Marvel 1602

This is probably one of the most interesting twists on the Marvel universe I've seen. Not that I've seen a lot, but Gaiman does a better job than I ever could have expected in weaving together characters who inherently belong in the 20th-21st century and transplanting them naturally into an environment 400 years before their time.

The most remarkable part of this book is the worldbuilding. Both the way the setting is built up and the way the setting is tied into (or off of, or however to describe it) the rest of the Marvel universe is incredibly fluid, as if Gaiman had come up with it all himself without decades of history to build off of. In spite of this, the heroes are largely treated with a respect that makes them instantly recognizable yet natural to the setting. Sir Nicholas Fury fits in as well as Queen Elizabeth's spymaster as he ever did in the Avengers. Carlos Javier works to protect and teach his witchbreed followers in much the same way Charles Xavier did his mutants.

Most of Kubert's art in the book is fantastic. There are quite a few panels that will stick with you afterwards because of their fantastic detail and framing. There are quite a few "transitional" panels that lack detail in the usual way of rushed comics, with the colours and faces simplified to blobs, but they're done at times that your eyes will probably gloss over it anyways. My only real complaint with the art is in the closeups on faces - many of them end up looking virtually identical. I can't imagine how, by any stretch of the imagination, Clea and Rojhaz should have basically the same facial features, but there are a few panels where I had to do a double take.

The story is a bit convoluted and seems to get most of its movement in a few lurches during the last two or three issues, but it is entertaining and weaves together a gigantic cast of characters quite nicely. How does a page in London relate to a group of mutants hiding from the Inquisition in Spain? Quite easily, it turns out. Gaiman manages to have enough twists in this story to keep it interesting from the very beginning, but I would have liked to see things flesh out over a longer time period. A series closer in length to Watchmen would have done wonders for the pacing and allowed more time for some interesting and important scenes, but for what he was given I'm not sure I could have asked for any more. He even linked it in an interesting way to the greater Marvel universe, which I really wasn't expecting and was a fun addition.

Overall I wouldn't consider this a "must read" for anyone, but it was certainly a fantastic book. It is, in a way, the best fan fiction I've ever read. 1602's biggest achievement is taking a bunch of characters from other works and masterfully inserting them into a setting and story where they don't belong. I wasn't sure if it would work, but by Thor it did.

Written by Neil Gaiman, this interesting miniseries introduces a world where familiar Marvel characters (Doctor Strange, Nick Fury, several X-Men) are reimagined and placed in a historical setting.

The plot itself was mostly standard fare--time-travel has led to a disruption that threatens to destroy the universe--but it was very interesting to see the Elizabethan depictions of the characters. Part of this was the fun of catching the various references to modern day characters--some more subtle than others--but much of the appeal was seeing how the various characters were interpreted. Nicholas Fury as Queen Elizabeth's spymaster and the monastic X-men worked particularly well, but the Peter Parker and Bruce Banner equivalents (at least in this series; it looks like they're brought back in the spin-offs) seemed like they were mostly around for the "hey, it's that guy!" factor.

All-in-all, this was a fresh take on the Marvel Universe, and I look forward to reading the 1602 spin-offs.

Neil Gaiman ventures into Alan Moore territory for Marvel. Oddly, it's not a very exciting expedition.

Gaiman may be the victim of expectations. I was a huge fan of Sandman and The Books of Magic. Frankly, nothing he's done since has impressed me half as much.

In 1602, he takes a clever idea - what if all the Marvel superheroes were alive in the time of Queen Elizabeth? - and does less with it than I would have expected.

But I'll admit that in part, that's because Alan Moore has done so much remarkable work with historical comics and heroes that Gaiman suffers by comparison. I'm used to incredibly dense, clever, brilliant stories - books that make you think, references to other works and historical events that are so complex and interwoven that it takes another book (probably by Jess Nevins) to annotate them all.

Gaiman has approached that level of cleverness in the past, with Shakespeare in Sandman. That's universally agreed to be a classic of the genre. But 1602...was just a comic book.

Oh, it's not a bad comic book. It was just surprisingly unimaginative. And oddly enough Gaiman's strongest suit, his sense of mystery and atmosphere, wasn't particularly notable here.

At one point I had to wonder if some editor at Marvel had interfered with the book! Because to my surprise the mystery of the book was killed dead with a somewhat laborious explanation.

Let me see if I can explain.

The book features many classic Marvel characters as they would be if they had been born and grew up in the late 1500s. I'll admit it: this is a neat idea. But it didn't need to be explained. Making the whole point of the story an explanation of why modern characters were somehow re-born in the past (the explanation provided via a certain deus ex machina character) really killed much of the fun out of the story! It took away the atmosphere and mystery.

It was fun the way it was. Why ruin it with a rationalization? Why kill the sense of magic?

There were a few clever and amusing points which I won't spoil, but they certainly didn't make up for the essentially leaden and unmagical tone of the book.

On the plus side, it was well-illustrated. And at nearly 250 pages, it was longer than most graphic novels; a decent way to kill a couple of hours. In a fractional system, I'd have given it a 2.5.

I just expected more from Neil Gaiman, that's all.