The Nth Man is my main Marvel expertise

I was already interested in the new Marvel Age of Comics essays - small books full of information and analysis, looking at some of Marvel's most celebrated comics, because one of them was by Paul Cornell, and I was reading his stuff in the 90s when he was doing the same sort of thing with Doctor Who.

They are great little reads, especially Cornell's extensive look at the Avengers in the 1970s. They do sometimes get a little bogged down in plot recaps and explanations, but are pleasingly full of behind the scenes information and musing on the themes and artistic goals of these ephemeral comics.

I burned through them all in a weekend, and have already starting digging back into my Shooter/Perez issues of the Avengers. I have also been thinking about what Marvel comic I'd be qualified to write about if I did one of them.

Doing something basic like the Byrne/Claremont X-Men or Simonson Thor would be right out - they're still magnificent comics, but have been covered extensively in the decades they have been published.

There could be rewards in zeroing in on something like Alan Davis' ClanDestine, and use it as an excuse to get into the whole Marvel UK thing, and the brilliance of Davis' two Excalibur runs. There would also be ample room for thoughts ClanDestine's inability to get a grip inside the wider comic marketplace.

But I'm fairly sure it would probably be The Nth Man by Larry Hama and Ron Wagner. It only lasted 16 issues and change, but those 16 issues are full of world war, ninja mysticism and a dork with absolute reality-changing powers. It's incredibly propulsive and a deep mindfuck, and while it looks a lot like Hama's GI Joe, it is very much its own thing.

I could get 10,00 words on the career of Larry Hama, and a few more on Wagner's incredibly energetic art. It has some vague connections to the wider Marvel universe - they all show up in an issue of Excalibur in between those Davis runs - but it's a rare complete story from Marvel, even as it all gets cosmically goofy by the end of things.

If they did a series of books for 2000ad like they did for Marvel, I could write a dozen longs long essays on multiple long-running series and short shocks. But the Nth Man would be my Marvel man.