#nemesis dc

[mothfraek]

I'm finally reading Wonder Woman 2006.

[eve-edens]

i HAVE to assume this is nemesis’ secondary disguise under the first. WHY DOESN’T SHE LOOK LIKE ROBERT REDFORD

[spikyhairselinas]

Ok I finally have time for a little (probably too long) review of Nemesis' storyline in Brave and the Bold so here it is:

First of all, with how comics sometimes have a tendency to jump around multiple plotlines every few issues it was a nice change of pace to read a storyline that is generally linear and straightforward: Nemesis goes through an arc, gaining more experience and changing somewhat as he hunts down the people involved in his mentor's death and his brother's brainwashing and the structure of events is easy to follow. Interestingly, it doesn't quite follow the classic spy- and superhero story convention of the hero working their way up to the Big Bad as the final enemy. Instead Nemesis gets rid of the head of the council (aptly named 'The Head') very quickly and then works his way through the remaining high ranking council members.

This actually, I think, aids the main theme, that of Nemesis' guilt over his mentor's 'unjust' death and his quest for revenge (which really isn't as much a quest for revenge as one for punishment and a case of projection) never really ending, until he himself is gone, too. He 'gets' his revenge fairly early on when he kills the Big Bad who orchestrated everything - usually this would have been the big triumph where justice was served and the plotlines have been fulfilled. But as Nemesis points out, neither the Council Head's death, nor the deaths or otherwise imprisonments of the people responsible will 'weigh' enough to balance out the scales of justice that had been skewed when his brother was made to kill his mentor. He could have been getting rid of every 'criminal organization' on the planet and singlehandedly created world peace and it still wouldn't have been enough, not because his mentor's life was somehow worth more than other people's, but because ultimately the revenge he's named himself after was never directed at the Council and other 'criminals' involved with them, but at himself.

So naturally, the only thing that really balances out the scales is Nemesis' own death, and, really, if he hadn't been forced to stay in that helicopter to foil that last Council member's plan, he might have just as well found another way to end his own life and 'balance the scales'.

Ultimately Nemesis does all of this because of his own survivor's guilt over a parental figure's murder, which causes him to start an unending quest of vengeance against the 'criminal element' he deems responsible but which really is just an outlet for his own guilt and suicidal tendencies, with which he hopes to make up for having survived when his parental figure didn't.

He has, essentially, come down with a serious case of Batman, which makes it unsurprising that Bruce and him immediately click. And in the end it is Bruce who places the weight with Nemesis' name on it onto the scales to balance them, because he understood why Nemesis did what he did and that really his whole quest as a vigilante, just like Bruce's own, was never really about fighting as many criminals as possible, but about punishing himself and getting trapped in this sysiphean cycle forever until he ends.

(from Brave and the Bold (1955) #193)

[spikyhairselinas]

I probably should have expected that Nemesis' storyline would end like this (given his personality) but the ending with Bruce saying he wishes he'd had more time to get to know Nemesis and become his friend + this silent epilogue with the scales, that have been a recurring motif through this whole storyline, finally being balanced when Nemesis died, even though all the deaths or defeats of the criminals he hunted down didn't balance it before....it's a very thematically fitting end for him (well, before he comes back eventually ofc)

[xinakwans]

saw someone suggest bruce wayne/eve eden and i'll be honest that's funniest with the knowledge nemesis doesn't know batman is bruce wayne so nemesis being sad and forlorn that eve eden is dating some playboy gotham loser and lamenting to batman about said problem while batman sits there realizing he is someone else's rebound. send post

[spikyhairselinas]

Nemesis, being run through a trap gauntlet by a major crime boss: "wow this is just like DnD."

[spikyhairselinas]

of all the places Nemesis put one of his little calling card scales of justice figurines so far I've got to say "right on the chest of a guy who tried to kill him via a heart attack machine (but died from a heart attack himself in an ironic twist of fate)" has got to be the most theatrical one

[spikyhairselinas]

Nemesis apparently using his real firstname (Tom) as the first name for his aliases but switching out the last names is all fun and games but now a man called him "Mr. King" and as someone who has read the 2016 Batman run. well.