Nemesis analysis

Nemesis, 4 issue comic

Written by Mark Miller

              and illustrated by Steve McNiven

Published in 2010.

Nemesis follows the story of the worlds first supervillian as he has  targets the chief of police from different countries in Asia, who now targets a so called "supercop" working in Washington DC, Blake Morrow. In the first issue, Morrow is given a calling card with his name, time of death and way of death on it, which sets up the next 3 issues as he struggles to get one step ahead of Nemesis, who goes about his plan to destroy everything that Morrow stands for.

For my analysis i have choosen 2 pages from the fourth issue, pages 9 and 10, we have just found out that Morrows partner has been a plant from the start, actually working undercover for Nemesis there for the last 8 years.

Characters

 There are 3 characters involved in the 2 pages, Nemesis, the supervillian one of the main characters, chief of police Blake Morrow and what i would consider a secondary character, Stuart Lee, who is Morrows second in command.
Nemesis is clad in his usual all white costume, while Morrows is dressed in a suit, Lee is dressed in jeans and a light brown jacket.

Setting

The scene takes place moments after a SWAT team has been taken out by a trap laid by Nemesis. He had fed false information to a mole working for Morrows that he was in fact disguised as his own uncle, and hiding in plain sight the whole time.

However this was all made up as Nemesis reveals that he isn't even related to the Andersons, and that the real Mathew Anderson died in an Indian whore house after spending all his money. We have also just found out that Lee is a mole, put there by Nemesis a whole 8 years previously, showing the longevity of his plans when taking out these police chiefs.

The setting is very dark and the three characters are lit up as if on a stage.

Mise-en-scene

The scene itself does not have much going on in it in the background, as I said before, it is lit like a stage when theirs a characters soliloquy. And that is kind of whats happening. We have just got the news that Lee has been a mole the whole time, and now that Nemesis isn't even who he said he was. We find out that his only motivation for doing all this is that he is bored and rich. I feel this both adds and takes away from the entire story,on one hand he is a true psychopath, he is not doing this for revenge like we were led to believe, or for personal gain, he is already rich enough , he just wants to "see the world burn" as such, like he says at the end of the scene, "im rich and im bored, what else do you need to know".

Now on the other hand, we lose a layer of development from his past, all we really ever see of nemesis is his cool, doesn't care about anything attitude, and this back story had fleshed him out ever so slightly, without it he becomes just a 2 dimensional character again. More time was needed fleshing much of the characters in this comic in general, we don't really care when Morrows is forced to air out his dirty loungery because we have only spent a relatively short time getting to know him.

All I know that he is a good cop at all is that we were told it and then see him gunning down a few crack heads, i'm sure thats not really official police procedure.

Lee's revelation that he is a mole is quite good though, never see it coming, and the way he is "retired" just reflects the overall violence that runs through the comic.

In all the scene concentrates on the revelations of the bad guys, there are no wide shots of the background, its all very intimate.

Camera Work 

The first page starts with a close up of Nemesis head as he explains " what parents", then cuts to a behind the shoulder view of Morrows on the ground head looking down in confusion. The next panel cuts back to a close up of nemesis head again only now closer in an cutting off half of his right side, we see one eye, as he reveals that he is not Mathew Anderson.

The next panel then goes further out, we see all three characters, Morrows lowest down on the left, Nemesis standing up in the background and Lee, crouched looking down at Morrows with a sisister smile.As Lee is talking in the next image we can see part of a gun which may be aiming at Morrows or may be aiming at Lee as he explains that all of Nemesis henchmen retire after each job.

The next page then starts with a gruesome image of Lee s head getting blown off by Nemesis. The panel includes all three characters again, from the perspective of just behind Morrows shoulder.  Next panel has nemesis face kinda cut off  and tilted, we can only see one eye again as he explains"wll, thats one way of putting it".

we then get a high angle shot looking down on the two main characters, Morrows in a very theatricle position as he vents how he feels about nemesis, " is this what you bring to the world,Pain and suffering,"as nemesis stands with his arms down by his legs, gun smoking, " I think thats a pretty accurate assessment" 

Scene ends with Morrows in a close up shouting at nemesis, "who are you" as nemesis then replys in a seperate panel, that he is just rich and bored as he snaps his fingers.

Why I picked this scene

I picked this scene because, for one thing, it has a major revelation in it that totally changes the back story of the main character,nemesis.If anything it actually does reveal more about nemesis, that he doesn't need to be driven by any sense of revenge to commit these heinous acts, we see him for the true rich, spoiled psychopath that he is.I liked the comic book but i felt it lacked in depth and character development, we have seen all his plans before in other series, down to the choice he gives Blake at the end. Nothing is original except maybe for the fact that he is driven by being rich and bored.What if batman was the joker, is what the comic was dressed up to be like, and while the joker is driven by chaos, he also has his own personality and methods, he is also driven by other factors aswell.

In the scene we see how far ahead this was all planned by nemesis, he even says what he is going to do to his next victim, yet throughout the series thats all we ever see. Hes to far ahead, everything goes too well with him so we are not that suprised when he drops the bomb as such, for the whole series everything goes exactly to his plan, which I get, he seems unstoppable, he is a super villian after all, but I would have liked to see maybe an earlier issue that has his plan go horribly wrong so that we don't feel he is in total control of the situation.Maybe they were waiting for this moment to tie up the end, by then it was a bit too late for me though.