Marvel 1602

It's a wonderful idea - to take the Marvel superheroes and place them in the year 1602 - because something has gone wrong with time and they are needed 400 years early.
I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to the Marvel universe, but I have seen Avengers Assemble, so Sir Nicholas Fury, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I, was familiar, even down to the eyepatch - and he had an apprentice with a fascination for spiders who was called Peter....
The X-men are there, in a School for Young Gentlemen somewhere near Warwick - I'm not so familiar with them, though I do know about the bald professor in a wheelchair. There was no wheelchair here, of course, but he was still bald, and renamed Javier, as the X-men were renamed witchbreed.
And anyone who knows a bit of Tudor and Stuart history would know that James I and VI, who succeeded Elizabeth, was pretty anti-witches. In short, this was not a safe time for people with unusual powers to be living. In Spain, of course, there was the Inquisition, and the Grand Inquisitor plays a part in the story too, with his unusual assistants, a red nun and a boy who can run very fast.
And then there's the Roanoake colony, and a young girl called Virginia Dare, the first European child to be born in the Americas, coming back to England with her native American protector. Both of them are more than they seem at first glance.
As if that weren't enough, we also have the Four of the Fantastick and Count Otto von Doom - and a blind Irish minstrel with amazing acrobatic abilities (I'd never heard of Daredevil, but I really like this Matt Murdoch). Matt teams up with a mysterious widow called Natasha (I think I've met her before, too!).
And if that weren't enough, the Court physician is Dr. Strange, and Thor gets in there, too.
This being a Neil Gaiman story, all these many characters work seamlessly into a plot that makes perfect sense. And, this being a Neil Gaiman story, he gets the feeling of the early seventeenth century, with the very different ideas about science that they had then, too. It's amazing what can be done with oil of vitriol and water, a rod of copper and a rod of Chinese zinc....
So much for the script, but what brings it to life, of course, are the artists. Andy Kubert and Richard Isanove do a magnificent job of bringing the characters to life, in the clothes of the period, and the ships and the buildings. "For reference, I'd suggest Shakespeare in Love," Neil Gaiman says in his notes (some of which are reproduced at the back of the book, along with some of the character sketches). The cover art for each comic is by Scott McKowen, based on woodcuts of the period, and it all looks marvellous!

There is a sequel, written by Peter David, who wrote quite a few Star Trek novels among other things - and I think I will have to look out for it.