Nemesis The Warlock : A Potted History. Part 3 of 4

Luke begins to think he has bitten off more than he chew, but with resolve (or sheer pig headedness) perseveres for part 3. (Over the hump and all that). He finds another shift in tone but a lot to love, even if some of it takes some getting used to……..

By Luke Williams

Return of Brother Kevin : Johnny Deadstock splits opinion : Too much Torque, but lots of action : Purity & Tomas sitting in a tree : No one expects the Spanish Inquisition : Loving the Alien : Pat reaches for the sledgehammer

Late to the party? Catch up here! Part 1 & Part 2

We left Nemesis haring down the Time Wastes in pursuit of Thoth. Thoth was hopping in and out of the timeline eliminating  specific figures from human history.

Clearly sick of being panel dressing in “Nemesis”, the ABC Warriors shoot off to their own series, clean up the mess (not The Mess – he’s still on Mars) that the little scamp Thoth has wrought (“see “The Black Hole Mission” and summed up shabbily here).

Torquemada on the other hand, heads back to Termight to reclaim his throne, reinforce  his rule and re-establish his dynasty. The little interlude is illustrated by art god Kevin O’Neill.  Brother Kev’s art had developed, but was still recognisably O’Neill.

Torquemada the God  (Book 6.5)

If such things matter to you, it is here that the Titan editions start falling back into sync’ with the prog’ numbering. This book is “6” in Titan numbering and collects this short (but glorious) return by Kevin O’Neill alongside the Torquemada “Diceman” gaming book strip drawn by Bryan Talbot. A short, but rambling article on this can be found here.

At the 1986 Eagle awards, Torquemada was voted best villain, this says a lot.  Deny it, he’s the star of the series isn’t he? Gleefully evil, you love to hate him, he’s not a poe faced, supercilious evil like his opponent ( I’m getting ahead of myself), but you want to see what he does next, to see how far he will go.  In the introduction to ‘Phone Book 2, Mills himself said that Nemesis was enigmatic, unknowable and well….. alien.  Torquemada started stealing the show quite early on, villains can be the the most interesting of characters. Sith or Jedi? Who is cooler?

Anyhoo

Starting in Prog 520 (the ten year anniversary prog’ – but lets not argue about the accuracy of that statement) Torque’ returns to glory, adulation etc, and not surprisingly this goes to his head. Torquemada becomes convinced of his own divinity the “Torquemada the God” of the title and takes the opportunity to resolve some staffing and family problems. Mazarin had already been despatched, Krassan and Broder Kruger are subjected to a rather wretched fate.

Nostradamus is committed, and Candida….

Well, it’s all been a bit much for Candida. Over the last 2 books, she has lost her husband only to see him “resurrected”, her children have been killed by her husband’s greatest enemy,  she’s been pawed by her brother in law, and sought peace at the end of the world, but been denied.

Tomas, ever the pragmatist, knows he needs an heir. He needs a divorce, a re-marriage and offspring. Stat.

He finds a suitable candidate in Sister Sturn, his biggest fan. The downside is that she is married. But Torque, never sees problems, only solutions (final ones). Brother Sturn is sent on a quest and is soon no longer a problem.

Divorcing Candida on grounds of insantity, “SS” and Torque marry, and she bears him a son, Attila. However, Sturn herself is not the most stable of characters (who knew?), she sees  deviants everywhere. Paranoid and violent, she is under watch from the Terminators to ensure that no harm comes to Torquemada’s heir.

However, Tomas is distracted by illness.

Turns out, it’s all down to Thoth meddling with the time line. The young warlock is killing Torquemada’s previous incarnations and consequently destablising this current incarnation. Torquemada will experience much pain and discomfort, but finally that will be the end of TT.

Brother Mikron  hypnotises the Grand Master, sending his consciousness back in time to trace his incarnations through human history, with some unsurprising results :

Mikron finds that The Grand Master can be traced to the first Torquemada, “star” of the Spanish Inquisition. Which leads us nicely onto the next chapter in the series.

Book 7 : The Two Torquemadas

With a new artist, John Hicklenton delineating their deadly duel, our protagnonists head to 15th Century Spain. The Spanish Inquisition is in full swing, Torquemada mk1 running the show. Torque Mk2 wants to meet up with his ancestor / previous incarnation to end this attack on him and meet his inspiration.. Nemesis sees Torque Mk1 as a means of bringing Thoth out into the open. Thoth, on the other hand just wants to cause more mayhem.

T2 introduces himself to T1. T1 obviously thinks that T2 is madder than a sackful of arseholes and to “cleanse” him (where have we heard that before), he puts him to torture.

Clearly having no idea what thousands of years of evil, homicidal prejudice and hate would have on his spirit, T1 grossly underestimates the resistance of T2, and falls under his influence.

Meanwhile, Thoth has been one step ahead of Nemesis and Purity, but Nemesis has caught up. Thoth and Satanus had taken some downtime in the Cretaceous, to give Satanus an opportunity to work out some “frustrations” with a lady Tyrannosaur.

Instead of contacting him directly, Nemesis takes sometime to watch him as his father.

But Thoth, was tiring of his crusade.

He leaves Satanus in the Cretaceous, and heads to the 15th century to face T1 on his own, little realising that both his Pa and his target are ahead of him.

Both Nemesis and T2 are using T1 as bait to get to Thoth, but with very different outcomes in mind. Thoth materialises to finish his mission and kill the 15th century Torquemada.

Nemesis temporarily exhausts his powers to trap Thoth, but leaves his son vulnerable to Torquemada’s  attack, and with Nemesis unable to use his diabloical powers to stop him,  T2 exacts his revenge on the Warlocks.

Torque and Nemesis face off, T1 becomes “collateral damage” in the process. T2 on other other hand is prepared, tooled up in his “anti Nemesis” armour. But in a twist, Nemesis traps him in it and counterattacks in which the Grand Master is powerless to resist.

His Terminators carry him back to the ship, and leave the time zone. Nemesis has the opportunity to mourn the death of his son. He’s mad, and isn’t going to take it anymore. The mortal enemies have hurt each other as much as two beings can.

Their conflict might be moot at the end of the book, Blitzspear and Torquemada’s Auto Da Fe are caught in a massive time wave that engulfs them. It seems that the world is about to end and the ABC Warriors have  failed in their mission…..

Book 7 sees another shift in the tone. Mills emphasises Nemesis’s near omnipotence (more of which we will see later) and his seeming omniscience and impotence in seeing but preventing the death of Thoth. My scans are a tad on the bobbins side, but it’s clear to see how much of a departure John Hicklenton’s art was to what had gone before.

With the arrival of Hicklenton, the dark humour becomes pitch black and grotesque, Mills riffs off the art and inspires Hicklenton to new heights (or lows) of depravity. There is no argument that Hicklenton’s is distinctive. But is it any good? Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellll………………………………

It’s not as easy as that. I remember reading the first episode and being a little shocked and definintely disappointed.  I tried to like it, I wanted to like it. But Hicklenton’s art made my skin crawl. Oodles of body horror, grotesque and distorted figure work, hideous facial expressions and lots of bodily fluids and his story telling wasn’t the clearest. But the guy had talent, the hypothetical love child of David Cronenberg and Bill Sienkiewicz made real. Marmite art.

As I’ve got older, I appreciate it more. Re-reading it for this article, Book 7 is a strong entry in the saga, but commissioning Hicklenton for this strip was a brave step. Pat Mills has always shouted from the rooftops of his support for “Johnny Deadstock” (Hicklenton’s pseudonym). Uncle Pat’s attitude (and I’m paraphrasing quite extensively here) is “do you want a Jimi Hendrix artist? or an Ed Sheerhan artist?” Put it like that, it’s hard to argue against.

It takes Nemesis in a different direction from the gothic SF trapping of Bryan Talbot. The strip becomes unsettling and atmospheric, if occasionally a little difficult to follow. Read Hicklenton’s final work : “A Hundred Days”, published just prior to his untimely death, it’s great, but the stuff of nightmares.

Defintely not right for Dredd though.

Book 8 : Purity’s Story

Book 8 picks up exactly from where Book 7 leaves off. The universe hasn’t ended, and the chase continues.  David Roach is at the drawing board for this installment, you could not pick a more drastic change in style. .

Torquemada leaves the time wastes with Nemesis in hot pursuit. Purity begins to reflect on how Nemesis is always changing his mind, how they met, and how she got here.

Or, as Mills puts it :

In her younger days  Purity spent some time at the “Grand Master’s convenience”. Locked up in an asylum for campaigning against Torquemada’s crusade. Repeated escape attempts and subsequent “treatments” do nothing to dampen her enthusiasm. She is visited by Nemesis, who enlists her, and casts a spell for Torquemada to fall for her. She is released into Torquemada’s care and becomes Credo’s spy.

The arrangement works well for Credo. The resistance strikes a number of blows for the galaxy and amongst Termights. However, to discredit Nemesis, Torquemada hires an imposter to wreak havoc and murder and maim, the “Mimesis”

The Mimesis has the required effect, Nemesis’s name is mud. Meanwhile, Torquemada rumbles Purity’s game and sets the Mimesis after her. Nemesis arrives in the nick of time, and the two aliens fight to the death. Despite clearly being the more powerful, Nemesis has seven bells knocked out of him and bounced around Termight by the imposter.

Just when he is on the ropes, Purity saves him, the Mimesis is killed, and Nemesis and Purity escape to the tubes. There, Nemesis spills the beans.

Being a god of Khaos isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Omnipotence, cloven hooves and the ability to spit acid doesn’t make you fulfilled (apparently anyway). Turns out he’s bored. He’s not fighting  Terra for the greater good. He’s doing this for a bit of a laugh.

He craves the thrill that lesser beings experience. It breaks up the time, and he treats his battle against Terra as a game, liking his attacks to prodding a termite mound to see how the termites react.

Purity is a smidge distraught by this, but Nemesis still has use for her. He blocks her memory of this discussion and her relationship with Torquemada

The arrival on Earth, and the tachyon radiation released these memories, and the revelation is not welcome

But Nemesis can’t let her remember and reinforces the memory blocks.

The pursuit of Torquemada resumes.

After the brief flashback to Purity’s past in Book 5, this fleshes out the origin and nature of the relationship between her and Nemesis. It also seeds plot threads that will blossom in the next two books, following the resolution of the Thoth plotline. It sets up for the climax,which little known to us, was over 10 years away.

After the extreme and disturbing art from John Hicklenton, the arrival of  David Roach is jarring, but also acts as a palette cleanser. He always reminded me of Garry Leach with fewer blacks. It’s beautiful work, all clean lines, and an easier, more conventional read but manages to carry over the spirit from the Kev O’Neill and Bryan Talbot years. Roach’s version of Termight was a highly respectable interpretation of what had gone before. I’d be interested to know whether Mills had a say in picking Roach  – as they have never worked together since, he’s usually quite vocal about his artistic discoveries.

And I have a page of the art of this book 🙂

Book 9 : Deathbringer

Following on from the retrospection of Book 8,  John Hickletnon comes back off the bench as Torquemada and Nemesis face off in contemporary (okay, 1989) Britain.

Despite leaving the time wastes just moments before Nemesis, Torquemada had been in this era for ten years (‘cos you know, time, folks!). This is an earth of disruption, inter dimensional incurisons and instability.

Torquemada has built a power base, beginning as a gang leader, establishing a right wing racist organisation “Oy”, and gains power and influence from a fearful government. Torquemada and his “Reapers” militia  are seen as the only thing who can save Britain from the incursions caused by Thoth’s fiddling with the black and white holes.

Purity and Nemesis arrive and split. Purity disturbs a group of Reapers and after a brief struggle is arrested and brought to Torquemada. He reminds her of their “relationship” and informs her that Nemesis has made her his tool and has brainwashed her.

Purity seemingly has an “epiphany” and changes sides

Torquemada also has other irons in the fire. He has found Jennifer, a young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Candida, a great distraction. He stalks Jennifer, with a view to taking her back to Termight to be his “Grandmistress”. Jennifer is not too keen on this, but Torquemada finally corners Jennifer in a nightclub

Jennifer agrees, and has seemingly fallen for Torquemada’s charms. They swap spit, but “Jennifer” turns out to be Nemesis in disguise. “Ew”s all round. And it all kicks off.

The battle pauses. Torquemada heads for Jennifer’s apartment, and Nemesis heads to release Purity, unaware he is heading into a trap. Backmailed, Jennifer agrees to travel back to Termight.

Purity escorts Nemesis to an underground station where Torquemada has his means of escape back to Termight. The two foes are wounded and Purity goes to finish them both off, but not before she listens to their arguments to spare their lives

Before she offs them both, Brother Mikron saves them both and allows the two enemies to continue their battle. Mikron sacrifices himself to save his Grandmaster and Torquemada escapes to his own time. Nemesis and Purity also return to their own time, but Purity rejects further help from Nemesis. So ends Book 9.

It was around this time that Pat Mills was developing Third World War in “Crisis” the political 2000ad spin off. The research Mills was undertaking for that cross pollinated into Nemesis and consequently this story feels like a dry run for that other work. The student dialogue, the oppressive totalitarian police state Britain, the bedsit and clubbing environment.

Nemesis always had a political undercurrent, anti fascist and anti racist. But here it is front and centre. Another website (though obviously not a patch on ECBT) has suggested that Mills becomes self indulgent in this period. They have a point. Enjoyable enough, and I enjoyed Death Bringer and The Two Torquemadas far more after so many years than I did in the original progs. Far more happens in each of the first 4 books, than the next 5. The pace slows down and the plot begins to meander, particularly after the departure of Bryan Talbot, the earlier books are far tighter in plot and story development.

Hicklenton’s art is looser and more open and slightly less depraved than his last outing, but in placees no less confusing. Just look at the first few panels where Nemesis and Purity split up and Nemesis “rescuing” Purity from the cells.

By the end of Book 9, Purity and Nemesis are no longer a partnership, both enemies have lost their families in almost their entirety. And Nemesis is not the altruistic freedom fighter that we all thought he was at the start.

And then someone hits the “Pause” button for a few years.

(Click for parts 1, 2 and 4)