GLOBE (Global Land One-kilometer Base Elevation) digital elevation (DEM) data for land areas: covers the entire planet! 30 arc-sec (about 1km) gridded elevation data.
GTOPO30: another set of global land elevation data at 30 arc-sec (~1 km) resolution.
ETOPO5: global dataset of topography (land) and bathymetry at 5 arc-min (about 10 km) resolution.
Want a simple basemap quick? Try the easy-as-pie, GMT-based web utility Map-It.
GMT: set of Unix tools for geographic data manipulation and mapping from Paul Wessel and Walter Smith.