Nemesis makes Kick-Ass Look Like Kick-Ass
The creative evil genius Mark Millar and penciling wiz Steve McNiven reunite for Millar's newest potential blockbuster, Nemesis. I saw the cover, I saw the creative team and I was ready to go. What I got was something that really didn't move me like I was hoping it would. Does it have an intriguing premise? Yes. Did it have the typical Millar bad-assery we've come to expect? Absolutely. Did McNiven's pencilling put the icing on the cake? Certainly. The reason I only gave it a passable score is because everything just felt very shallow. Like Millar dialed it in. I'm going to keep reading it because I'm a fan of his work, but I feel this is a slow start.
My biggest problem to start with is our title character, Nemesis. I hear about this Batman/Joker combination thing and it just made me asking myself what was the point. Its the way I felt when I was reading this comic. I think the Batman comparison is especially interesting because when I was reading it, I instantly thought of Bane and his obsession with destroying Batman. That's sort of what you get with Nemesis, but he's going after police chiefs. What was better about Bane was the fact that we were introduced to him and learned what he was after before he went on to do the most famous maiming in comic history. We sort of get to Nemesis' motivation about taking down the arrogant, self-righteous police chiefs, but honestly that just makes him sound like a goth kid (no offense). I feel like Millar should have introduced us to the character in issue one then proceeded with the story because in the end, I still felt like I was in the dark. I didn't even care about the cop he's trying to take down. OK, so he's perfect, are we even going to be able to sympathize with him?
This issue did not accomplish much, but I have faith that Millar can bounce back by issue #2. Its worth a checking out if you want to see sick action scenes or just like a slam-bang action book, but other than that you can skip it.
