1602 Full Storyline Talkback (spoilers!)

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,


1602 Hardcover- The beautiful thing about Marvel these days is that, unlike DC, it's really easy to tell when they're going to release a hardcover of something and when they're not. 1602 screamed "hardcover" a mile away, and since Gaiman wrote it, I knew I'd want it in hardcover form.
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In fact, I'm seriously confused by much of the ending, so if anybody's up for discussing it with me via PM, I'd be interested in that. Still, despite a poor conclusion, it's a well-crafted and beautifully illustrated series, and is chock-full of intriguing historical allusions. I'm glad I picked it up. Grade: A

Consider this the 1602 "what the heck was THAT all about?" thread. Much speaking of the spoilers shall be done in this thread, so step wary, ye who have not read the story yet.

Annotations and an interview with Gaiman on 1602 may be found at Comic World News' Mysteries and Conundrums (http://cwn.comicraft.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?column=mysteries) home page. The annotations for issue #1 state that no Marvel character who debuted later than 1969 would show up (hence, none of the new X-Men). I remember reading somewhere that Iron Man got cut because Gaiman couldn't come up with a good way to introduce him.

I have to say that I was a bit let-down by the ending, too. I find that Gaiman has a real problem with coming up with more story than he has pages for. I've felt a bit let down by the endings to American Gods, 1602, and even Sandman when it first came out, although re-reading it in trade form made me reconsider the last one. In 1602's case, I think this was an especially big problem, as seen in this entry in Gaiman's blog (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/01/i-was-delighted-to-see-mention-of.asp):


Okay. Back to writing 1602... on chapter 4 now. The big question is how many issues come after this. I'd originally thought of it as a 6 issue miniseries. At his point I'm just hoping I can finish the body of the story in 8 issues. (ME: What if the last issue's a double-sized one, like the first? JOE QUESADA: What if it's just two issues instead?)

Anyway, chime in, everybody -- pull up a tankard and let us talk of 1602. I know a bunch of people picked up #1, and then discussion about it kind of petered out.

-- Ed/Ace

[randomguy]

Okay, here's where the source of my confusion comes in. Try to follow along...

1. The Purple Man takes over the world (actually reasonably possible, considering that Dr. Doom once used Killgrave's mind-controlling hormones to do the same thing).
2. The Purple Man runs a facist government wherein the superheroes are hunted down and slaughtered.
3. Remaining superheroes fight with the resistance, but cannot fight the ravages of age, and are eventually captured (we see elderly and out-of-shape versions of Daredevil and Spider-Man).
4. The resistance remains, and its chief leader and icon is Captain America, who isn't aging thanks to the Super Soldier serum. Again, this makes sense, because a variant of the Serum also allows 616 Nick Fury and The Black Widow to shirk aging.
5. The Purple Man wants Cap out of the picture, but can't kill him, as that makes him a martyr. So he sends him back in time instead, which seems somewhat contrived, but whatever.
6. Having been chucked back through time, Cap triggers a ripple-effect in space-time, causing the Marvel Universe to manifest during the time period he was sent to (the late 16th century).
7. The same ripple-effect upsets the space-time continuum and threatens to destory the Omniverse... not just the Universe itself, as Uatu notes, but everything that has ever existed and ever will exist. High stakes.
8. The assembled Marvel heroes manage, despite Cap's wish, to restore him to his original timeline. 1602 Fury goes with him.
9. This event leads to the creation of two divergent universes. In one, a pocket universe held by Uatu, Virginia Dare and the 1602 Marvel heroes live, Peter is bitten by an irradiated spider, and you've got a new universe ripe for sequels. In the second divergent universe, Virginia Dare dissappears mysteriously, much as she did in ours. Presumably, this second timeline is the original 616 continuity, and its future eventually leads into the Purple Man taking over the world.

Okay, this is a neat story, and it would be all well and good if it was a Marvel equivalent to an Elseworlds. However, it's supposed to be in-continuity. And that's where the headaches come in. Try as I might, I can't reconcile the events in 1602 with mainline Marvel continuity. If I'm following it correctly, there are two timelines in this series. One is the 616 timeline, and Uatu even refers to it by that name. The other is created when Cap is sent back to the future. Okay. So if the bulk of 1602, everything except the epilogue, takes place in the 616 timeline, that means that A) The 1602 characters once existed in the current Marvel Universe. This irks me for a number of reasons, notably because nobody in the Marvel Universe has noted that they all had exact dopplegangers four-hundred years ago, something which presumably would have come up at some point. And also, B) The future involving the Purple Man is the in-continuity future for the Marvel Universe. I'm not crazy about that either.

So... yeah, it's weird. I'm not quite sure how to piece together all the alternate universes and alternate timelines with the 616 Universe. It's all very confusing. Maybe I'm just trying too hard, but if Gaiman's gonna go out of his way to make this thing in-continuity (as he clearly did by having Uatu refer to the 616 timeline by name), then maybe he shouldn't have made it so confusing to fit 1602 into things.

I mean, I really dug the story. The charcter work, the historical allusions, that feeling of re-discovering the Marvel Universe all over again for the first time... all very good stuff. I was disappointed that Iron Man and the Pyms didn't show up, but given that they're such scientifically-themed characters, I can understand it. But I think trying to set it within continuity just complicated it in ways that weren't necessary.

I know a lot of folks read it, so if anyone else would like to chime in with their thoughts, I'd much appreciate it.

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

Time travel and continuity issues -- two great tastes that make for Really Big Messes. I tend to take Capt. Janeway's advice from an episode of Voyager: "Don't think about it too hard. You're just going to give yourself a headache."

I think there is a simpler explanation than that. You can broadly divide time travel stories into one of two types:

1. The time travel story which does not fundamentally change past history, and shows that the time travel was the precipitating event that caused specific events to occur. Star Trek: First Contact is this kind of time travel.

2. The time travel story which DOES change past history, with the ripple effect stretching away into the future. The Back to the Future movies are of this type.

Most time travel stories in comics are the second type, "Days of Future Past" being the first example that comes to mind. I think 1602 also falls into that category, although the key bit to remember is that there are TWO unexpected time travel events. The first is Rojhaz's first jump back to the late 1500's, which precipitates the creation of Marvel heroes in Elizabethan England. Here, the change to past history is the creation of the Marvel heroes, which then threatens all existence everywhere.

The second universe-altering jump is the one Rojhaz and Fury take back to the future, which splits the 1602 timeline from the official MU timeline. If we presume that this sends Cap back in time somewhere, we are still left with two possibilities. If Cap was sent back to the 616 present to merge with the one in the comics now, then his re-appearance could change events to ensure the Purple Man never takes power. Presumably, Fury could merge with his 616 counterpart as well.

If we presume that Cap went back to the 616 future he came from, he can continue his fight against the President-for-Life Purple Man, with the help of 1602 Nick Fury. No current continuity gaffes, and using Lorendiac's 4:1 timescale estimates (http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=123027)) gets us a story that will need to be told about 160 years from now, assuming that Spidey and Daredevil are in their 30's now and in their 70's by the time they are arrested. I can live with that. Our grandchildren will either think it is astoundingly cool that someone is telling a story predicated nearly 2 centuries ago, or be totally cheesed off that they have to dig up a back-issue older than any redwood trees lucky to make it that far just to follow the story.

There is a third possibility I can see, which is that the time event doesn't send 1602 Fury and Cap anywhere at all, but eliminates them in a preservation type of thing. The restoration/split of 616 vs. 1602 means the anomalies in both are smoothed out and eliminated (something Sir Reed hints at when he says, "But I fear the creation that has been restored is not the same as the one that would have been." -- he could be talking about 616 as much as about 1602). Rojhaz and 1602 Fury, unfortunately, become "anomalies," and are thus wiped from both existences. The real 616 Cap then goes on to stay a hero in a non-totalitarian United States and 1602 Fury...well, he totally gets the raw end of the stick.

Yup. Right about on time. Headache.

One other question I had about the hardback was on the cover (wallpaper of it here on the Marvel website (http://www.marvel.com/wallpaper/index.htm)). Who's the brunette on the far right?

-- Ed/Ace

[randomguy]

Wow... yeah, that does help. Thanks, Ace. I still maintain that the whole thing was a bigger mess than it really should have been, but I guess it's a little less frustrating now. You can articulate these things better than I can- I was actually struggling to explain just where my confusion came from.

As for the brunette... I honestly have no idea.

[Cyporiean]

One other question I had about the hardback was on the cover (wallpaper of it here on the Marvel website (http://www.marvel.com/wallpaper/index.htm)). Who's the brunette on the far right?


John Grey

[randomguy]

John Grey
See, I thought about that, too, but the hair threw me off... I didn't think it was red enough, especially in comparison to Matt Murdoch's.

[Cyporiean]

See, I thought about that, too, but the hair threw me off... I didn't think it was red enough, especially in comparison to Matt Murdoch's.
Read the hardcover, it says its her.