Comic Book / Marvel 1602

"We live in a time of miracles and wonders and I cannot say that it pleases me."

— Queen Elizabeth

It is the year 1602, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First and all is not well in Merry Olde England. Strange storms have rocked the continent, the sky has been cast in haunting tones, rumour on the street speaks of the end-times and only one man might discover the truth behind these unusual occurrences. He is Doctor Stephen Strange, The Queen's Physician.

Marvel 1602 was an Elseworld miniseries written by Neil Gaiman, transporting the Marvel Universe into the Elizabethan Era. It took heroes such as Nick Fury, The X-Men, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and Spider-Man and found a way to make them work in the period and tell an original tale centering upon them.

The original mini-series has had several follow-ups by other writers, focusing on particular (sets of) characters. 1602: A New World by Greg Pak, which introduces Lord Iron, Fantastick Four 1602 by Peter David, and Spider-Man 1602 by Jeff Parker. There was also a Hulk 1602 story in Hulk: Broken Worlds, a two-issue anthology book about alternate Hulks.

2015's Secret Wars (2015) event saw further additions to the 1602 universe, with Lady Kate of Bishop acting as a Robin Hood-type in a Secret Wars Journal story, while Angela received her own Witch Hunter Angela series, which also featured 1602 versions of Bucky Barnes and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

The second season of What If…? (2021) featured a Pragmatic Adaptation of this comic, keeping the basic premise but changing many details while several characters were Adapted Out.

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This work provides examples of:

• Accent Adaptation: Thor's usual Flowery Elizabethan English obviously wouldn't stand out in this setting, so instead he speaks in alliterative verse evocative of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
• Adaptation Name Change: Most name changes are slight and mainly consist of changing them to names more likely to exist in the early 17th century, but this continuity's versions of Dr. Doom and Dr. Octopus curiously swap their first names, becoming Otto Von Doom and Victor Octavius. This was most likely done because "Otto" is a very Germanic name, and in a period when it was popular for scholars to latinise their names, it would be more fitting to have one completely German name and one completely Latin one.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: In this continuity, Peter Parquagh gains his spider powers from being bitten by a spider exposed to the same mystical energies that caused David Banner to become the Hulk.
• Alliterative Name: Defied with the 1602 counterparts of Doctor Doom and Doctor Octopus, who have their original first names swapped.
• Alien Space Bats: The universe was normal until superheroes started appearing in it four hundred years too early. Yes, the dinosaurs are "normal". Dinos and prehistoric beasts really DID roam the lands a little before the colonists arrived in official Earth-616 canon. ^note  In fact, the Savage Land still has dinosaurs.
• Alternate History:
  • Due to the superheroes showing up early, King James becomes King of England one year early, Roanoke becomes an independent colony, with some new form of government other than monarchy (a republic, perhaps?) and it's implied that Ireland remains independent from Britain.
  • America has been replaced by the Savage Land in this continuity, so it's now crawling with dinosaurs. According to the page at the end of the comic, it's because Neil Gaiman likes dinosaurs.
• Ambiguously Gay: James keeps calling Brother Petros "pretty", as well as saying the Inquisitor must've been pretty as a young man. This is Foreshadowing the fact that the latter is the father of the former. It also has some basis in reality, being a popular theory on James of Scotland held by many historians.
  • Also, Angel for the Sweet Polly Oliver Jean Grey.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Enrique was born to a Jewish family, but was one of the forcibly converted children baptized during a burning.

• Apocalyptic Log: Doctor Strange, once he's sentenced to death.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: James of Scotland.
• The Bard: Matthew Murdork poses as a wandering minstrel to cover up his spy work. He clearly enjoys the job though, seeing as he breaks out into song whenever he gets a chance.
• Before My Time: Peter Parquagh tells Sir Nicholas Fury that he's unaware of previous events in that timeline, because, as he justifies it in his own words, "I wasn't born yet". Fury responds by telling him the importance of knowing about history.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Count Doom, the Inquisitor and King James are all major, separate antagonists, though they eventually take a backseat to the threat of armageddon.
• Cassandra Truth: it's the Elizabethan era, and even in a hurry, it takes days or even weeks for messengers to arrive to their destinations. So how can brother Petros bring news within the day? "I ran here very fast".
• Character Exaggeration: An inevitable side-effect of trying to re-imagine around twenty well-known Marvel characters in a fresh historical setting. In general, the reinterpretations tend to emphasize just one aspect of the characters' well-known canon personalities.
  • Matthew Murdoch's characterization emphasizes his fearlessness to the point that he comes off as an adventure-seeking adrenaline junkie, rather than as a working-class devout Catholic with a militant hatred of injustice.
  • Peter Parquagh's characterization emphasizes his role as the kindhearted, idealistic young rookie, while largely discarding the Deadpan Snarker and Sad Clown aspects of Peter Parker's personality. Justified (at least in the original miniseries), in that, at that time, Parquagh had not become Spider-Man, nor had he lost his uncle.
  • High Inquisitor Enrique's characterization is largely dominated by the He Who Fights Monsters aspect of Erik Lehnsherr's personality, making him come off more as a straight-up Knight Templar than as the tormented Well-Intentioned Extremist known to X-Men fans.
  • Count Otto Von Doom is defined almost entirely by his narcissism and lust for power, while his characterization largely de-emphasizes the intellectual egotism and lust for knowledge that has so long defined the character. Notably, this version of Doom doesn't seem to have known Richard Reed prior to the latter's transformation, largely removing the personal element in their long-standing feud. The story does feature a scene in which the handsome Doom is horrifically scarred through an ill-advised experiment that Reed urges him not to perform, bringing it more into line with the standard depiction of their relationship. Doom is also depicted in this universe as an alchemist, reflecting both the 616 Doom's use of magic as well as science and his scientific rivalry / inferiority to Reed.
• Composite Character: In this continuity, David Banner becomes the Hulk after being exposed to the energies of the Anomaly while shielding Peter Parquagh from those same energies. After the accident, Peter also becomes something of a Morality Pet to Banner. In effect, this means that this continuity's version of Spider-Man also serves as this continuity's equivalent of Rick Jones.
• Cut Short: Gaiman had larger plans for the title than the miniseries format allowed him to realize; thus the final issue is rather abrupt and open-ended.
• Deconstructed Trope: This story includes a notable deconstruction of All Myths Are True (which the Marvel Universe has always used rather liberally) in its portrayal of Thor. In this universe, the Church apparently goes to great lengths to hide any evidence of the Asgardians' existence, realizing that it would invalidate the First Commandment ("You shall have no gods before me") and discredit the Church's authority. For this reason, Thor's hammer is considered so dangerous that it ends up becoming this universe's Templar treasure.
• Doing in the Scientist: In this universe, practically all of the superheroes' scientific origins are replaced by magical ones, which apparently spring from some kind of vaguely-defined mystical energy emanating from tears in the space-time continuum. The Fantastic Four, for example, get their powers after wandering into a magical storm that turns them into physical avatars of the four elements; David Banner becomes the Hulk after being hit by a blast of energy from the dimensional rip; Peter Parquagh gets his spider-based abilities after being bit by a spider that's affected by the same blast of energy.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Gaiman has said the story was made in response to 9/11. With that in mind, the dimensional rip looks a lot like the 9/11 ribbon.
• Dramatically Missing the Point:
  • Werner bickers a lot with Scotius, as he kept mocking the Open Secret by insisting on talking about "John Grey". Scotius changed his tone when he realized that Werner wasn't mocking anything, he really did fall for the charade and sincerely thought that he was talking about a boy.
  • Scotius himself also falls for this in relation to the Grey/Werner thing. He was jealous because he thought that Werner was also in love with her, but it was more complicated than that; Werner was never suspected that he was talking with a girl posing as a boy, and fell in love with Grey in the male "John Grey" persona.
• Earth All Along: A variant. For half of the story, it was believed that this was a simple Elseworld tale transplanting the Marvel Universe into Elizabethan times. However, it's revealed to be the mainstream Earth-616 itself, its heroes and villains appearing four hundred years too early due to Steve Rogers' presence tricking the universe into bringing them into existence.
• Elemental Powers: The four crew members of the Fantastick are even more obviously this than their mainstream Marvel counterparts.

• Exty Years from Publication: Set 400 years before it was published.
• Fantastic Racism: The X-Men are here, but the usual racism against mutants is slightly modified. The very concept of mutations is unheard of, as this is all set two centuries before Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species. Common people consider the "witchbreed" to have unnatural powers, and will gladly start a Witch Hunt to burn them all at the stake (not much unlike the human supremacists the usual X-Men deal with). The X-Men themselves, ignoring their true nature, agree that that powers are not natural, but desire to be allowed to live nonetheless. They say that they are the way they are because God made them that way, and He works In Mysterious Ways.
• Fantasy Americana: Neil Gaiman invokes various American legends, such as the mysterious Sargasso Sea and The Lost Colony of Roanoke, to flesh out the world of Marvel 1602.
• Fictionalized Death Account: Queen Elizabeth I is poisoned by Doctor Doom instead of dying from natural causes.
• Foreign-Looking Font:
  • Whenever Doom speaks the font is notably more fancy-looking than it is for most other characters.
  • Thor's speech is rendered in a faux-runic font.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Purple Man is responsible for the dimensional rip that endangers the multiverse, but caused it by accident and never affects the story directly.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The Templar treasure. That heavy wooden crate in the cart, which Murdoch goes to such great lengths to protect, is just a decoy. The treasure is actually the Old Pilgrim's walking stick...which is a disguised Mjolnir.
• Hired by the Oppressor: The Grand Inquistor Enrique persecutes Witchbreed (mutants) across Europe, burning them at the stake as abominations... and also employs two, Sister Wanda and Petros, as his personal enforcers. It turns out he is actually only eliminating Witchbreed who can't pass as human, and has a vested interest in forcing the survivors to hide themselves from mankind... he's one of them himself. Specifically, the 1602 version of Magneto.
• Historical AU: Marvel 1602 transplants the contemporary-era characters into Elizabethan England.
• Historical Character's Fictional Relative: Robert Drake is said to be related to the famous explorer Sir Francis Drake.
• Historical Domain Character: Queen Elizabeth, King James, Virginia Dare.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Virginia Dare, who is now a kid superhero in Elizabethan times.
• Historical In-Joke: Loads. For example:
  • The old Templar refers to his transformation into/union with Thor as "two knights on one horse". This was a symbol of the Templar Order's ideal of poverty (though in practice they became very wealthy), and appears on their seals.
  • Reed classifies various fields of science using the names of Knights of the Round Table to show they're all equally important. The study of living things is "Lamorackian" (referring to Sir Lamorak, but also Jean-Baptiste Lamarck), the study of particles too small to be seen is "Borssian" (referring to Sir Bors, but also Niels Bohr), and the study of electricity is "Galvanic" (Galvan being a variant spelling for Sir Gawain, but also referring to Luigi Galvani). Though both the terms "electric" and "atomic" are derived from Greek, Reed doesn't use "electric" itself since it was coined after 1602, but he uses "atomy" (in the plural, "atomies") which was already in use, as in Romeo and Juliet.
  • Like his 616 counterpart, Richard Reed is also a scientific genius whose mind works on a level that produces theories and inventions that are decades and even centuries ahead of his peers. Which, in 1602, means that he's coming up with things like batteries, clockwork automatons, modern chemistry (which Doom exploits to make what's hinted to be chlorine gas) and what would appear to be the theory of relativity.
    Reed: Do you ever wonder, Otto, if light has a speed? If the speed of light through a vacuum were a constant, it would explain so much.
  • The "White Indian" Rojhaz is believed to be descended from Welsh explorers who reached America before Colombus. This references the myth of Prince Madoc which developed in the Elizabethan era to bolster English claims to the New World.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: James again.
• Hope Spot: Clea asks that Strange not be executed for practicing magic. King James says he won't be, and Virginia grins broadly while The Stoic Rojhaz even cracks a smile. Then James continues, and says that Strange is going to executed for treason.
• Horny Vikings: This version of Thor has the look, at least.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: "I'm afraid armageddon is rather outside my department, Majesty."
• Incurable Cough of Death: Queen Elizabeth starts the story coughing. It is no surprise for anyone that she would eventually die. Though that's not what actually kills her.
• It Will Never Catch On: Doom isn't impressed by Richard Reed's theory that light might have a speed.
• Knight Templar: The Grand Inquisitor, charged with ferreting out Witchbreed. Actually one himself, as he's this world's Magneto.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • At one point, Reed says that he believes that the fundamental particles of the Universe are stories, and that they are in a universe that favors them. He posits that stories can never truly end. Ben Grimm asks if it would be possible to restore his humanity, and Reed responds that the "laws of story" would prevent any cure from lasting long. This has happened several times in mainstream Marvel and one can almost picture Neil Gaiman smiling his smile as he wrote those lines.
    Reed: For in the end, alas, you are much more interesting and satisfying as you are.
  • The Point of Divergence for this universe also leans heavily on the meta. The Marvel Universe technically starts with the Fantastic Four according to comics scholars, but Captain America's creation is also considered to be where Marvel superheroes truly began their prominence. Because of Steve Rogers' time travelling, the universe became confused by his premature presence and thus kick-started superheroism 400 years too early.
• Lovable Rogue: Matthew Murdoch, adventurer-for-hire and dashing rogue.
• Mighty Whitey: Rojhaz is a blond, white-skinned Native American, apparently due to Welsh ancestry, and far more competent than his fellows. Though we later learn he's actually a time-displaced Steve Rogers.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Virginia has trouble remembering that she's human after transforming.
• Mythology Gag: Loads and loads to things in the Marvel Universe.
  • One in particular crosses the line to Genius Bonus: in the regular Marvel Universe, Dr. Strange lives in Greenwich Village, in 1602, he lives in the village of Greenwich.
  • Nicholas Fury has a lot of experience with open conflicts and secret wars.
  • Peter Parquagh has several scenes involving spiders, but he is only bitten at the end of the story.
  • Peter is the protege of a Nick Fury.
  • Wanda is made a nun because her costume classically comes with a wimple, headgear typically worn by nuns.
  • David Banner is the Hulk's name in the 1970s TV series.
  • David Banner tells Peter a story about Robert the Bruce.
  • The Fantastic Four being masters of their own seafaring vessel recalls The Fantastic Four #5 wherein Doctor Doom sent them back in time and they took control of a pirate ship.
  • When Jean's body is cremated at sea by Scotius, Angel notices that the fire makes the shape of a giant phoenix.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: In the 1602 universe, Sir Nicholas Fury and Doctor Stephen Strange are essentially Sir Francis Walsingham and Doctor John Dee, respectively, in all but name.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Not only is Rojhaz perfectly capable of talking like a normal man, and having expressions other than a scowl, he's also, quite literally, a man ahead of his time.
• Older Than He Looks: In addition to being from the future, it's heavily implied that Steve Rogers is actually much older than he looks when he appears in this story. He claims that in the Bad Future that he comes from, he ended up as one of the world's last active superheroes because the others got too old to continue fighting crime, while the Super Soldier serum in his blood somehow prevented him from aging.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: As usual, Reed Richa— I mean, Richard Reed.
• Painless Death for a Price: As Werner is being prepared to burn at the stake for being a witchbreed, he is offered the opportunity to confess and repent his sins in exchange for the stake being laid with wet wood and grass so that the smoke would asphyxiate him before he felt the fire consume him. Luckily for him, he is rescued by Scotius Summerisle and Robert Trefusis, fellow witchbreeds, who bring him back to their master.
• Oracular Head: Doctor Strange, after King James orders his execution.
• Pedophile Priest: In addition to wrenching him from his family, the Catholic priests who abducted Enrique claimed that he was "too beautiful" a child to be raised by Jews. The accusation is never made explicit but the implication is clear.
• Percussive Prevention: Fury to Captain America.
• Pet the Dog: Banner, after being an all-around Jerkass for most of the story, and verbally berating Peter Parquagh constantly, shields Peter with his own body when the time explosion goes off.
• President Evil: According to Captain America, The Purple Man becomes this.
• Pretentious Latin Motto: The motto for Carlos Javier's school, "Omnia Mutantur, nos et Mutamur in illis" ^note  "All things change, and we are changing with them". Notable for doubling as a subtle Mythology Gag, since the motto inspires Javier to dub his students "Mutantur" for lack of a more precise term.
• Prochronic Product: Richard Reed's genius is shown by him anticipating many principles of modern chemistry and physics (including subatomic particles and the speed of light), and inventing batteries and other modern devices.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: In his afterword in the hardcover edition, Gaiman claims that he got the idea for the story around September 2001, when he was still trying to come to terms with the shock of the 9/11 attacks. He said that at that moment, he knew that he wanted his next big comic book to be set in a simpler time, when people didn't have to deal with the chaos caused by terrorism and modern technology. Hence, he gave us a story about Marvel superheroes in the Elizabethan Era.
• Red Herring:
  • We're led to believe that Virginia, with her strange unexplained (and unpredictable) powers, is somehow tied to the strange disturbances in space-time. A vision from Strange, which shows her about to arrive in Europe, seems to confirm it. It turns out that his vision was actually trying to show him Rojhaz. Rojhaz, who's really Steve Rogers sent back in time 400 years, is the real source of all the Alternate Universe weirdness.
  • Also a good one involving the true nature of the Templar treasure. That important-looking wooden crate in the back of the Old Pilgrim's wagon? That's not the treasure. The Pilgrim's walking stick is the treasure. The Pilgrim (whose real name is "Donal") is this universe's Donald Blake, and the walking stick is Thor's hammer. The hammer was hidden by the Templars because it undermines the First Commandment ("You shall have no Gods but me"), and could bring about the downfall of the Church if it was revealed.
• The Reveal: "Rojhaz" is actually a time-displaced Steve Rogers, who was hurled back in time to get rid of him when he tried to organize a resistance against America's despotic new president, the Purple Man, in the future. His presence is actually what's causing the space-time disturbances and leading to the appearance of familiar superheroes 400 years too early.
• Rubber-Band History/The Time Traveller's Dilemma: Averted. The Watchers preserve this timeline in a pocket universe, allowing it to continue despite Captain America's removal bringing back the original timeline. They give it to Uatu as part of their condemnation/commendation of him.
• Runaway Fiancée: This word's version of Susan Storm is said to be this (she joined Richard Reed's expedition on the Fantastick to escape her betrothal to a man who she didn't love).
• Running Gag:
  • Matthew Murdoch being offered money to stop singing.
  • Peter Parquagh messing around with spiders... all of which fail to bite him. Until the very last page.
• Samus Is a Girl: When Angel asks about "John Grey," Cyclops yells to just drop the act as everyone knows it's "Jean" Grey. When Angel stumbles on the name, a stunned Cyclops realizes Angel honestly couldn't tell "John" was Jean in men's clothing and a cap.
• Sarcastic Confession: When James asks Petros how he got to him from Spain so quickly, Petros responds that he "ran very quickly." James thinks this is hilarious.
• Saying Too Much: When Richard Reed tries to convince Doom not to misuse his knowledge for evil, Doom tries to taunt him by claiming that his plans have brought chaos to England, such that the common folk believe that the strange weather they're experiencing portends the end of days. Except Doom remembers a second too late that Reed didn't know about the strange weather, and he didn't want him to know:
  Reed: ... What strange weather, Otto?
• The Spy Master: Sir Nicholas Fury.
• Straight Gay: Angel.
• Sweet on Polly Oliver: Angel again, though subverted in that, as the above suggests, he's perfectly okay with his attraction to "male" Jean.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Jean Grey.
• Theory of Narrative Causality: Reed Richards comes up with this. Apparently he's smart enough to sense the Fourth Wall.
• This Is My Name on Foreign: As a big chunk of the characters are English, this doesn't get played with as much as you'd think. There are some notable examples, though, like Carlos Javier (Charles Xavier), Enrique (Erik Lensherr/Magneto), Roberto Trefusis (Bobby Drake), and Scottius Summerisle (Scott Summers).
  • Roberto Trefusis as Bobby Drake deserves special mention: Roberto claims to be a nephew of naval commander Sir Francis Drake; the real Sir Francis had family by marriage named Trefusis. Someone's Showing Their Work.
  • Peter Parquagh is This Is My Name On Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe. It gets retconned as a pseudonym in Spider-Man 1602.
  • Rojhaz (Steve Rogers), as well, though he actually is Steve Rogers.
• Title by Year: Set in 1602, released in 2002.
• Tonto Talk: How Rojhaz speaks. Subverted when it turns out that he can speak perfectly good English. (Since he's actually Steve Rogers, it's possible that he was inspired by listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio as a boy.)

• Violation of Common Sense: Daredevil's origin gets modified to include this. Instead of losing his eyesight in an accident but gaining superpowers in the process, here he wandered into a cave as a kid and ate some glowing gunk he found clinging to the cave walls.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: Virginia Dare's power.
• The Watcher: A major member of the cast, violating his oath of non-interference again to save the universe. The position catching as he condemns Stephen to the same thing through he only has to do it for as long as he's alive, which is an obvious escape clause.
• Wham Line:
  • "[Stephen Strange] was wrong. [Virginia Dare] isn't the time traveler. Is she, Rojhaz?"
    Rojhaz/Steve Rogers: Well, if you put it like that, Ms. Strange, I guess she's not.
  • Another one when the Watcher describes the 1602 universe:
    We call it 616.
• A Wizard Did It: People keep asking Strange how he does various magical acts. his response is usually along the lines of "I am a wizard." This is something of an open secret. He is later executed. No, not for magic, for being a traitor.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Played with. Since the story takes place in the Elizabethan era, Thor's normal Flowery Elizabethan English speech patterns have been pushed further back and taken on elements of Old English. Gaiman theorizes that humans always hear Asgardian speech in their own language, just in a somewhat antiquated form of it. It's averted however with Rojhaz once he starts speaking a far more familiar form of English, given that he's a time-displaced Steve Rogers. Aka Captain America.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: The heroes, being fugitives at the time, don't want Roanoke's citizens to get in trouble with King James for helping them. So they pretend that they have taken control of the colony and declared it independent.

The sequels provide examples of:

• A God Am I: Octavius, when he embraces his transformation instead of trying to undo it.
• Bittersweet Ending: 1602: Spider-Man reveals that in time, history as we know it reasserts itself until eventually nearly everything Rojhaz had done to prevent his Bad Future is undone. On the other hand, the serum Pym used with Peter's blood survives long enough until World War 2 to be used as the basis for Captain America.
• Composite Character:
  • In 1602: Spider-Man Virginia Dare takes the role of Gwen Stacy. Sadly, up to being killed by Norman Osborn.
  • In Witch-Hunter Angela, King James unexpectedly turns out to be Wolverine.
• Cthulhumanoid: Victor Octavius's actual form is revealed to be this.
• The Dreaded: The King's Pin is a pirate who is rightfully feared by all sailors.
• Dropped A Bridge On Her:
  • Natasha, a major character from the original miniseries, questions Doom about his plans... and he pushes her off his flying ship to her death.
  • And poor Virginia Dare, whose death makes way for Peter to get together with actress Marion Jane Watsonne.
• Fan Disservice: In the Spider-Man miniseries, Janet Le Pym appears naked all the time, but the sexiness is offset by the fact that she spends most of her appearances being tortured by Baron Octavius.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Near the end of the Spider-Man miniseries, Henri Le Pym confronts Baron Octavius while gigantic and naked.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: Octavius is dispatched by being stomped on by a gigantic Henri Le Pym.
• I Have Your Wife: Baron Octavius keeps Henri Le Pym working for him by continually reminding him that if he doesn't comply with demands, his lady, Janette, will be fed to Conners, who is almost fully dinosaur in this world.
• Jekyll & Hyde: Inverted. Hulk is the good persona, Banner is a sadistic bastard who was one of the best torture agents in England.
• Mad Scientist: Octavius (squid), Conners (dinosaur), and eventually Osbourne (also dinosaur?) are all lab-table mutates, the prior two by their own doing. Octavius' mutation was accidental, though, which was the original reason he'd used a hostage to press-gang Pym into creating a cure. Then, as part of a Kick the Dog moment, he reveals to Pym that he'd been experimenting on Janette while she was in his keep, mutating her into an insect hybrid.
• Pirate: Kingpin (Captain Wilson Fiske, the King's Pin) and Bullseye (The Bull's Eye) are pirates in this continuity.
• Plague Doctor: In Spider-Man 1602, Baron Octavius (who is dying of the Black Death, and willing to go to any means to cure it) makes his first appearance flanked by plague doctors.
• Put on a Bus: At the end of the first series the characters talk of making the colony a safe haven for people with unusual abilities. At the beginning of 1602: New World there is a vague mention of the Witchbreed leaving, and they have not been seen or mentioned anywhere else in the follow-up series since.
  • Except Hal McCoy (Beast), who ends up as a test subject for Octavius, and mutated to his familiar blue, ape-like form.
• Redemption Equals Death: Deciding to become a good man, Banner goes to subject himself to execution. Possibly subverted, however, in that it was likely a ploy to get close to King James as he was shown Hulking Out
• Revenge Before Reason: Arguably Lord Iron, who doesn't particularly give a damn about either side of the fight, but sides with King James because it means getting to kill Banner.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Once McCoy is released from captivity, he rips his way through the military guards in an attempt to find Octavius, not knowing he's already fled.
• She Is All Grown Up: Peter is shown to have developed feelings (and implied to have more intimate longings) for Virginia Dare which unfortunately don't last.
• Sissy Villain: King James.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In Spider-Man 1602, when Peter learns that the Watsonnes come from his home town, he asks if they have news of his uncle and aunt, and is told they were recently accosted by a highwayman, but Ben saw the robber off.
• Steampunk: Lord Iron's lightning bottle powered armor, which is the only thing keeping him alive after Banner got through with him.
• Take That!: The Spider, after getting doused with ink, points out that no audience wants to see him in a black outfit.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: At the end of Spider-Man 1602, we find out that in the 40s, the Americans discovered an unfinished version of the serum Pym had created from Peter's blood, and refine it to create Captain America.
  • It's also possibly implied that history eventually corrected itself to the point that World War II starts off as normal. Meaning that everything Rojhaz has done to prevent his world from coming to be was all for nothing.
• Tin Tyrant: Do you even need to be told it's Doom?
• Walk the Plank: The crew on Captain Stacy's ship are just about to kill Peter for being Witchbreed when he saves his life by saving their asses from the pirate ship The King's Pin.

Fantastick Four provides examples of:

• Bad Boss: Doom, natch. King James I too.
• Cool Airship: Doom has a literal airship - a galleon slung under a balloon.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: A creature referred to only as the Leviathan turns up from nowhere, menaces them for a few pages, and is Taken for Granite.
• Executive Meddling: In-universe - James I has opinions about what should be in Shakespeare's plays.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: The Medusa, one of the Frightful Four.
• Historical In-Joke:
  • Doom captures Shakespeare because Cervantes was in prison.
  • The woman Johnny Storm kidnapped ended up writing most of Shakespeare's plays.
• Series Continuity Error: Shakespeare first becomes interested in a certain character as a writing partner when she uses the "damned be he who first cries 'hold enow'" line which would end up in Macbeth, which starts him looking for a pen, even though that line is the first one he says in the series.
• Shout-Out: The 1602 version of Namor is called "Númenor" after J. R. R. Tolkien's Atlantis, while his kingdom is called Bensaylum after Francis Bacon's New Atlantis.
  • Also, instead of being able to turn into sand, the Sandman in this continuity is an albino with power over dreams, much like another Sandman from a Different Company. It's a bit of an in-joke, considering who wrote the original series.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Near the end of 1602: Fantastick Four, the main characters catch a glimpse of the giant form of The Watcher looking down upon them. Everybody is convinced they saw the face of God, causing agnostic/atheist Richard Reed to have a massive crisis of faith.
• Taken for Granite: Anyone who looks into Medusa's eyes.
• Truer to the Text: Zigzagged. On the one hand, Bill Everett never intended for Atlantis to be Namor's home. On the other, he probably never intended it to be Bensalem either.
• Villain Decay: Doom in the original series was a terrifying threat who required all the heroes to take down, planned to conquer Europe with an army of specially bred slaves, and murdered Queen Elizabeth I. Doom in Fantastick Four goes to the edge of the world in pursuit of cosmetic surgery. He really liked being called "the Handsome".

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