Marvel 1602 [New Printing] Paperback – February 9, 2010

Granted I read this because of Neil Gaiman, but I found the setting to be one of the best for Marvel characters. The historic events in the plot deepened and enriched the marvels in a way I have not seen in modern film adaptations. The art was beautiful and the story was great. Highly recommend.

Neil Gaiman gets it right. You know this if you've read Sandman, or Coraline, or American Gods, or...well you get the idea. I remember Marvel from the 60s. I remember being 15 years old and wondering if maybe it wasn't time to abandon comics altogether. Then I looked through the local drugstore window and there was Avengers #4. The cover blurb proclaimed, "Captain America Lives Again!" In the foreground, Captain America seemed to leap out of the cover. I bought the book and the inside was just as good as the cover. In a few months I was buying all the Marvel superhero titles and Sgt Fury, of course. It would be another 8 or 9 years before I (temporarily) abandoned comics. The guys who created the Marvel universe, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, made four color magic. They were fun comics to read, and my memories of Marvel in the 60s still evoke powerful emotions. Some who were fans of Marvel at this time, went on to try to reinvent Marvel, sometimes accompanied by a blurb which said, "Everything you ever read about Spider-man, or the Fantastic Four, or the Avengers, was a lie." or they kill off one of my favorite Marvel characters often, as the song Folsum Prison Blues says, "Just to watch him die." They don't get it, and they fail to recreate the magic. Neil Gaiman gets it, and in Marvel 1602, he DOES recreate the magic. Marvel 1602 doesn't tell us, even by implication, that everything we ever read in a Marvel comic before was a lie. It just says that there is an alternate universe where alternate versions of our beloved Marvel characters exist. This alternate Marvel universe is a fun place to visit. And if some of the major Marvel characters die along the way, their deaths are not without purpose. I give this book my highest recommendation. Oh, and I loved Neil's version of Capain America, too.

Admittedly expectations were going to be high when Neil Gaiman was signed to do a Marvel Comic. Gaiman's decision to create a unique vision of the Marvel universe set four hundred years in the past during the last days of the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, which certainly whetted my appetite to read this trade paperback collection of the mini-series. When you see Scott McKowen's scratchboard covers that ups the ante even more, and while there is certainly nothing wrong with Andy Kubert's art it is hard to look at those covers and not imagine the entire series done that way, even if it would take McKowen the rest of this decade to get it done.So "Marvel 1602" begins in the throne room of Elizabeth, by the Grace of God Queen of England, where Sir Nicholas Fury, the head of her intelligence organization and Stephen Strange, the court physician, are meeting with her Majesty on a stormy night. Something powerful being kept in the city of Jerusalem, a weapon perhaps, has been offered to Strange and he has arranged for it to be transported to England. Something is in the air and while the trio talk lightly about how it might be the end of the world it just might. Meanwhile, in the High Tower of the Palace of the Inquisition in Spain, a familiar mutant awaits execution and on a ship bound for England from colony of Roanoke with the young Virginia Dare and her large bodyguard Rojhaz. These are just the first of the many pieces that Gaiman puts into play.My initial thought while reading "Marvel 1602" was that he was overplaying his hand with his conceit of putting most of the original roster of Marvel superheroes into the time of Elizabethan England because he was working in a couple of dozen characters (including a couple of extremely familiar first line villains). I was thinking that he was simply juggling too many characters and that the best stories I have read putting familiar Marvel and DC superheroes in another place and another time have been fairly specific (e.g., Batman appearing in the London of Jack the Ripper). You might put an entire super group like the Fantastic Four into such a story, but in "Marvel 1602" Gaiman works in just about everybody and it would be easier to try and count on one hand the number of original Marvel characters who do not appear in these pages.But then we learn that Gaiman is going for something more than an alternative history version of the Marvel Universe. There are forces at work that explain why Matthew Murdoch, Carlos Javier, and Peter Parquagh are running around in Merry Olde England and parts of the Continent. This is important because how much you like "Marvel 1602" probably depends on how much you think of the prime cause. Ultimately I think it is an okay idea, especially since it forces Gaiman to skirt the origin issues (so to speak) for most of these characters, and what there is often smacks of necessary convenience. However, if there is one thing we know about Neil Gaiman it is that the best way to appreciate his work is usually to look at it from a mythological perspective.That perspective is important because ultimately what matters about the time period that Gaiman has picked is not the existence of the Inquisition and the strong parallels that immediately exists between religious persecution back then and the persecution of mutants that has always been a strong undercurrent (if not tsunami) in the world of the X-Men, but rather that this was the beginning of the epoch in human history where the Old World gave way to the new one that was being created in the Americas. That makes Virginia Dare the pivotal character in "Marvel 1602," and the second time through reading it pay attention to the character more as a symbol.The final irony is that the more I appreciate the symbolism of Virginia Dare, the more I think it undermines the grand conceit of dressing up so many Marvel superheroes in Elizabethan garb. Instead I found myself wanting Gaiman to start over and basically begin with Virginia Dare and Rojhaz sailing on the ship to visit Queen Bess and not involve the other characters. Or, conversely, to leave the pair from Roanoke out of the picture and keep the focus on the Euorpean stage. Granted, each time we read "Marvel 1602" there will be more to unpack from Gaiman's storyline, but while it is quite interesting it does not rise to the heights of "Watchman" (insert your own classic graphic novel standard if you want) and I certainly do not overly interesting in seeing what Greg Pak and Greg Tocchini come up with following in the shoes of Gaiman and Kubert in "1602: New World."

Famed comic writer and Hugo winning novelist Neil Gaiman gets the opportunity to use 40 plus years of Marvel Comic's history to "re-create" Marvel's universe in, that's right, 1602. What more could you want?Apparently nothing. Mr. Gaiman brings to bear the wit, wisdom and genius he applied to the creation of American Gods and Sandman. Conversely, he has the whole Marvel Universe to pick and choose elements from! Not a bad sandbox.There is nothing amiss here: great storytelling, beautiful art and immense respect for what has gone before (or comes after, rather), 1602 deserves that over-worn phrase, tour-de-force.In true collaboration with the artist Andy Kubert, Mr. Gaiman does not retell a displaced story but rather sets the beginnings 4 centuries into the past and tells his own story. The characters are familiar to Marvel fans, and yet they are quite different.I would be remiss if I did not mention the cover/color work of Richard Isanove; it sets the mood for the entire story.I apologize if you were expecting details but I won't spoil the read. Suffice it to say that if you love Marvel and you love Mr. Gaiman, you will love this book!