Read V for Vendetta

Retired vigilantes in a 1985 with Nixon still president; the graphic novel that made comics grow up.

The Joker's possible origin and Barbara Gordon shot; one bad day.

Jack the Ripper as a royal conspiracy, with 40 pages of footnotes; Moore and Campbell's Victorian London.

A 55-year-old Batman comes out of retirement to fight Superman; Frank Miller's 1986 reinvention.

Bruce Wayne's first year and Jim Gordon's; Miller and Mazzucchelli's crime comic.

Superman has a year to live and does twelve impossible things; Morrison and Quitely.

An ageing Justice League returns to stop a new generation of reckless heroes; Alex Ross's paintings.

Morpheus, lord of dreams, escapes seventy years of captivity; Gaiman's ten volumes of myth.