It's been a while since I reviewed any comic books here, hasn't it? For what it's worth I'm in the States at the moment, and this gave me a chance to visit the local library and check out some of the stuff I missed.
Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602 is, as you might expect, a re-imagining of the Marvel Universe. Instead of the comic book characters we know and love springing into life sometime after WWII, this story places them further back in time, into an era when America was an undiscovered country, when the Holy Inquisition was still underway, and when Britain and Spain vied for mastery of the seas.
The story begins in England, where Stephen Strange and Nicholas Fury meet in the presence of Queen Mary. From there it moves on to Spain, where one of the "witchbreeds" (mutants) faces death at the stake, and from that moment it moves to Roanoke Colony, Virginia, where a young girl and her protector are sailing toward Britain in hope of gaining audience with the Queen.
And of course Stephen Strange lives in the village of Greenwich, which will eventually host an observatory, which will eventually give rise to the term Greenwich Mean Time. And of course Robert Drake is somehow related to Sir Francis Drake. Coincidences? Don't bother counting them, they're all part of the fun.
This is probably where I should say that I'm not a big fan of Neil Gaiman the author of novels, but where I also say that I am a fan of Neil Gaiman the author of comic books. I feel that the medium really suits him, and that his novels are more like setups for graphic novels that are likely to be better than the source material. His occasional corniness aside (in this instance manifested in the X-Men suiting up, and Reed Richard's supernatural understanding of future technology), he's a good writer when working from the right set of preconditions.
Just don't ask yourself why the future people only sent ONE person back in time, seemingly without testing the time travel technology they were using to punish that person with. Pondering such uncertainties will give you a headache, and will also impair your enjoyment of this inventive comic book series.
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