Nemesis the Warlock

At thirteen years of age my exposure to comics was pretty much limited to GI Joe, Conan and The Punisher. All of which, if my undergraduate Sociology serves me well, are symbols of the triumph of Capatalist individuality and reaffirmations of the dominant social paradigm. Actually some of that was probably just shit I made up.

Anyway, it was with only this limited exposure to comics as a storytelling medium that I came upon a coverless copy of 2000 AD Monthly featuring Nemesis the Warlock amongst a stack of magazines in my eighth grade art class. It was something of a revelation to me.

Nemesis is a creation of Pat Mills, who set up 2000AD and had a large part to play in the creation of it's most famous offspring, Judge Dredd. But Nemsis is a different, I would say much better thing altogether. Part left wing reaction to Thatcherite Britain, part mediation on obsession and vengeance, and (a very big) part good old eighties-style science fiction, from an era when the Brits were doing some wonderfully dark and pessimistic things with the genre. The villain of the piece is named after Tomas de Torquemada the Spanish Inquisator, and is a vicious dictator who keeps the entire human race in check through a very literal form of xenophobia. The themes in this thing are universal and sadly still very relevant. Of course I didn't realise any of this at the time, but I fucking loved it, and still do. You would too, if you read it. I don't like to overstate things, but the world would be a better place if we were all reading Nemesis the Warlock.