If ever there was an era of comics that truly feels like it was ‘my’ era, it’d be the late 80s and early 90s. That’s because it was when I had the most immediate access to new titles, and I read just about everything I could get my hands on (or afford!).

At that time, newsagents everywhere usually had a small selection of US comics, and they were always somewhat awkwardly displayed, often hidden in the space underneath the more prominent (and, you’d think) far more popular and well known magazines and comics. The random selection they got in each week was baffling, but my guess is that their distributor just gave them whatever they had left over, in the hopes it’d sell. And if not, they were just returned anyway.

It was through a random selection of comics in a normal, independent newsagent that I first saw an issue of Nth Man, and it always intrigued me. I only ever managed to pick up one issue from late in its run (it only lasted for 16 issues as it was), and to this day I don’t think I understood what the hell was going on in it, but it was certainly intriguing.

When I saw the first issue in a bargain box on a stand at the Portsmouth Comic Con for just 30p, you better believe I snapped it up immediately. I mean, it has a 50p cover price, so I’ve managed to buy it for cheaper than it was in 1989, and by some magnitude if you adjust for inflation!

So, getting in at the beginning, do I now have some insight as to what’s going on in Nth Man? Surprisingly, only a little bit more than before!

That’s because issue #1 drops readers into the middle of the story, with an American military unit flying clandestinely as a Russian plane, on a mission to rescue a mysterious prisoner from Moscow. World War III has already begun in the story, with the catalyst being a super powered human who rendered the world’s nuclear arsenal useless with his psychic abilities – thus removing the threat of mutually assured destruction that was keeping a global war at bay.

There’s an absolute ton of exposition in this first issue, and absorbing it isn’t helped by writer Larry Hama’s insistence on explaining what every bit of military hardware is with asterisks, as well as breaking down and translating certain Russian terms or organisation names using the same method. It does lend this alternate reality story quite a bit of authenticity, but it does make an already fairly dense narrative become even harder to digest.

It feels as if it wants to be an intriguing action thriller, but the mysteries here aren’t all that compelling, and we’re introduced to the titular Nth Man, who has the most arbitrary explanation for his nom de plume, far too late to get much of a grasp on who he is, or what he can really do. He certainly doesn’t feel like a Ninja, with his shirtless, definitely-not-Asian look and tendency to wield massive guns (and a katana, but still).

Still, it is only the first issue and, as mentioned, it has a lot to set up. It’s just a shame that Hama feels the need to go into so much detail about tank names, or explaining the name of the KGB.

It also feels as if the major plot point of WWIII arising from the Cold War was poorly timed. Nth Man #1 was published in August ’89, and the Berlin Wall, signalling the beginning of the end of the Cold War, happened just a few months later in November of the same year. So its narrative would have felt almost immediately dated.

That’s not Hama’s fault, of course, but it’s perhaps another reason (along with the fact that Nth Man was one of the few mainstream Marvel comics which didn’t take place in the main Marvel Universe), that its run was so brief.

I am ever so slightly intrigued as to where the story could be going, but I don’t think I was missing out by not having read it back when it came out. At least there’s only 15 more issues to collect…

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