The second season of Marvel’s What If…? continued today with its seventh episode, “What If… The Avengers Assembled in 1602?” The new episode, which you can read a full recap of here, takes some of our favorite characters and throws them into a very different era, giving us a very different Marvel Universe.
However, this is not the first time we’ve seen this Marvel Universe. No, “1602″ was actually seen in the comics first. And while many of the stories featured in Marvel’s What If…? are brand new, this one was actually fairly true adaptation.
Before we get into the comic, this new episode of What If…? follows Captain Carter, who has been pulled into a new universe to help solve a huge problem. This “1602″ universe is being ravaged by storms and a rift that spontaneously opens and swallows anything near it. Carter, who earns the distrust of the King, learns of a forerunner, a person outside of their own time, who is the cause of these storms. With the help of some familiar, but slightly altered heroes, Captain Carter attempts to save this new universe.
Believe it or not, the comic is not all that different. Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert’s 2003 eight-issue series takes us to that same year in a universe inhabited by different versions of our favorite heroes. The entire world is being impacted by mysterious storms and the Queen of England’s resident magician, Dr. Stephen Strange, cannot find an answer as to why.
As it turns out, the issues is the same as in the new episode: a forerunner has brought this universe destroying energy to this universe. So, while becoming traitors to the crown along the way, a group of heroes (sans Captain Carter) works to solve this problem and return the forerunner to their proper time and restore their own universe.
Of course, there are plenty of other storylines throughout the eight issues of “1602.” There is a very Game of Thrones-like vibe to all of it, with characters constantly betraying one another in pursuit of more power or whatever else the hope to achieve. The story also obviously needed to be trimmed to reach the typical runtime of a single episode, there there is, as usual, much more to the comic story than the adaptation.
Spoilers for both “1602″ and “What If… The Avengers Assembled in 1602″ ahead!
The interesting thing about this episode is that, while it had to change quite a bit for a number of reasons, the forerunner remains the same person: Steve Rogers. In the case of What If…?, Rogers takes on a Robin Hood persona and aids Captain Carter in her quest. In the comics, Rogers is a Native American named Rohjaz, who serves as a bodyguard to Virginia Dare, the first child born in the American colonies.
Some of the other similarities between the two stories include the presence of Uatu the Watcher, who explains the impact of the forerunner in both stories. There is also the loss of the queen in both, though in the comics it is Queen Elizabeth while in the episode it is Queen Hela. The same can be said for the King, who is simply James in the comics while Thor wears the crown in the episode.
Of course there are dozens of characters included in the comics who do not make an appearance in the episode and vice versa. The X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Clea Strange and Spider-Man play a huge role in the comics while the cannot be found in the episode. It would have been very strange to have the first appearance of the X-Men or Fantastic Four in the MCU (or MCU adjacent, I suppose) come in this manner. The episode does however, feature Scott Lang, Bucky Barnes, Happy Hogan and of course Captain Carter, who are not included in the comics.
It’s quite impressive that the creators of Marvel’s What If…? were able to take such an ambitious and out-there comic series and adapt it into something that featured a relatively similar story, while condensing it into about half an hour. There are dozens of other great comic stories out there and this gives Marvel fans hope to see them one day hit Disney+.
You can stream the first seven episodes of Marvel’s What If…? season 2 on Disney+ now and read Marvel’s “1602″ now on Marvel Unlimited.