I’m not a huge comic book geek, but I do enjoy reading them from time to time. The only two series that have really ever caught my eye have been the original black-and-white issues of The Tick, and Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman series. The Sandman series prompted me to seek out more of Neil Gaiman’s writing, and he’s become one author that I tend to keep an eye out for. Understandable, then, that this information caught my eye today:
1602 is an 8-issue mini, set in a Marvel Universe in which, for reasons which will take a while to uncover, the whole Marvel Universe is starting to occur 500 years early: Sir Nicholas Fury is head of the Queen’s Intelligence, Dr Stephen Strange is her court physician (and magician), the Inquisition is torturing “witchbreed“, many of whom have taken sanctuary in England under the wing of Carlos Javier, and now a mysterious treasure — which may be a weapon of some kind — is being sent from Jerusalem to England by the last of the Templars. Something that may save the world, or destroy it, which has already attracted the attention of such people as Count Otto Von Doom (known as “The Handsome”)…[so] Nicholas Fury sends his top agent, a blind Irish ballad singer named Matthew Murdock, off to bring it back safely.
It’s a race against time in a world in which time is the enemy —
It’s not a What If or an Elseworlds. And it’s really fun…
— ‘1602’ author Neil Gaiman