Gaiman's 1602

Neil Gaiman's 1602 is wickedly good:

• The Marvel super-heroes, all in Elizabethan England. Great bad guys (Baron Otto von DOOM).
  
• Dialogue worthy of Joss Whedon (after dispatching someone down a deep abyss, she leans over and says "tell the devils or angels or whoever you, 'hi!' from the most dangerous woman in the world").
  
• Time travel.
  
• Aliens.
  
• Conversations with the dead
  
• Excellent excellent graphics.
  

Did I mention I liked it?

The book is an incredible "up yours" to modern American politics. Sometimes, the message is overt (there's a dig at a George-Bush-like fellow who, in the modern world, has made himself president for life and has driven all the super heroes to despair) but mostly its far subtler than that, and only really reveals itself in the author's after notes.

Gaiman writes that he could not write a book of hero's in the post 9/11 world. In the modern world there are villains aplenty, but no way to be a hero, no way to perform a righteous act without oppressing someone, somewhere. So he gave up and sent all his heroes hundreds of years into the past where, by their own words, they achieved nothing and saved nothing but the status quo.

Ouch!