, and here's the memos to prove it," but someone at DC must hate the guy, because the memos show him to be fighting the process all the way. Almost every memo was, "Please don't use [this character] because I have plans for them in All-Star Squadron." Make no mistake: CrisisruinedAll-Star Squadron. The Golden Age that Thomas had spent almost five years rewriting in All-Star was completely wiped out by Crisis, and most of the title after the Crisis tie-ins consisted of origin stories for individual members.

Yet, other than Thomas' other title, Infinity, Inc., which devoted eight issues to COIE, All-Star was the only DCU title to devote seven issues to the Crisis. Personally, I'd like to have those in a collection, because no matter how much of a help he was or wasn't for Crisis, Roy Thomas can write Golden Age characters like no other. Unfortunately, All-Star Squadron is over twenty years old, so I don't think that the book would sell with All-Star as the primary title. So I put Crisis on Infinite Earths as the primary title, because it's got a high recognition factor with fans, even if they're younger and don't think as much of the story as us older fans do.

For the cover, I'd use issue #50, with Harbinger at the center, because it's the only cover that shows anything to do with COIE. Although the Captain Marvel cover is striking (no pun intended).

Thanks again!