Written by Neil Gaiman. Illustrated by Andy Kubert adn Richard Isanove.
Cover by Scott McKowen.
"It wasn't meant to be a secret…" I get it all the time now. I just arrived in Portugal, in Lisbon, to promote CORALINE, and the first question I was asked, in the car from the airport to the hotel was 'So, can you tell me anything about 1602?' And I said, 'It's drawn by Andy Kubert, coloured by Richard Isanove, lettered by Todd Klein, covers by Scott McKowen and I saw a photocopy of the first issue and it looks pretty good.'
'Yes, but the story …. What's it about?'
'Oh, you know,' I said. 'Stuff.'
'Well, is it the Marvel characters? Or characters you invented yourself?'
'Yes,' I said. 'That's pretty much it.'
'But how long is it?'
'I think it'll be eight issues. It was meant to be six, but I'm writing episode 5 right now, and there's a lot of story to tell.'
'So why is it such a secret...?'
It got to be a secret because the idea of 1602 was fairly straightforward, and really fun, and I hated the idea of people being familiar with it, even bored of it, by the time it came out. So I asked Joe Quesada if he'd mind if we didn't make a big announcement at the start. But the more people asked me, buttonholed me, pleaded with me, the more I liked the fact that only a tiny handful of people at Marvel and I had even seen Andy's amazing pencils or Richard's colours. This was starting to be a genuinely fun secret - like not telling someone what their birthday present is until it's time to unwrap it. What am I going to tell you? It's really fun. It's set in the Marvel Universe. It looks gorgeous. You may even like it. There are sixteen hundred & two good reasons for telling you all about it, and I'm not saying a word. Think of it as your birthday present."—Neil Gaiman, May 2003