Nemesis The Warlock - Publication History

Publication History

The series began in 1980, in issue 167 of 2000 AD, with a story called Comic Rock "The Terror Tube", in which a freedom fighter called Nemesis escaped from Torquemada, the chief of the Tube Police, after a protracted chase through a complex travel-tube system on a planet called Termight, later revealed to be Earth. All that was seen of Nemesis was the outside of his spaceship, the Blitzspear (See 1983 200AD Annual The Secret Life of the Blitzspear). The roots of the story lay in an episode of Ro-Busters (also by Mills and O'Neill) in which the heroes escaped from the police in a car chase through a tube network, which IPC management objected to. In "Terror Tube" the police were portrayed as a cross between the Spanish Inquisition (Torquemada is named after the notorious inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada) and the Ku Klux Klan (or from Spanish Easter penitents), making it easier to position them as the bad guys.

"Terror Tube" was the first of a planned series of one-offs inspired by popular music, called "Comic Rock" - in this case The Jam's "Going Underground". The series never got going, but did produce a second Nemesis story, a two-parter called "Killer Watt", in which Torquemada chased Nemesis through a bizarre teleport system based on telephone lines.

These stories proved popular, prompting Mills and O'Neill to develop a regular series, Nemesis the Warlock, which combined the early high-concept science fiction with fantasy in the "sword and sorcery" mould. Torquemada was promoted from chief of the Tube Police to Grand Master of Termight. Nemesis was revealed as a demonic alien with a face based on the nose of his Blitzspear, fighting to protect aliens from Torquemada's genocidal tyranny, although his inhuman attitude and anarchic "Khaos" philosophy made his motivations ambiguous. Such as in Book Five; The Vengeance of Thoth; during a chase; Nemesis is forced to hijack a bus full of children, which ends up crashing, killing all on board as he escapes.

Written at the height of Margaret Thatcher's government, the fiercely left wing Mills depicts anarchic anti-heroes violently railing against a bullish, intolerant authority. That the authority in question is the human race thousands of years in the future adds a further dimension: a heavy-handed condemnation of human nature. Particular targets for Mills's ire were imperialism and religious fanaticism. Book 6 had a comment about South Africa and Apartheid removed, which was reinstated in the Titan Book reprint. The ABC Warriors and Satanus the black tyrannosaur, both Mills creations, were reintroduced as supporting characters, and a time travel element was introduced which left the series' timeline extremely convoluted.

Book 9 concluded in 1989, and the character barely appeared for ten years. Finally, in 1999, Mills and artists Henry Flint and O'Neill wrapped up the series with Book 10: The Final Conflict, and an epilogue of sorts, Deadlock, which explored the political state of Termight in the aftermath of Nemesis' and Torquemada's deaths.