Nemesis Is An Awful Comic – Don’t Make It Into A Film Too

A film version of the Nemesis comic, from Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, appears to be edging closer.

Fox had originally snapped up the rights for a movie based on the book, but The Tracking Board is reporting that Warner Bros. has now taken on the project, with Joe Carnaghan (Smokin’ Aces) on board to direct.

According to the report, Carnaghan – along with his brother Matthew Michael Carnaghan – has written the screenplay.

Millar projects have proven popular with studios looking to adapt comics, with movies like Kick Ass and Kingsman: The Secret Service performing well at the box office.

There is a problem to consider here though. Nemesis is wretched. It’s unquestionably one of the worst things I’ve ever read, comic book or otherwise.

The story follows a supervillain calling himself Nemesis, who is essentially supposed to be an evil version of Batman. He targets the police chief who had imprisoned his criminal father, who then subsequently committed suicide. Nemesis uses his vast resources to travel the world, developing his violent skills, before embarking on a grotesque mission of revenge.

The sheer scale of the unpleasantness in this comic is beyond belief. It’s not just the violence, which is a feature of most Millar comics and becomes stale after a while.

What’s really appalling is just how nasty it is. This comic features the forced insemination of a young girl by her gay brother. Her womb is then rigged to explode if anyone attempts to abort the pregnancy.

Read those two sentences again. If you can take some enjoyment from that, then you are made of hardier stuff than me. Personally, it turned my stomache reading that section of the comic. It’s just vile and hateful.

And then there’s the ending. I won’t spoil it for you just in case you are crackers enough to want to read this comic. But trust me when I say it is one of the most laughably terrible endings of any comic book, ever. It’s so insultingly bad that it is difficult to believe that Millar has anything other than utter contempt for the people that read his comics.

There is a common thread between the various film adaptations of Millar’s work. They all change the source material in significant ways. Wanted barely resembles the comic. Kick Ass takes plenty from the original comics, but manages to make it more light-hearted and fun which fundamentally changes the feel of the story (and I say that as someone who actually loved the comic).

As for Kick Ass 2, while the movie is rubbish, it’s still a significant step up on the appalling mess that is the comic. Much as with Nemesis, it’s a book that seems to take glee in coming up with the most appallingly vile things to subject its characters – and by extension, the reader – to.

So there’s my hope. If we absolutely have to have a Nemesis movie, I just hope that it takes as little as possible from the source material as it can. Just the name and the ‘evil Batman’ gimmick will do.

The world doesn’t deserve a faithful film adaptation of this comic.