YMMV / Marvel 1602

• Complete Monster:
  • Count Otto "The Handsome" von Doom is the narcissistic ruler of Latveria, and the ancestor of Victor Von Doom, but lacking any of the latter's positive qualities. Obsessed with his self-aggrandizement, Otto believes that his supposed genius and handsome face entitle him to world domination. Using the birthing pens he inherited from his father, Otto breeds up armies of brainwashed vulture flier assassins and craven dwarfed servants to do his bidding, keeps the crew of the Fantastick imprisoned in specially made prison cells, sends killers after Sir Nicholas Fury and Virginia Dare, and has Queen Elizabeth I murdered lest her agents beat his to the Templar treasure he covets. In Fantastick Four, he murders his lover, Natasha, plots to sell Susan and Jonathan Storm to Numenor of Bensaylum and his cousin as sex slaves—after hypnotizing them into killing Richard Reed and Benjamin Grimm—and finally betrays Numenor, murdering him and sinking the city of Bensaylum beneath the waves. Utterly vain and innately treacherous, Count Otto and his ego left a trail of ruined lives in their wake.
  • A New World & Spider-Man 1602: Master Norman Osborne, leading citizen of the colony of Roanoke, is obsessed with finding the source of the strange power disturbing the New World and claiming it for himself. Believing that the Indians of Roanoke are hiding it, Osborne creates tension between the colonists and the Indians, even attacking one of the colonists and framing it as an Indian attack. Leading a mob, Osborne has his men burn down the Indian village before later convincing General Ross and his men to march on the Indians. After a massacre is narrowly prevented, Osborne pretends to relent before attempting to wipe out the Indians by infecting them with smallpox out of sheer spite and hatred. When Peter Parquah's love interest Virginia Dare attempts to go to her father, Osborne kills her. Eventually being turned into a Witchbreed, a "reborn" Osborne attempts to kill not only Parquah, but the boy's second love as well, and has no loyalty for his own allies who risk getting caught in the crossfires.
• Funny Moments: In a potential Take That! to Wolverine Publicity, in later stories it turns out that Logan's counterpart in this universe is King James.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Reed discusses how he's arranged the sciences around Knights of the Round Table, such as Lamorack and Bors. And of course, Lamorack was designated to be the name for biological sciences and Galvan (aka Gawain) for physics. Phenomena that he couldn't classify were even designated as "Merlinic", after Merlin.
  • In one scene, Carlos Javier (Charles Xavier) chastises Fury for smoking inside his school, noting his strong dislike of tobacco—and Fury remarks that the last person to chastise him for smoking was King James of Scotland. King James I actually was infamous for his dislike of tobacco (which was a product of the Spanish Empire throughout much of his reign), and even wrote a pamphlet to express his hatred of the stuff. Javier's description of tobacco as a "noxious weed" is taken directly from James' writings.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Purple Man, unwitting instigator of supernatural events in a time where there shouldn't be any supernatural events. Gee, that sounds familiar....
• Moral Event Horizon: Osborne gives smallpox blankets to the local Native Americans, whom the colony has already made peace with, then shoots and kills Virginia Dare when she goes to tell her father what he'd done.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Stephen Strange's head, when shown to Richard Reed and the others by Strange's wife. That thing has been preserved in whiskey, and in the panel in which it appears it is wet, its eyes are completely blank and its mouth is open wide, as if it's screaming. Bonus points for it being the first panel of a left page: it's exactly as freaky as it sounds, and it's bound to catch you off-guard the first time you read 1602.
  • Strange's wife states that one of the sailors snuck a sip from the whiskey during the voyage. "He went mad, of course."
  • The cover of part 7.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Jean's death, notable for being one of the only continuities where she just might stay dead.
  • Virginia Dare's death in one of the sequels, making her a Gwen Stacy analogue.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The initial 1602 series was prized for its creativity and for being unique, distinct from the Main Marvel canon. Then more books were made, the majority of the characters from the original dropped off the face of the Earth, Virginia Dare was killed off to make way for a Mary Jane character, and on a downright depressing note it was established that none of these adventures were going to have a lasting impact. Time/space itself was ultimately going to "correct" this world of adventure into the Brave New World Steve Rogers had tried to prevent.

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