Neil Gaiman on ‘1602’ mixing Marvel’s heroes and Elizabethan Era
Neil Gaiman arrives at Marvel in August with his 8-issue mini-series “1602”, which transports several of our Marvel heroes to the Elizabethan era.
We know the following from the press releases: Sir Nicholas Fury heads the Queen’s intelligence agency, Dr. Steven Strange is the court physician while Carlos Javier, and his “witchbreeds”, have fled the Spanish Inquisition taking refuge in England. Matthew Murdock, a blind Irish ballad singer, is Fury’s top agent working on the recovery of a secret shipment from the Knights Templar and Peter Parker is obsessed with spiders but hasn’t been bitten by “that one” yet.
What does all this mean?
Well, not a lot, except GAIMAN, GAIMAN and more GAIMAN.
This is the writer that interwove different historical settings into Sandman and is considered an expert on comic book fiction. The expectations are going to be high. So, how did all of this come about?
After 9/11 Gaiman says that he wanted to avoid technology (i.e. airplanes, bombs, guns etc…) and the Elizabethan era was a perfect mate to superimpose with the Marvel Universe. The politics will allow for exploring the themes of intolerance and tights were commonplace, so it’s easy to blend in. (The last comment may have been creative freedom that I will neither confirm or deny.)
If you are unfamiliar with Neil Gaiman or his work, don’t fret – you’ll be inundated in the next couple of months. He and Dave McKean return with two graphic novels in the fall: Sandman: Endless Nights and Wolves in the Walls. Expect a frenzy of promotion, which is scheduled to include an Entertainment Weekly article, coverage in Spin and numerous interviews.
Gaiman says: “People will be completely sick of me by October.”
Well maybe, but I can’t wait to find out about Count Otto Von Doom, known as “The Handsome.”
originally posted, transferred from Crazedfanboy.com
