Booklog

Really? A Quill Award? I don't know about that. 1602 places the Marvel Universe squarely in the year....well, 1602 and uses the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition and the mysterious disappearance of the colony of Roanoke to tell the story of the multiverse in crisis, again...this time involving a time traveling Captain America who upsets the balance of the world. There are some clever adaptations to the characters to suit the time period. Mutants are Witches persecuted by the church, the Knights Templar's secret was the Staff of Thor and they were persecuted by the Catholic Church for their evidence of the existence of other gods. Peter Parker is Peter Parquagh, Matt Murdoch is a blind Irishman and Charles Xavier is the Spanish Carlos Javier.

But there are so many flaws in the telling of this story I don't know where to begin. After reading Alan Moore's guide to writing comics, in which he says one of the biggest places writers lose their readers is the transition between scenes, I was unnerved by how drastic and confusing a lot of the transitions were in this book. It's like I looked from one panel to the next and was like, whoa wait, what happened? There's way too much deus-ex-machina for my taste as well, which I chalk up to just poor explanation of events, powers, etc. The dialogue is also prone to melodrama. Example: "There is no careful. There is no right, no wrong. There is only VON DOOM!" Neil Gaiman fail.

Or maybe I'm just not a big fan of the Marvel Universe in general.