>Why are you all so... EVIL? Don’t you think it’s wrong to hate aliens – just because they’re different to us? >NO.
Purity Brown has been Nemesis the Warlock’s closest ally since the strip’s formal début in 1981. Strong, courageous and compassionate, she came to act as the demonic alien’s conscience as the events of the story grew progressively bleaker and more desperate. She was there when Nemesis learned of his wife’s death. She was there when the warlock’s son, Thoth, waged war against humanity and his father. She was there when Nemesis’s arch-enemy, Torquemada of Termite, murdered Thoth just as father and son were reconciled. Throughout all, Purity’s story has been left largely untold. That changes in this arc.
When we last saw Nemesis at the conclusion of the Book Seven () he and Purity had just escaped the fifteenth century following their latest confrontation with Torquemada. The two rivals chased each other through the history, each trying to murder the other one with their vehicles, until a massive time wave (caused, we now know, by the ABC Warrior's antics in The Black Hole here ) explodes behind them.
Who will survive, and what will be left of them?
Nemesis the Warlock is a very peculiar sword and sorcery epic. Although a tremendous source of inspiration for players and GMs of a variety of games, it is particularly notable to Veeky Forums as the source of huge amounts of 40k’s background.
After the frenzied scrawls of John Hicklenton in The Two Torquemadas the art in this episode returns to something more conservative with David Roach.
Jaxson Carter
Nemesis the Warlock : Prologue, Books One and Two (You) (Cross-thread) Books Three and the first half of Book F our (You) (Cross-thread) Book Four (Dead) Second half of Book Four, Book Five and First half of Book Six (You) (Cross-thread) Second half of Books Six, Book Seven (You) (Cross-thread)
Connor Morris
...
Isaiah Rogers
...
Joshua Bennett
ABC Warriors: The Black Hole
Dominic Collins
The surface of Terra, capital of the human Termite Empire, is almost uninhabitable and so vast hive cities spread underground. Stalscrapers are the stalactite-like housing complexes that make up large parts of Termite's subterranean cities, and are often so bizarrely constructed that a mere glance is enough to drive you mad.
Elijah Allen
...
Justin Price
Torquemada's regime did indeed kill Purity's father. A thought detection van identified him as dreaming rebelliously in his sleep and so he was taken away, likely for torture and vaporisation.
Nicholas Bailey
...
Kayden Powell
Good use of German expressionist, Nosferatu style shadow imagery here. Why, its almost as if Nemesis cuts a sinister figure.
Hunter Gonzalez
...
Levi Myers
...
Christopher Thompson
...
Henry Rivera
...
Noah Jackson
...
Luis Ortiz
...
Michael Lopez
...
Cameron Brooks
>Stick to mindless trash, I implore you! Can do Grandmaster!
Blake Jenkins
...
Charles Campbell
...
Joshua Gutierrez
...
Luke Brooks
...
Nolan Roberts
...
Xavier Thomas
Torquey, baby, love the outfit.
Jonathan Martin
You know, I think he bought it.
Brayden Hughes
...
Tyler Perez
...
Zachary Cook
...
Juan Rogers
...
Oliver Hall
...
Aaron Cooper
If anyone is reading along could they please bump from time to time?
Ayden Robinson
...
Benjamin Hernandez
...
Jonathan Adams
...
Nathan White
...
Dominic Wood
>Chain Axe Massacre! When did 40k get chain-axes? Its an obvious development of the chainsword concept, but its funny to see it here.
Carson Howard
...
Mason Bell
...
Landon Garcia
...
Bentley Thomas
...
Charles Cooper
...
Jacob Anderson
After all this time we finally get to hear Nemesis' motivation straight from the horse-monster's grille thing.
Just two major Nemesis stories left, which I should be able to knock out tomorrow. Might even be able to do them in this thread as they're not all that long. Until then remember to BE PURE! BE VIGILANT! AND BEHAVE!
Connor Lewis
Can do. The use of light/shadow in this one is especially stark. Into it.
Wyatt Foster
bump
Samuel Edwards
DO SLAINE NEXT
Connor Howard
oh dang, I missed a shakira storytime
Nemesis is sweet.
Carter Baker
Wow what a dick. Its one thing for Nemesis to be insane. Its another for him to be toying with humanity.
Cameron Flores
couple questions: 1. is Khaos and Order another dichotomy aside from light and dark from Slaine 2. is Khaos or any otherworldly forces responsible for Dark Judges?
Landon Rodriguez
>2. is Khaos or any otherworldly forces responsible for Dark Judges? Maybe? I see shades of Judge Death here in Deadlock's lines. Maybe all the otherworldy forces just want us dead, and if so, does that inadvertently make Torquemada our hero?
Joseph Perez
>Nemesis fucks with humans repeatedly >Is surprised when humans fuck him back and kill his wife and kid >Blames humanity even though he can SEE THE FUTURE and could have fucked off at any time
Not gonna lie, he had it coming.
Mason Davis
>tap tap let me in guys I'm a fairy!
Appreciate the effort Shakaranon. Think I will go on a 2000 ad binge buy after reading this.
Jaxon Gonzalez
Purity is really the only pure one in this
I'm kinda glad she is the only one who survives
Jason Rivera
Nemesis is an alien. He might be able to act human enough when it suits him but he is not like us. Trying to fit him into a human moral or psychological model can only end in disaster. It's like expecting a stray cat to make friends with your pet mice
Ryan Nelson
Nu-uh, warlockism is the religion of peace, humanity is the source all the evil in the world.
Camden Cook
>Termight drives your children to school >Nemesis drives them into a laser grid
Warlocks, no sense of right and wrong.
Jason Bailey
Khaos and Order are another dichotomy in the vein of Moorcock's Chaos and Order (in fact they're almost identical). You have to read between the lines a little bit in Slaine, but the Earth Goddess and the other original pagan faiths are associated with primal chaos and unconstrained freedom (with a healthy side order of TREMENDOUS violence). Organised religion, the freemasons, politicians and the 'establishmment' in general, however, are tools created by extradimensional aliens who feed on suffering and want to impose a vision of bleak order on the universe.
Pat Mills has many fine qualities, but subtlety is rarely counted among them.
Unless something drastically changes The Dark Judges are their own conflict between mighty cosmic horrors, though there may well be indirect influences there. Generally speaking Pat Mills tries to tie absolutely everything he writes into one continuity and everyone else ignores him to do their own thing. He can also get INCREDIBLY upset if someone else uses his characters and concepts in ways he doesn't like - see, for example, his meltdown over Satanus - which also explains some of the ways other writers approach his stuff.
In a nice coincidence I found this Boo Cook Nemesis the other day.
Luke Cook
I'm always unsure what to make of the later books of Nemesis. I can't help but shake the feeling that Mills undermines some of the points he was making earlier by 'revealing' Nemesis' true motivations.
The early books of Nemesis seem to suggest that one shouldn't hate and fear others because of what they look like and that even under the skin we've got far more in common than we realise - no one type of person has a monopoly on virtue, vice, intelligence or stupidity and even the worst monsters have redeeming features like families they love (complete with embarrassing elderly relatives). Later, this develops into a theme of how one should reject extremism, and how heedlessly pursuing a crusade can eventually cost you everything you set out protect in the first place. By constantly escalating their conflict Nemesis and Torquemada destroy each other in every way that matters, to the point where all they have left is their hate for each other. Rejecting everything he was out of pain and despair over his own mistakes and deciding to embody a cold and distant ideal instead makes sense given the story, but it turns out it was always a game and none of it really mattered. He kept up the charade even in his private thoughts that only the reader was privy to. It also seems to vindicate Torquemada, at least a tiny bit, which seems a bit counter-intuitive. The next bit shows that there is a reason for that, but I'd rather not go into more detail just yet.
Mills is often criticised for going into a really self-indulgent period of writing here that lasted well into the 90s and even early 00s. That's really borne out by this next book, which is set in a version of contemporary Britain that allows Mills to comment on the ills of his day in a really blunt way. Blunt even by his standards, I mean.
Sebastian Cooper
BOOK NINE: DEATHBRINGER
Cooper Ortiz
I've never actually storytimed this chapter before, that's vaguely exciting.
Deathbringer brought back John Hicklenton from The Two Torquemadas for art duties. He's slightly more restrained on this one. Slightly.
Austin Thomas
...
Levi Nguyen
...
Connor Johnson
...
Liam Green
...
Dominic Ward
2000AD started in 1977 and Deathbringer was published eleven years later, in 1988. Assuming that the core demographic of the first issue was 8-13 then the initial intake of readers were either in a college like this one or had just finished.
Torquemada, as we know, is the most evil man in history. What could he possibly be in the 1980s but a landlord
Aiden Cooper
A landlord and a skinhead.
Nathaniel Nguyen
A-Levels (Advanced Level) are a standard qualification intended for school leavers aged around 18.
Jace Hall
...
Thomas Price
Oh look, jackbooted policemen with visored helmets with a cross-shape over the nose. How terribly droll.
Adrian Kelly
...
Caleb Cook
What happened to Torquemada's decaying? I thought killing his former selves would have killed him in spirit, and even though Nemesis went to stop Thoth from killing the 1st Torquemada, Nemesis himself ended up blasting his face off with a fire breath. Yet this didn't seem to hurt future Torquemada that much.
Ah, who cares, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey ... stuff.
Colton Lewis
The look and battlecries of Torquemada's thugs are based on football hooligans and skinheads. Second-generation punks (ie. the ones in the 80s) were often ex-punks and Oi! is even a distinct sub-genre of music en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oi! youtube.com/watch?v=P_N_ojt_HOs
During the 1980s the significance of political affiliation grew enormously among many skinhead groups, splitting the movement into left and right wing camps. Tabloid media at the time concentrated on the extreme right fringe, popularising the view of the skinhead as a violent fascist idiot. That's also the bit Mills (who think of himself as a punk and something of an anarchist) concentrates on.
Any references you see to D.M.s are to steel-toed Doc Martin boots.
Its not perfectly clear, but Torque's still somewhat rotten - that's why he has the nose plaster, its to cover a gaping hole. The first Torquemada was important because he was a particularly awful iteration that was next on Thoth's hit list, presumably there would have been even earlier ones going back to the beginning that would have caused even more damage.
You're right though, he's a whole lot worse in The Two Torquemadas, to the point you can see his whole spine and most of the back of his skull in some parts. He's also looking remarkably intact considering the Terminators had to cut him out of his armour using nuclear cutters at the end. Its explained at least a little bit by the fact that he's been treated for his injuries for ten years longer than Nemesis has been here, but its still a bit of a plot hole.
Thomas Miller
...
Gabriel Green
...
Blake Kelly
...
Oliver Turner
...
Liam Thomas
Of course Margaret Thatcher supports Torquemada. I'm honestly surprised she didn't turn out to be Torquemada in a wig.
Nicholas Nelson
...
Kevin White
...
Carter Watson
Hard to look a cool and mysterious alien wizard in a wife beater.
Dominic James
...
Elijah Watson
I think that's the point. That, and to show the increasing parallels between him and Torquemada.
Jonathan Gonzalez
...
Benjamin Powell
Is that why Torquemada's neck is so elongated?
Wyatt Morgan
A Giro, or Giro Transfer, is a payment made from one bank account to another instigated by the payer not the receiver. In the 1980s, before the rise of electronic payments, the fortnightly "giro" payment was the normal way of distributing benefit payments.
Hunter Rogers
Never thought of it that way, but that seems very plausible.
Isaac Hill
This is Torquemada's take on one of Nemesis' recurring speeches , to hammer home the theme again.
