In the Sunday, April 18, 2004 issue of The New York Times, film critic A.O. Scott, whose name should be familiar to longtime readers of this column, tries yet again to clarify his argument against genre movies that won’t stick to what he thinks are their proper place; quoting the late cinema critic Pauline Kael, Scott labels that place “trash” as opposed to what he terms “genuine art.” Invoking another predecessor, Scott refers to critic Manny Farber’s distinction between “white elephant” art, “which stifled its innate energies in pursuit of prestige,” and “termite” art, which, in Farber’s words, “goes forward eating its own boundaries.” (That actually sounds to me like art that, in the contemporary phrase, pushes the envelope.) Scott is dismayed that what were once considered “B” pictures, the popular genre movies, now dominate the industry, and claims that “some of the pulpy, subcultural allure of these forms has been polished away.” (“Subcultural,” eh? This reminds me of the shot of the fictional America’s Best Comics building in Alan Moore’s trade paperback of the same name, inscribed with the slogan “I can’t believe it’s not culture.”)

“Among the sins of white elephant art, according to Farber,” Scott states, “are the tendencies to ‘install every event, character and situation in a frieze of continuities’ and to ‘treat every inch of the screen and film as a potential area for prizeworthy creativity.'” Among what Scott condemns as the “current white elephant B pictures” are “bloated comic-book term papers.”

So, I take it that if Scott ever stumbles across my extensive lit-crit analyses of works like Neil Gaiman’s 1602 and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again, he would not appreciate them. As for those of you who might sympathize with Scott’s position, let me assure you that 1602 and DK2 and other works that I treat in such detail are superb entertainments. If they didn’t work as examples of their genre, in these two cases the superhero adventure, I wouldn’t be motivated to spend so many hours poring through them. You can have a satisfactorily good time reading these books on the surface level of escapist fun.

To my mind, however, still more pleasure is to be derived from careful, detailed readings of works like these. Themes, complexities of characterization, and insights will emerge that will increase the reader’s understanding of the material and hence his or her appreciation of it. Comics creators on the level of Miller and Gaiman not only impart greater literary depth to the genres with which they work, but masterfully dramatize their themes in ways that make their stories even more entertaining.

The title of Scott’s tirade is When It Was Bad It Was Better, subtitled, “Why Did Good, Clean Trash Have to Get Sleek and Pretentious?”

He seems to want certain genres, including those he associates with comic books, to remain mindless guilty pleasures. I couldn’t disagree more: to my mind, works like 1602 or DK2, to which I have devoted so many recent installments of this column, are exemplars of what genre comics should be: simultaneously filled with both dramatic vitality and keen intelligence, confidently asserting their right to be taken as seriously as any other forms of storytelling.

And so let’s turn to the final issue of 1602, #8, which is longer than its predecessors and hence will be the subject of two installments of this column. Those of you who are unacquainted with this series should look up my reviews of past issues in the Comics in Context archive. To set the scene for issue #8, I will say simply that we have learned that Captain America has been transported back in time by a means that has had a catastrophic effect on time and space. All of reality is in danger of obliteration. In an apparent attempt to save itself, the forces controlling the universe have caused counterparts to many familiar Marvel heroes and villains (all associated with Stan Lee’s 1960s comics) to come into existence during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Now Elizabeth has been succeeded by James I, and most of these heroes and villains have left England for the New World.

Let’s start with issue 8’s striking cover by Scott McKowen, showing a map of American colonies in the early 17th century, upon which stand the figures of Rojhaz (Captain America, transported back in time, and garbed as an American Indian), the 15-year-old Virginia Dare (the first girl to be born in one of England’s American colonies), and Sir Nicholas Fury, the spymaster who is the counterpart to the present day Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.. These three, then, are to be the central figures of this last issue.

Virginia Dare has mystified readers with her ability to transform into various animals. I had thought she only turned into animals native to America, but in this issue she becomes a dog; surely if she were restricted to wild American animal forms, she would have become a wolf instead. Readers hoping for an explicit explanation of her powers in 1602 will be disappointed. So perhaps we must look for a thematic explanation instead. Virginia has a super-power, so perhaps Gaiman thereby means to link her to the super heroes who join her American colony in the course of this issue. Perhaps, like the X-Men, she too is a mutant.

Another possibility is that Virginia’s ability to take the forms of animals is meant to link her to the natural world. Hence, Virginia, the first American-born colonist, who shares the same name as the colony (and now state) of Virginia, represents the as yet unspoiled (virginal) natural world of America.

On the cover Virginia and Rojahz both stand in the light. Virginia opens her arms in a welcoming gesture. Rojhaz keeps his arms folded, in a gesture that evokes traditional images of Native Americans. But it also may suggest a lack of openness to other people and other points of view, an unwillingness to change his ways, as we shall see as the story progresses.

Fury, who turns warily towards us, stands in shadow. He is thus significantly excluded from Virginia and Rojahz’s brightly lit newborn America. Perhaps he is also a shadow figure in the Jungian sense. Does this make him the villain of the piece? Or does he instead represent “dark” qualities that the heroic forces must incorporate in order to succeed?

Let us briefly acknowledge the inside front covers to 1602, which evoke the look and typeface of actual literary works printed in 1602.

In the first panel on the first page we see a ship, the “Virginia Maid,” bearing Rojahz, Clea and Virginia Dare herself, sailing to the Roanoke colony in America.

I suppose it is possible that Gaiman has based Virginia Dare on a historical or legendary figure of whom I am unaware. I do know about her colony, Roanoke, the namesake of a present day city in Virginia which I have visited. The original Roanoke colony was a real settlement which came to an abrupt and mysterious end. Hence it is an apt site for the unusual events that Gaiman sets there.

The ship’s name, “Virginia Maid,” reinforces the image of Virginia Dare as a fifteen-year-old virgin (or “maid,” short for “maiden”), and perhaps therefore her symbolizing the “virgin” territory of America as well. It may also be a pun: as the first-born of the Roanoke colony, Virginia Dare was “made” in the future state of Virginia.

The various ships transporting the major characters from Europe to the New World make Joseph Campbell’s celebrated phrase “the hero’s journey” literally true. Campbell contended that the hero always leaves the normal world for the enchanted realm of adventure and then returns home to the normal world. I think he is wrong that this is always the case: Luke Skywalker does not go back to farming on Tatooine after he blows up the Death Star. In various cases the hero ends up in a new, more suitable home at the end of his adventure, a home more in keeping with his newly realized potential as an individual. In 1602, as we shall see, Virginia returns home, which is a good thing. So does Captain America at the end, thereby saving the universe, although Cap himself will not be happy in the world he returns to.

But many other heroes of 1602 have left their homes in Europe and do not return. One could even argue that those previous “homes” no longer exist. In Fury’s case, this is literally true: branded as an outlaw by King James, Fury presumes that his home has been given over to one of James’s favorites. James’ new regime has displaced the late Queen Elizabeth I’s in England, and so in effect the England that many of these heroes called home is gone.

And so these heroes, in the course of this last issue, instead find a new home in America, joining the Roanoke colony. This evokes the immigration of Europeans (and, of course, later people from other continents) to America. Keep in mind that immigration is a theme that in superhero comics goes back to the origin of Superman himself. He is an “immigrant” from Krypton who became assimilated into American culture. For that matter, many of superhero comics’ founding fathers were from families who had emigrated from Europe in recent generations. (And immigrants play a role in today’s comics, as well, even in unexpected cases: Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and Neil Gaiman himself were all born in England and at different points in their lives moved to the United States.)

Thus 1602 evokes the traditional concept of America as a place of refuge for the displaced, a place to which people can escape from religious or political oppression (and 1602‘s heroes suffer from both), a place where one can start his life anew, and hence a place of rebirth. America is portrayed as a land of freedom, in contrast to the more oppressive old regimes of Europe, represented in 1602 by the despotic James I, the Spanish Inquisition, and even by Doctor Doom. Doom’s armor, medieval castle, and role as absolute monarch clearly make him seem anachronistic in the 21st century, but he is also a throwback in the Renaissance Europe of 1602. However advanced his science, Doom in both periods represents the heavy, tyrannical hand of an old, outdated political order attempting to dominate the new. (Come to think of it, Doom is not unlike contemporary Islamic terrorists who employ modern technology but subscribe to a medieval ideology.)

Gaiman is drawing on the Marvel concept of the superhero as outsider and even (in the cases of Spider-Man and the X-Men) outlaw. It is appropriate that I’ve recently been reviewing The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Miller also portrays the superhero as an outlaw, and both he and Gaiman also depict the superhero as a symbol of individual freedom and the heroic potential within each human being. (One of the rewards of writing this column is not only discovering thematic patterns within individual works in comics, but finding similarities and connections between different works.)

In the Marvel canon, a superhero may be an outcast from society, but Marvel also pioneered the concept that these outcasts could band together to form a new community. This is clearly evident in The X-Men.

In 1602 Gaiman melds together the Marvel concept of the community of outcasts with the traditional concept of America as a community of outsiders from the Old World. In 1602 the first American colony includes a community of superheroes. In fact, the Roanoke colony in 1602 becomes the embodiment of Charles Xavier’s “dream”: “normal” humans co-existing in peace and harmony with superhumans.

I was pleased to see that Gaiman’s recap of Captain America’s origin hews to tradition. Marvel claims that its recent Captain America series, Truth is part of official continuity, despite its violations of so many past stories. As I understand it, Truth indicates that Steve Rogers did not become Captain America until after America entered World War II and even suggests that “Steve Rogers” is not his real name. Gaiman sticks to tradition: Rojahz recalls being transformed by the “super-soldier” serum before the war started (“There’s a war coming, we called it World War II”), and Professor Reinstein once again looks like Albert Einstein, rather than the Truth version of the character. Good.

Continuing to recount his history, Rojahz says, “Then, end of the war, I lost a couple of decades.” This is probably Gaiman being intentionally vague. In real time, Cap was revived in the comics in 1964, and hence was in suspended animation for just short of two decades. Thanks to the way “Marvel-Time” works, whereby characters age very slowly, and it’s always only been seven to ten years since the events of Fantastic Four #1, Cap would now have been in suspended animation for a half century. Through Rojahz’s phrasing, Gaiman allows the reader to pick whichever interpretation he or she prefers.

As for Rojahz’s remark, “they thawed me out,” well, that’s a slight distortion of the facts in order to describe the events simply and quickly. The ice in which Cap had been entombed was actually melted by warm ocean currents by the time the Avengers found and rescued him.

I applaud the nice shot of Captain America in costume on page 1, which artist Andy Kubert has made into an evocation of and tribute to Cap’s original artist in both the 1940s and the 1960s, Jack Kirby.

Now comes a surprise. I had assumed that Captain America had been sent to 1602 from the present day. But instead it seems that he has come from one of Marvel-Earth’s possible futures (each of which exists as an alternate reality).

“The dark times came slowly,” Rojahz reports. The superheroes grew old, and were hunted down and killed. We are shown a picture of the captive Spider-Man and Daredevil, each in what seems late middle age, and they don’t seem to be in good physical condition, either. Not only are they manacled, but they have been unmasked, and hence figuratively reduced from superheroes to impotent human status.

So this is only a few decades into the future. In fact, we are shown posters featuring the visage of the “President for Life,” who looks like a caricature of a white-haired George W. Bush!

Now, this is a new example of a recurring motif in superhero comics following the Silver Age of the 1960s: the American government devolving into a repressive regime, under which superheroes (symbols of individual liberty and of justice) are outlawed, imprisoned, or killed. In the Marvel canon the key work of this sort is John Byrne and Chris Claremont’s landmark “Days of Future Past” in Uncanny X-Men #141-142. This is also the premise of Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight series. (Again, I’m pleased at the happy synchronicity that finds me reviewing 1602 #8 right after DK2)

At least Byrne and Claremont came up with a reasonable scenario for why and how the U.S. government turned into a police state: there was a clampdown on mutants after mutant terrorists assassinated a United States senator, the feds unleashed the mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, and, as usual, the Sentinels took over from their supposed masters.

Gaiman, though, like Miller, offers no convincing explanation as to how the government went wrong. It’s as if the stories assume that the readers would automatically accept the idea that the U.S. government is on the brink of turning into a tyranny. (I am reminded of Moveon.org’s recent “Bush in 30” contest for political ads against the George W. Bush administration, and a few notorious submissions comparing Bush to Hitler.) Sorry, I don’t buy it. I understand that there isn’t enough space in this last issue for an extended backstory about this alternate future, and I suspect that this may be a tale that Gaiman intends to tell at length in a future project. Still, I find this vision of America as a police state hard to swallow.

Still, Gaiman is working here within a strong tradition in the Captain America mythos. In each decade following the Silver Age of the 1960s there has been a major story arc in which Captain America, who represents pure, traditional American ideals, finds himself at odds with the United States government, which has departed from them in some way.

As a result, Cap finds himself operating outside the authority of the government. Steve Englehart did a story of this sort in the 1970s, reflecting the disillusionment over Watergate; Mark Gruenwald wrote his version in the 1980s, and Mark Waid did another variation in the 1990s. This is an archetypal story line for Cap, and it can involve his taking on a new identity: Nomad in the 1970s and “the Captain” in the ’80s. Now, in 1602, he is Rojhaz.

In each variation of this story line, Captain America is a truer representation of America as a platonic ideal than the American government is. So it is that in 1602, Rojahz says of the America of this possible future, “That America wasn’t my America any more.”

Gaiman takes this further than the previous writers did. Though in Steve Englehart’s Secret Empire arc (serving as a metaphor for Watergate), the government nearly fell to a coup d’etat from within, the U. S. government never actually turns into an oppressive state in any of these previous stories. But, as we have seen, Gaiman’s alternate future America does turn authoritarian, and Captain America becomes part of an “underground” revolutionary movement “to restore the country that I had sworn to protect.” Again, here is a parallel to Miller’s DK2, in which Batman is a revolutionary leading a rebellion.

The “For Life” and “Because Life Matters” slogans on the President’s posters cleverly evoke the pro-Life movement, so presumably Gaiman sees this future American regime as dominated by the Right, perhaps specifically the religious Right. That would serve as a parallel to the power of the Church and the Inquisition in 1602. (It should be pointed out, though, that the American Right includes libertarians, strict supporters of the Constitution, and many who believe the federal government is already too big and powerful; none of these would tolerate the “Big Brother”-type of police state that Gaiman envisions.)

The President’s posters evoke George Orwell’s 1984 not only through their promotion of a personality cult around the leader, but also through the way they twist the uses of language. We can observe in real life what Orwell spotted: how governments use benevolent, idealistic phrases to justify their actions. And so this poster asks people to support the “President-for-Life” “because he cares,” attempting to present an authoritarian figure as a kindly, paternal one.

When Rojhaz says that the America of this alternate future is no longer “his” America, I wonder if we should consider the possible “meta” aspect of Neo-Silver comics, which I view as attempting to recapture and reinterpret the positive spirit of 1960s superhero comics for the present day. As noted, 1602 only deals with the Marvel characters that Stan Lee wrote in the 1960s; Captain America was created in the 1940s but Lee and Kirby revived him in the “Silver Age.” It is possible to interpret Cap’s statements about the “dark times” in America as a comment on the state of comics following the Silver Age. Perhaps Cap is saying through parable that amid the pervasive grimness and grittiness. the irony and the destructive revisionism, the Silver Age spirit has vanished. Cap and his “underground” represent the creators trying to turn the tide.

Continuing to recount his past, Rojahz says, “I was betrayed.”

By whom? This may be a further indication that Gaiman has worked out a great deal of backstory that is later to be told in greater detail.

Cap’s captors did not kill him, because even if they incinerated his body, his ashes could serve as a “memorial, to inspire others.” So instead they sent him back in time to the wilderness of the late 16th century.

Now, one must accept many impossibilities in the superhero genre, including time travel, but human behavior must still be believable. Why would these tyrants go to all this trouble and, presumably, expense to get rid of Cap? If they had killed him and burned the body, they could have just scattered the ashes over the ocean? (And if they’re so worried about relics that could serve as a memorial, why didn’t they send Cap’s indestructible shield back in time, too?)

Rojahz says that just before he was sent through time, he was shot in the head. How could he survive that? Perhaps he wasn’t actually shot with a bullet. In any event, this shooting is Cap’s symbolic “death” preceding his “rebirth,” naked, his memory mostly gone, in the sunny 16th century American wilderness. It’s as if he is cross between a newborn infant in adult form and Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Now, if the bad guys had a time machine and sent Cap through time, disrupting the timestream, couldn’t they do it again? Wouldn’t they have experimented with sending objects through time before sending Cap? Wouldn’t they try to get rid of other enemies of the state the same way, thereby continuing to endanger reality?

Or is Gaiman suggesting that it is displacing this particular person, Captain America, through time by this specific method that caused the danger to the fabric of reality? Captain America has traveled through time in various past stories, so it must be this specific method of time travel, described as unique in a previous issue, that endangered the cosmos. Moreover, Gaiman has established that Cap is the “forerunner” of the Silver Age Marvel heroes, and when he was sent back to Elizabethan times, his presence there triggered the creation of other Marvel heroes and villains. A different time traveler would not have done so; perhaps his displacement through time would not have convulsed the cosmos this way, either.

In his new time period Captain America was taken in by Indians and became known as “Rojhaz,” a variant on his last name, Rogers. Obviously most of his memories returned over succeeding years.

On finding Virginia, the first settler of English descent born in America, Rojhaz says, “I knew what she was. What she represented. What she meant, My America….”

Virginia is thus an example of the tradition of envisioning a country as a woman. Perhaps she also falls into the artistic tradition of picturing liberty as a woman (as in the Statue of Liberty, or Delacroix’s Louvre painting Liberty Leading the People, which is one of my screen savers) as a woman.

By protecting Virginia from the time she was a baby, Rojhaz/Captain America becomes a father figure to her. This fits his image as the protector of America. Indeed, as Virginia’s protector, Rojhaz becomes a “father” to America, the “father” of his country.

Note that the state of Rojahz’s mid-21st century America parallels that of the other 1602 characters’ England: in each case a good political system and society to which characters felt loyal has turned bad, dark and repressive under a change in leadership, and the heroes have been made into outcasts. In watching over Virginia and the Roanoke colony, Rojahz is trying to recreate “his” America in 1602. Similarly, as we shall see, other 1602 heroes arriving from Europe will try to recreate a better England through the community they join in Roanoke. The end result is the same: Captain America and the other Marvel heroes are the co-creators of America as mythic land of liberty. Gaiman thus links not just Captain America but all the Marvel heroes to the spirit of America.

1602 deals with both politics and religion: America is likewise traditionally a land of religious freedom. In the next scene Gaiman cleverly explains why the Church kept secret the existence of the wooden staff that can transform a worthy wielder into the Norse god Thor. The aged monk Donal explains that the Church feared what would happen if it became public knowledge that there were gods other than the God of Christianity.
 Sir Richard Reed (counterpart to the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards) looks grimly at Donal in this scene. The Church establishment of this time maintains its power and authority by concealing knowledge (the existence of the Asgardians). As we shall see, Reed has a very different view of God and his attitude towards human knowledge.

In the original concept in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Thor series, Don Blake was a normal human who found the staff and was transformed into Thor. Lee and Kirby eventually reversed this concept, establishing instead that Odin transformed Thor into the human Don Blake, and that therefore Blake had no existence independent of Thor. (Still later, Roy Thomas established that there had been a “real” Don Blake who had been displaced by Blake/Thor.).

In 1602 Gaiman returns to the original Thor concept, examining how a human might react to merging with a god. Indeed, here he is examining the general idea of the superhero with a human alter ego. Why would Superman pose as the all-too-human Clark Kent?

Donal confesses to Reed that he “gloried” in cohabiting the body and mind of Thor. But Donal feels guilty over this, and even considers himself to be damned. The Church is not only forbidding certain kinds of knowledge, it is also condemning forms of pleasure, which Donal describes in physical terms. Moreover, the Church is restricting the human spirit’s capacity for growth. Recall that superheroes, in 1602 as in DK2, represent the heroic potential within the individual human being. Donal can become Thor; he can exceed his metaphorical “mortal” limits. But the Church forbids him to do so. The fact that Donal is a frail, elderly man, and Thor is youthful and superhumanly strong, strengthens the metaphor. The Church will not allow Donal to be “reborn” and regain spiritual and physical vitality. Donal thinks that turning into Thor has damned him, but perhaps it is the Church that has truly “damned” him by condemning him to decline and death. The Church insists that Donal stay within prescribed limits and never move beyond them.

Having arrived in Roanoke, Fury meets with the head of the colony, Virginia’s real father, Ananias Dare. “Ananias” is an interesting name. According to the dictionary, it is a synonym for “liar”; in the New testament Ananias was a man who suffered death for lying about the Church. In 1602, however, Ananias Dare is a positive figure, who welcomes the Marvel heroes into his community. Perhaps his name serves an ironic purpose, marking him as a good man who is nonetheless an outcast from established society, in other words, James’s England, just as the superheroes are.

Fury tells Ananias that those who look monstrous on outside are on the inside “no more monstrous than the rest of us,” and “perhaps the reverse is also true.” This states a classic Marvel theme, and may be relevant to Ananias as well: don’t judge him by his unfortunate name. This may also serve as a warning about Fury’s true nature, as we shall see.

Not wishing James to retaliate against the Roanoke colonists for their kindness to Fury and his allies, Fury suggests they claim that he and the superhumans seized control of the colony. This is a lie, an evil that will be done in a good cause, like others that are to follow in this issue.

Fury cunningly goes further, and declares “the village of Roanoke and this continent independent of the British Crown,” and declares himself Governor. So here is America declaring its independence nearly two centuries early. But this is hardly a great moment for American idealism. This is a Machiavellian maneuver by Fury (appropriate for the Renaissance), who in one stroke both spares the people of Roanoke from James’s wrath and seizes power for himself, supplanting Ananias’s authority. Ananias protests, but Fury argues him into acceding to his demands.

In an amusing scene, Ananias proclaims the cover story to the citizenry: “our poor colony has been captured by monsters and rebels.” So he has indeed become a liar, like the Biblical Ananias, though he makes his good intentions clear in bidding his people to “treat them with respect, and with goodwill…”

Carlos Javier (1602‘s counterpart to Charles Xavier) tells Fury about the three approaching ships bringing much of the rest of the cast to the New World. Well, things often do come in threes, though I wonder if the three ships are to evoke the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.

One of the ships carries Enrico, the Grand Inquisitor (1602‘s version of the X-Men’s archnemesis Magneto), so Fury suggests destroying the ship before it can reach land. This is a reasonable suggestion, but Javier overrules him: “If we murder them, we would be no better than they are.” And that is another indication of the moral difference between Fury and many of the other 1602 heroes that readers should keep in mind.

Javier communicates telepathically with Enrico, who informs him that it is merely a coincidence that they have both ended up in this area of the New World. “And you expect me to believe that?” asks Javier. Well, if Javier is telepathically communicating within Enrico’s mind, he should know whether or not he’s lying!

Enrico asks Javier if the normal people, whom he calls “mondani” (the mundane? the muggles?) still hate him and the other “witchbreed” (mutants). Javier comes up with an amusing image of Enrico as a lute player who only knows one tune and plays it over and over. This is funny, but moral absolutism is a serious themes in 1602. Enrico’s enemies, the Inquisition, will destroy anyone who disagrees with them. Will Enrico/Magneto prove more willing to compromise with his adversaries?

Gaiman has reassembled the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in 1602 except for Mastermind. Perhaps this is due to lack of space. Certainly Mastermind’s ability to create illusions would have helped the Brotherhood more easily escape the Inquisition.

There follows another of this series’ splendid, magical visual images: Enrico’s ship entrapped within an iceberg created by the X-Men’s Iceman (who was shown earlier exhaling towards it, as if he were the god of the frigid North Wind). Unlike virtually all other writers who have dealt with Iceman, Gaiman, in an earlier issue, pointed out that Iceman’s ability to create ice is limited by the amount of moisture around him; the sea here provides enough to perform this colossal feat.

Gaiman’s final issue of Sandman was named after Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and I wonder if there are analogues between this final issue of 1602 and The Tempest. In Shakespeare’s play Prospero, who commands magic powers, has settled on an island that may be in the New World; when his enemies sail close by, he summons a tempest that wrecks their ship, putting them in his power. Here Javier’s enemies are sailing to the New World, and Javier succeeds in capturing them.

Here is reassurance that I’m on the right track when I try to interpret even the names of characters in this series: Reed refers to a “Borssian phenomenon.” Reed later explains that he has named different areas of knowledge after the Knights of the Round Table. In this specific case it enables Gaiman to link the name of Sir Bors to Niels Bohr, the 20th century atomic physicist. I also like Reed’s implication that the search for greater knowledge is like a knight’s “quest,” and the subliminal association of Reed and the other superheroes with their Campbellian forebears, the Arthurian knights.

Next comes another round in Gaiman’s variation on the Cyclops-Marvel Girl-Angel triangle in 1960s X-Men stories. Jean had been masquerading as a boy, and 1602‘s version of Cyclops says that the Angel “allowed her disguise to fool him,” suggesting it was a conscious decision: he wanted to believe her to be a boy. The Angel disagrees, saying, “I was truly deceived. . . .But I do believe I was in love with that young man.”

I am still confused by this. Was Angel attracted to Jean because he subconsciously realized she was a girl? Or is he gay? If Gaiman means to indicate that the present-day Angel is gay, several female characters, including the late Candy Sothern, would sharply disagree. Maybe the point is that, believing Jean was a boy, the 1602 Angel accepted the idea that he had homosexual feelings for “him.” Having portrayed Catholics, Jews, political dissidents, and, yes, mutants, as outsiders in the society of 1602, perhaps Gaiman wanted to include gays as well.

The warmth of the reunion of Virginia and her father is a reminder that the relationships between fathers and their children, real and figurative, is another theme of this series, as it was in DK2.

Arriving in Roanoke, Clea says she will “try to help unknot the mess you men have made of things,” suggesting that women have a kind of wisdom that men lack. She has transported Dr. Strange’s severed head, through which his spirit can communicate, in a barrel of brandy. This leads to a bit of macabre humor, in which we learn that a sailor drank some of the brandy and went mad. Perhaps it’s not just funny: metaphorically the sailor could not cope with his “taste” of Strange’s awareness of the dark side of reality. I suppose that even if this is brandy, Strange’s wisdom falls under the motto “in vino veritas.”

Speaking of “in vino veritas,” now Donal is rambling drunkenly about the power of Thor, as the unseen Invisible Girl listens, as if she were a ghost, or his conscience, or his anima. He regards himself as damned: he is now another outcast. There is pathos in Donal’s complaints over the pain he feels due to his old age, and his envy of the immortal Thor’s freedom from such pain.

A boy accuses Virginia: “Think you’re queen of the world.” Later, talking about a timeline in which Virginia dies, Uatu says she is “never now to become queen of anything.”

Keep in mind that Virginia is named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, as the latter pointed out in issue 2. Though Reed says there will be no actual Queens in America, Virginia is symbolically the successor to Elizabeth. The glories of her realm, now that James has taken over, will pass to the future of America.

The “virginity” imagery may be another link to The Tempest, whose ingenue heroine, Miranda, may be Virginia’s counterpart. And Shakespeare, through Prospero, emphasizes the importance of Miranda’s virginity.

Strange’s head tells Reed, “I have died, that others may have their chance at life.” Is this Christ imagery?

Fury, looking on, says quietly (to judge from the small size of the lettering), “Get on with it.” This is a subtle indication of how taken aback he is by this encounter. When Strange was alive, the 1602 Fury refused to believe in his magic. It is not emphasized, but obviously this, as well as other things that Fury has witnessed (like Thor), must be convincing him that the supernatural is indeed real. That, in turn, would persuade him that Strange’s story about the impending end of the universe is likewise true.

Reed outlines the danger to the universe in scientific terms. Observe that when Reed states that it will be “Extremely difficult” to return whatever came from the future back to its time, Gaiman and Kubert show us not Reed but Fury, standing deeply, ominously in shadow, his expression unreadable.

Impressed by his analysis, Strange comments, “Reed, you are the magician, not I. . .” Gaiman is pointing to the fact that Reed/Mr. Fantastic, though he deals in science, fits the archetype of the wise and powerful wizard. (Gaiman is also very good at capturing Stan’s dialogue style for Reed and the personality it creates.)

Reed discovers the “rip” in time-space takes the form of what we would call the infinity sign. This is an appropriate symbol for the entire universe, indeed, for all of reality. (There is actually a Marvel “abstract being” named Infinity, who is a personification of the universe – and is the female aspect of the better known Lee-Ditko creation, Eternity.)

Explaining how he names the different “disciplines” of science (the study of animals, the study of electricity, and so on), Reed contends that the separation of knowledge into distinct categories is an artificial device: “there is but one table, which is God’s creation.” As Javier realizes, “each discipline, like each knight, is a way of reaching” the symbolic “Grail,” which Reed defines as “perfect knowledge.” Reed emphasizes that “all disciplines are equal.” (So perhaps even writing comics – or writing comics criticism – is a means towards attaining perfect knowledge.)

It seems surprising to see Reed, the master scientist, speaking fervently of his religious faith. It could be argued that agnosticism and atheism were rare back in 1602. Still, it seems significant that the 1602 Reed, who can foresee the theory of relativity, is a religious believer. Even the 1602 Fury voices faith in God, and appears to be sincere about it.

1602 has pointed to the misuse and distortion of religion, notably through the Inquisition. But it also offers a positive vision of what religion can and should be, and, surprisingly, it is Reed the scientist who voices that vision.

Earlier in this issue we saw through Donal’s scenes that the established Church of this time, maintains power by restricting knowledge. We know that the Inquisition destroys those who disagree with it; King James follows the same policy with dissidents like Strange.

But here Reed is asked, “And do you not fear that there are things God did not intend man to know?” and he replies, “Frankly, no.”

The Beast thereupon jokes that if Reed had been in the Garden of Eden and had been forbidden to eat fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (the cause of man’s fall), “by the time the Lord returned I swear you would be advising him on the finest preserv’d fruit recipes.”

Does the Beast mean that Reed would have defied the Lord’s commandment and eaten the fruit? Or, more likely, that Reed does not need to eat the fruit, and would have gained knowledge through his own efforts?

Whichever was the case, the real point is that knowledge is not a vice but a virtue; it should not be the cause of mankind’s fall, but of humanity’s rise to fulfill its potential. Knowledge is the Holy Grail. Religion should not keep people in submission, but encourage them to strive forward, to empower themselves. (And perhaps the wise critic encourages creators to push past the alleged limits of a genre, rather than contenting themselves with producing pleasurable “trash.”)

“As I once told Fury,” Reed states, “God gave us eyes to see, and hands to grasp, and minds to understand his creation. And perhaps – with God’s grace – to save it.” And Gaiman and Kubert show the infinity symbol floating in front of Reed’s forehead, illuminating it with its glow, perhaps signifying the infinite potential of the human mind. (Even if one does not literally believe in God, this passage works as a celebration of the human spirit.)

And who was it that Reed told that perhaps we can save the world with God’s grace? It was Sir Nicholas Fury, the realist, the Machiavel, the man who condones murder and torture. And it is he who becomes the central character in the second half of this final issue, as I will show next time.

-Copyright 2004 Peter Sanderson

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