"Marvel 1602" by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert and Others (2013)

 

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.

Related Entries:

"Marvel Greatest Comics: 100 Comics That Build a Universe" by Melanie Scott and Stephen Wiacek (2020)

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)

Superhero Movies From October 2018 Onward (12: The Last One)

"Artemis" by Andy Weir (2017)

"'Yeah, but...'  He looked pensive.  'I mean, it's not your style.  It was risky - and you're really smart.  You don't take risks unless you have to.  You're not desperate for cash or anything, so far as I know.  I mean, yeah, you're poor.  But you're stable.  Do you owe loan sharks or something?"

Andy Weir was a computer programmer who took up writing full-time after the success of his first novel, The Martian.  As just about everyone knows, The Martian was later adapted into a popular movie.  And yes, there are plans to turn Artemis into a movie too.

In Artemis a young woman by the name of Jasmine or "Jazz" works as a porter and smuggler on the moon.  The name of her lunar colony is - you guessed it - Artemis.  At a certain point Jazz runs afoul of a Brazilian crime syndicate, and her attempt to save Artemis from this syndicate gives shape to the rest of the book.

In the most general terms Artemis a heist novel, whereas Weir's previous book, The Martian, was more a story of survival.  The author himself says as much in an appendix.  Compared to The Martian, Artemis is more complicated by other characters and political/economic details, and also less focused on the general problem of living on the moon.  This said, it's still a very scientific approach to what life on the moon might be like, and Weir's characteristic love of scientific detail is very much in the foreground.

As sci-fi novels go it's an entertaining read and firmly within the genre.  There are of course a thousand other extraterrestrial colony vs. rugged individualist stories in this genre, and Artemis offers no real twist on what has come before.  It's only real edge over similar stories is the level of detail the author puts into it.

My only complaint about this book is that the protagonist is a bit too similar to Mark Watney from The Martian.  She's also - like Mark Watney - incredibly immature at times, and the way she acts seems at odds with her unbelievably vast knowledge of physics, chemistry and other fields.  I think making her more mature would have made her more believable, especially given the gravity (if you'll excuse the pun) of certain situations.

This is, however, a small complaint.  On the whole reading Artemis was good fun, and I look forward to whatever the author comes up with next.

Related Entries:

"The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi (2009)
"Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement (1954)
"R.U.R. and War with the Newts" by Karel Capek (1920 and 1936)
"The Martian" by Andy Wier (2011)

"The Martian" by Andy Wier (2011)

"You may be wondering how I'll store them.  I can't just pile them up; most of them would go bad before I got around to eating them.  So instead, I'll do something that wouldn't work at all on Earth; throw them outside."

Andy Weir started out as a computer programmer.  He's written a lot on the web, but his paper output consists almost entirely of The Martian, his first novel.  Despite his love of space travel he has a strongly developed fear of flying.

I'm assuming that most people are familiar with The Martian's plot.  The 2015 movie was a huge hit, thanks in so small part to Matt Damon's appearance as the story's protagonist, Mark Whatney.  Like most people, I saw the movie long before hearing of the book, and its "marooned on Mars" plot was obvious from the previews.

The book is competently written, and penned by an author who has a clear love of space travel.  The movie version is faithful to the book, though of course some of the more scientific aspects of the book had to be left out of the film.  Matt Damon's Mark Whatney is a lot manlier than Andy Weir's version, but the differences between the two versions are negligible.

Should you bother to read the book?  My opinion?  Probably not.  It doesn't offer much that can't be found in the movie, though of course those interested in the workings of solar cells, water reclamation devices, and jet propulsion will find more to like in the pages of The Martian.

Related Entries:

"Arrival" by Ted Chiang (2015)
"The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead (2016)
"House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds (2008)
"Neuromancer" by William Gibson (1984)