Read more about Nemesis the Warlock at: Wikipedia

Official Site: 2000 AD

Nemesis the Warlock is a story created by writer Pat Mills and artist Kevin O'Neill which appeared in the pages of the weekly comics anthology 2000 AD. The title character, a fire-breathing demonic alien, fights against the fanatical Torquemada, Grand Master of the Terran Empire in Earth's distant future, and his attempts to exterminate all alien life. Grotesque, hyperbolic and violent, the series possesses a dark wit and biting satirical intent.

The series began in 1980, in issue 167 of 2000 AD, with a story called Comic Rock "The Terror Tube", in which a freedom fighter called Nemesis escaped from Torquemada, the chief of the Tube Police, after a protracted chase through a complex travel-tube system on a planet called Termight, later revealed to be Earth. All that was seen of Nemesis was the outside of his spaceship, the Blitzspear (See 1983 200AD Annual The Secret Life of the Blitzspear). The roots of the story lay in an episode of Ro-Busters (also by Mills and O'Neill) in which the heroes escaped from the police in a car chase through a tube network, which IPC management objected to. In "Terror Tube" the police were portrayed as a cross between the Spanish Inquisition (Torquemada is named after the notorious inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada) and the Ku Klux Klan (or from Spanish Easter penitents), making it easier to position them as the bad guys.

"Terror Tube" was the first of a planned series of one-offs inspired by popular music, called "Comic Rock" - in this case The Jam's "Going Underground". The series never got going, but did produce a second Nemesis story, a two-parter called "Killer Watt", in which Torquemada chased Nemesis through a bizarre teleport system based on telephone lines.

These stories proved popular, prompting Mills and O'Neill to develop a regular series, Nemesis the Warlock, which combined the early high-concept science fiction with fantasy in the "sword and sorcery" mould. Torquemada was promoted from chief of the Tube Police to Grand Master of Termight. Nemesis was revealed as a demonic alien with a face based on the nose of his Blitzspear, fighting to protect aliens from Torquemada's genocidal tyranny, although his inhuman attitude and anarchic "Khaos" philosophy made his motivations ambiguous. Such as in Book Five; The Vengeance of Thoth; during a chase; Nemesis is forced to hijack a bus full of children, which ends up crashing, killing all onboard as he escapes.

Nemesis the Warlock has not been a contender in any CBUB matches.