Nemesis The Warlock: Deadlock The Enigmass Variations

The Princess of the Silver Elves suggests Love is the solution. Then adds reprovingly, ‘I mean Pure Love’.

I’m blown away by Nemesis the Warlock: the Definitive Edition, Vols 1 and 2. My compliments to the publishers, Rebellion, and especially their designer Gemma Sheldrake for the truly inspired front and back covers.

Volume 2 is now on sale from the 2000AD store.

Such a Definitive Edition requires a Definitive Commentary, a companion piece for when you’re looking at the beautiful art by art-creator Kevin O’Neill and the other talented artists that followed him. So it’s time for The Secret History of Nemesis the Warlock, an episode by episode revelation of what really went on behind the scenes.

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Episode 2: The Enigmass Variations

All the sorcerers see the Enigmass as a threat that is relevant to their own magical tradition. This was undoubtedly inspired by my experience of seeing a UFO, which I’ve written about before. The kind I saw was no Spielberg CE3K awesome mothership, but a biological entity of the kind written about and photographed in the Cosmic Pulse of Life by Trevor James Constable, a book I see is now free on the internet archive. And perhaps foreshadowed in Conan Doyle’s The Horror of the Heights. Otherwise, such UFOs are never spoken about and certainly never featured in the media.

What made our encounter remarkable was that the people I was with saw the UFO as a beautiful silver ship, whereas I saw it as a kind of embryo, after my sceptical mind had tried to rationalise it at first by wondering if it was a hang-glider with lights before it drew so close I could see it was organic and could not be explained away.

I found this episode very amusing, but it is dark art and thus difficult to follow. I think this style was a trend in 2000AD at this time.

Episodes 3 & 4: The Enigmass Variations

Once again, the artwork is very dark and thus hard to follow. Not least because there is no dialogue in the action scenes. This is always a problem for a writer. If the art is clear, then dialogue is often not necessary. For example, I’ve just been looking at the Manga version of Requiem Vampire Knight, and there are pages of action with no dialogue which work well. But here, the art needs words to help the reader through the gloom.