Book: 1602, Neil Gaiman / Andy Kubert

[tamaranth]

Neil Gaiman's 1602 is not an alternate-universe take on the Marvel comics-verse of the 1960s. ...And before all the die-hard comics fans start burning me in effigy, I am not a comics fan ok? So please forgive my soon-to-be-evident ignorance of terminology, background, etc etc.

There are thunder-lizards roaming the mid-West, and petrodactyls, and all manner of oddities peripheral to the plot. But 1602 is not an AU -- not of the Marvel universe, at least. It's something quite different, and it stands up well on its own, at least for this non-comics fan, who had to go back and read the introduction to work out who everyone (apart from Elizabeth I and James I) was. I suspect the story would acquire all manner of extra dimensions if I knew the Marvel context: but it works without any of that context, and is complete in and of itself. The artwork is glorious (Andy Kubert) and the covers (by Scott McKowen) taught me a new technical term: 'scratchboard', what it says on the tin, where stiff cardboard is covered with a layer of chalk, and then with a layer of ink which, dry, is scraped away with a knife.

Of course, it's more difficult to carry off mannerist cross-dressing when it's illustrated ... though I did like the reaction (surely an update of traditional Marvel characterisation?) to one revelation.

Nit-picking: a ship, propelled not by magic but by wind and water, 'out in the Atlantic' will not reach London that day, or the next. Or even that week.

Very much enjoyed: lovely Gaiman prose, gorgeous images, a whole new 'verse, and characters who kept reminding me of Mary Gentle's 1610 (And hasn't historian Christopher Lee written 1603? I want those missing issues: 1604, 1605, 1606 ...)

Comments

[asynje.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I want that. I would have already gotten it too had it not been for the fact that the local Shop The Stock These Things only have the Danish translation.

Which is - no.

And I'm working on the whole traveling abroad issue :)

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

now you know which young page ought to have been bitten by a spider, go back and look at the point when he doesn't ;-)

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to get hold of a copy for you. Or rather, swisstone is :)