The Marvel Universe
Transposed into the Seventeenth Century
by Neil Gaiman
Reviewed by William G. Doty

One of Neil Gaiman's most recent publications is Marvel 1602, which brings into a one-volume graphic-novel collection the eight issues published beginning in 2003. Gaiman did the script, Andy Kubert the illustrations, with digital painting by Richard Isanove, and covers by Scott McKowen. Gaiman mentions (in an Afterword) having first encountered the Marvel Universe of comics when he was about six, drifting in a small boat in Sussex; many years later he proofread this collected volume, presumably now near his American home, the very same way.

It must be the water muses who have blessed this attractive and compelling book. The conceit is a striking example of mythopoesis (about which I'll have more to say later): superhero characters from comics of the 1950s and 1960 from publisher Marvel are more or less alchemically translated into seventeenth century characters in Britain and the Continent and Colonial America. 1602 Character A is modeled on Character K of a particular Marvel subuniverse, but mutated (a term repeatedly mentioned in the 1602 plot, along with magic — which of course is a sort of alchemy), even to the point where the Native figure of Rajhaz, protector of Virginia Dare, has bulky muscles on his white skin, his visage topped with very blond hair. Even Queen Elizabeth notes that previous American Natives who appeared in her court bore dark skin and black hair.

Gaiman was taught comic scripting — we see a portion of the script for the first issue reproduced at the back of the volume — and he will suggest to the illustrator what M-Universe figure he has in mind, along with transformations to fit the seventeenth century. For those of us with almost zero exposure to these comics, annotations are critical, and for the first half of Marvel 1602, those online by Julian Darius are salvific, at least for me. In this particular instance, we learn that Rojhaz is based upon a classic blond, white-skinned, superhero hunk, Captain America (played in film by Reb Brown).

Revisioning is not scarce in the comics' universes. After I had drafted this, I found another new publication by Gaiman, Eternals, in which the figures originally created in the 1970s by Jack Kirby undergo a number of alterations. Gaiman builds a new narrative there as well, though obviously respecting Kirby's original concepts fully. And even within-house, a publisher may bring long-established superheroes up to date, notably in the Ultimate Marvel series, 2000+, which updates and revises earlier (1960-70s) figures such as Spider-Man, Wolverine, the Hulk, Thor, Daredevil, the X-Men, the Avenger, and the Fantastic Four.

In other fiction, Gaiman has betrayed his fondness for several earlier writings, such as fantasist Lord Dunsany or James Branch Cabell. But I like what critic Darrell Schweitzer writes:

His work is a fertile ground for influence-tracing critics. It is almost harder to discover what he hasn't read. But much more interesting is an examination of how he has transmuted the materials he has borrowed. Or, to mix metaphors, a writer can't merely stand on the shoulders of giants. He has to do something interesting while he's up there. A little tap-dance, maybe. Gaiman does at least that. (116; my emphasis in the third sentence.)

As I indicated in an earlier column here ("Mythopoesis from Moby-Dick to Ahab's Wife," May 2007) mythopoesis involves adopting one mythological figure and transforming or revivifying the figure in new guise. We are quite familiar with the process, since in important ways Greek and a few Roman mythic heroes give Western literature a characteristic tone over the ages (see for instance Kossman's Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths). Gaiman brings his skills in fantasy, speculative fiction, and the graphic novel (especially the massive Sandman series) to 1602; the motion picture from his Stardust volume is debuting this month, and one senses his sympathy for cinematic portrayal.

As with his other materials, pacing is rapid-fire, and continuities are sometimes hard to sequence. Usually there are rectangular balloons identifying new scenes, but at other times suddenly we find ourselves within a character's induced vision or out-of-body scoping of distant venues. Time intervals can pass between segments of a single uninterrupted story line (II.5). A song in one issue may only be continued pages later in others, sometimes resuming mid-page (just before the Queen is killed by a toy sent by Count Otto von Doom-grr!) without any reference to the present scene (IV.16, there is no informative balloon at all).

Fantastic skills accrue to superheroes in comics: vide Superman or Spiderman (incarnated here as Peter, who is fascinated by spiders — and yes, he is finally stung at the end of the volume). Eyes blinded by a radioactive spill, Matthew Murdoch's orbs can yet shoot out a red laser beam, loosening bonds, and opening an escape hole in a castle's stone walls. Scotius Summerisle (from Cyclops), another superhero, can shoot beams of freezing ice from his fingertips, and bears an X branded on his chest after earlier being outed as a mutant ...

"John" Gray (earlier Jean in X-Men, but here, as in Shakespearean drama, played as a young lad): well, he/she can impel a sail-less ship through water and air. Yet another, Petros, can speed across the landscape so quickly that he's almost as efficient as the telegraph lines will be hundreds of years later.

Then there's the lad whose first appearance portrays him hung by wrists and ankles so that his body forms a huge X. Aha! the reference here and in the others of the transmuted Fantastic Four of Marvel, the X-Men, of course, although here one of them is female (Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman). In a school for the mutants, five of them appear in one panel just before a training fight — each has a bold X on his metal belt. But not in later scene V.5 or VI.4, a gathering of nine superheroes, with the motto "To save everything, the heroes have come."

This is more or less the elevated language of myth, and it is no wonder commentators speak of Gaiman as crafting "a modern myth" (Rauch 11); "Gaiman's stories serve as a mythology for the present world, combining cosmological explanations, instructive ethical teachings, and a profound feeling of wonder; they represent our dreams (in more ways than one) and our fears" (ibid) Referring to the massive Sandman series, Rauch notes: "The central plot forms what has been called [by Frank McConnell] "a magnificent parable about the humanization of myth" (16).

And Ben Indick, referring to American Gods (see my column in Mythic Passages April 2006) proposes that this is a "novel of myths and reality, and the planes across which they intersect"; "Mythology ... has its own power of becoming real. America, in Gaiman's view, has become the repository for the gods of the world, and is simultaneously creating new gods, new mythologies" (92).

Certainly Gaiman is well aware of world mythologies and religions: a Jew by birth, he was educated in Anglican schools, and his father is a bigwig in the Scientology movement (Gaiman sketch in Knowles). Rauch notes that "Gaiman populates the world not just with gods from one culture's mythology, but from many pantheons" (13). Some include Greek and Roman mythology, "gods and mythological beings from Norse, Egyptian, Japanese, and Christian traditions, as well as the planes of faerie, order, and chaos." And Bethany Alexander stresses how the planes are seldom kept isolated, and "mythologies often blend in his work, cheerily carousing with folktales, history, happy accidents, dreams" (136).

In one of the best essays in Schweitzer 2007, Chris Dowd points to the fact that "Gaiman frequently tells stories about telling stories .... His fictional worlds are populated by writers, film directors, puppet masters, actors, oral storytellers, and even a king of stories who rules a realm of fictions, fables, and dreams"; "Gaiman holds up a mirror to the storytelling process (103)." And it's a baroquely-detailed mirror that discloses layers of meaning across the chapters of the book, including unveiling identities within the play-within-the-play (yes, there's a strong influence of the Bard!). An example is found in issue/chapter V, where the story of Sir Richard Reed, backgrounded already in chapter I, and his ship The Fantastick, are related in elaborate visual frames in the comic panels — a sort of postmodern trick wherein the reader, not the author, must reconstruct significances and meanings.

I'll just mention that the graphic work (in all its phases, the illustration, the inking in for printing, the careful lettering) in both Marvel 1602 and Eternals is extraordinary, although quite different. Some of the spreads in the latter are almost blinding in the intensity of their coloring; those of the former are more restrained, largely because of their displacement into the seventeenth century, and betray what seems to be serious influence from Japanese animé publications and video — both of which have become wildly popular recently.

In the Afterword to Marvel 1602, Gaiman states, "I wanted to write a comic with the same sense of playfulness and of being part of a world a-borning that I had seen in those early Marvel comics. To write something that would not be a pastiche, but which Stan Lee or Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko [figures famous for inaugurating and continuing complex comic streams] would have recognized."

I am sure they would, and it's pretty damned exciting watching such universes get conceived and their creations brought to fruition.

Works Cited