Nemesis #4 (of 4)

[superboyprime]

The comic's backmatter gives the genesis of this cover:

"Here's a little extra treat for all of you Nemphomaniacs. Just to prove his renaissance man-ishness, Mark decided to put the keyboard away and pick up a pencil and draw the variant cover for this issue."



The good guys eventually succeed in killing Nemesis.

Comments

[tsunamiwombat]

Ten Years?

That is some motherfucking Xanatos Chessthere.

[nezchan]

Is it just me, or does that "ten years" thing completely blow the suspension of disbelief here?

Not that the bubble hadn't been blown already with the excesses that made the reader focus on Millar coming up with sick shit more than the characters actually doing them...

[thokstar]

Given that the Department of Homeland Security didn't exist 10 years ago, yes, yes it does.

(I realize this takes place in like 2020 or something. But it's more fun to think of the ridiculousness that would be required to predict the both the existence and the name of the Department of Homeland Security in the year 2000.)

[nezchan]

Even to predict there'd be a market for the idle rich to become supervillains is a stretch beyond anything I'm limber enough for.

[thokstar]

But there's always a market for the idle rich to become supervillains.

[nezchan]

Mmm, the "at the moment" phrasing makes it seem like a fad that's recently cropped up, so he'd have had to foresee that it would crop up at a particular time and in a very, very specific way.

[icon_uk]

I think it's the "costumed" supervillians which are the fad rather than just being generically evil bastards.

[lucky_gamble]

After living through multiple highly publicized white collar crimes, i think that some of the rich have no problem stepping into the villain zone.

[liliaeth]

Oh that I could see, it's the part about the triplets that I find impossible to believe he could predict that.

[blackruzsa]

Given that Xanatos once had a coin delivered to himself after a few centuries by some Illuminati agents, ten years is pretty standard to match the trope.

[jlbarnett]

1000 years actually. But he used time travel.

[blackruzsa]

True. C: Real geniuses pre-plan.

[thanekos]

I wonder, just how many versions of that letter did Mysterious Power Broker Man draft up and leave at that hotel?

With different vintages, of course.

[pyrotwilight]

Soooo...Nemesis is a corporation? I...what.

[thokstar]

Millar so totally rewrote the ending when he heard about Batman, Inc.

[big_daddy_d]

Quite a plausible theory.

[espanolbot]

Why not, not like the original version of Nemesis wasn't inspired by the Batman villain the Wrath anyway.

[proteus_lives]

Huh.

Not as bad as I thought it would be. But there are a lot of pages I'm not seeing.

[sadoeuphemist]

So..the bad guy was God the whole time?

[psychopathicus_rex]

So Nemesis is an institution, then. Eh, it's been done. I'm not impressed.

[jlroberson]

Interesting shot there at the end, at Hollywood. A bite, in fact, at the very hand that feeds him. Except it's more like he's the hand feeding THEM. So it seems a mite hypocritical as Millar is a prime mover in Hollywood's current glut of superhero stuff. And that this is obviously destined to be a movie(the whole comic is basically a storyboard). And Millar is also a major culprit of the past decade's attempts to make comics storytelling more like movies--and not even GOOD movies, but the kind Emmerich or Bay do. Which I think is a mistake, as commercial as it might seem, because comics and film really have nothing in common as media. Which was why, for instance, as messy as it was, I liked Bendis & Cho's MIGHTY AVENGERS because of the massive number of panels and thought balloons. It was nice looking at a mainstream comic that was ACTING like a comic.

That said, I wasn't expecting any more of this than well-crafted diversion and it delivered as far as that's concerned. I'm used to Ennis and Mills, so its pure meanness doesn't put me off. It's a hell of a lot more fun to read than KICK-ASS, which I found repulsive, though that might have had to do with the strange, gratuitous liberal-bashing. What exactly IS MIllar's understanding of American culture? Because Hit-Girl's--and her dad's--expressed beliefs did not seem ironically meant. MiIlar's been spouting that weird sort of seeming RW pandering ever since ULTIMATES and I'm not sure if any satire is intended by it. If so it's clumsy.

[kaete]

The funny thing is that it's not really "biting" the hand that feeds him. Hollywood loves *anything* that focuses on Hollywood, whether the attention is positive or negative. Hell, darker, cynical works get slavered over even more.

He pretty much gave this the perfect ending to make sure some producer is even more guaranteed to pick this up. Who wouldn't be tempted by an ending that shows himself as the ultimate , untouchable power behind the scenes?

[lucky_gamble]

Wow, the way you put it, Hollywood could be part of one of The Plastics in high school. The attention slob.

[darkblade]

You say that like it is a new development.

[hybrid2]

Right,the henchmen "retire" after every job.

[thanekos]

The Golden Parabellum, Nemesis called it.

[jetwolf]

While I haven't read the series (nor will go out of my way to do so), the revolver at the edge of the frame pointing at his temple seems to allude that in the next panel he's going to pay for buying into that ridiculous story.

Which he fully deserves. Seriously, has he never seen a movie?

[stubbleupdate]

So the cops knew that internal affairs were setting them up?

[lonewolf23k]

Reading that title blurb, "Is there anything this Bastard isn't Capable Of?"

I'd say yes. He can't even begin to get me interested in this mini-series.

[nezchan]

I'm sort of wondering why they're so proud of him apparently tracing a photo.

[cyberghostface]

I'm moderately happy that the series didn't end with Nemesis defeating the Gordon proxy in a cruel and humiliating fashion, as I was expecting.

Although how could whoever write the letter know that the girl would have three triplets, or that they would be carried to term? I mean, maybe he would have known about the impregnation, but the results?

[espanolbot]

Carefully dosing her with fertility meds without her knowledge maybe? And if she ended up with more than one kid then fudge the ultrasound scans and chuck away the surplus children.

[lordmcdeath]

The waiter is being paid to lie and doing it badly. Do I win a Millar no-prize?

Scratch that, it would probably be filled with antrax.

[halloweenjack]

Yeah, this is about as dumb as I thought it would be. At least now we know what it would be like if Millar tried to write Ozymandias.

[espanolbot]

It is unintentionally funny that a lot of Miller's villains these days seem to be reflective of the attitude of the villains from Grant Morrison's Batman run.

Only with Grant good triumphs and the traditional supervillains dispose of the new ones in the most humiliating ways possible.