Review: Nemesis

Nemesis by Mark Millar
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Rating 1 out of 5 | Grade: F; Disappointing, Infuriating, Tiresome

Warning for expletives and a whole bunch of cursing. Read at your own peril.
Full Disclosure, the reviewer is a lifelong DC fan, and a hardcore Bat nerd. So, any biases that you may spot is intentional.

When the whole premise of your story can be summed up as 'Batman, but if he was an a**hole', you as a reader can be justified in the sense of apprehension that is building up within you.

And when you finish reading the story and realize that it is just as much of a shit stain that you surmised, you can breathe a sigh of relief at not being prejudiced at a story merely because they alluded to one of your favorite fictional characters in a negative light.

You see, unlike the dark, gritty, gratuitously violent and offensive works of Garth Ennis such as The Boys, which also features a negative portrayal of the Justice league and Batman, Mark Millar's Nemesis is nothing more than a shallow sensationalist cash grab.

As unsavory as some of the things which Garth explores in the Boys is, they have a purpose. In that story, he has laid out a world, where there are superheroes, and unlike the glorified version portrayed in mainstream comics, he shows how beings with such superhuman powers can act, well, like f**king a**holes. And it's believable, how Absolute power corrupts, so Absolute superpowers would corrupt absolutely.

It serves to give us an alternative narrative, as well as holding a mirror to the borderline fetishism that we as readers and fans have towards these characters, with, arguably no accountability for their actions, other than their own moral conscience.

While in this case, Nemesis, doesn't really contribute anything to this school of discussion, other than maybe, 'Uber rich dudes who're bored, engage in homicidal destructive hobbies with human lives at stake'. Which is something that a lot of horror movies have already explored in a much better man. Squid game as a most recent and popular example.

But when the whole hook, line and sinker of your story, is that this A**hole who is your titular character, goes around killing innocent people and cops, all to get some sort of kicks out of it, is lazy and boring as a character motivation.

Coming back to the boys, what makes a villain like homelander so compelling, is not just that he's a psychotic version of Superman, it's also that his sense of entitlement, narcissism combined with the screwed-up upbringing he had, combined with the perpetual high that invincibility grants him, makes the worst part of his already bad personality to manifest in violent and disturbing manner.

Like a child throwing a tantrum when they don't get what he wants. There is a method to his madness.

As opposed to Nemesis, who is shrouded in mystery, and other than doing a whole bunch of stunts and gymnastics, we never get to know what this guy's deal is. What happened in his life, that he became such an a**hole? Or was he this homicidal to begin with.

When you don't have a solid base with which your readers can relate to the characters, even negative ones, the whole story amounts to nothing more than a bunch of lightshow and fireworks, much like the mediocre content that Disney-Marvel seems to pump out these days.

In closing statements, I'm really miffed that I had to close out the final days of 2022 with this heap of garbage, pardon my French, and go read something else.

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