Nemesis the Warlock: Terror Tube

We liked Valerian – a French series which may have influenced Star Wars – but Caza was the most relevant here. Each month Caza would produce a self-contained story featuring a crazy fantasy world.

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

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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Terror Tube

I worked the story out in synopsis form and then let Kevin break it down into individual scenes so it suited his pacing. Initially, Kevin sketched conventional cops, but I felt they needed something extra and suggested they were eerie monk-like figures. That led to Torquemada as their master and also to the gundola, a tube gondola driven by the pilot at the rear, surely one of the wildest of Kevin’s creations. As a kid, or a collector today, I would have loved a gundola and I’m still surprised no one has ever produced one. 

The logic behind Terror Tube was 100% French comics, in particular Metal Hurlant. It had also inspired 2000AD generally, with very little American comic influence: the notable exception being Warren Comics which, themselves, had a European flavour.  

We liked Valerian – a French series which may have influenced Star Wars – but Caza was the most relevant here. Each month Caza would produce a self-contained story featuring a crazy fantasy world. So one episode featured a tower block over-run by pirates. Another told a story about a space ark. Each story was wilder than the next.

We liked the idea of jumping from one crazy idea to another, rather than building on one SF idea alone. In that respect, we were probably out of step with British comic sensibilities which liked more traditional world building, as you will see.

Alongside Caza were the works of Philippe Druillet, reprinted in the UK by Dragon’s Dream Publishing (which I believe was connected to Roger Dean) at that time. The story that I especially admired was the original Lone Sloane Delirius book, which I believe is stronger than Philippe’s other works because it had a writer: Jacques Lob. It featured the mad Priests of the Red Redemption who believed the Universe must be cleansed by fire and blood. I felt Torquemada’s Terminators should be something along those lines.

In recent years I met Druillet at the Angoulême Comic Festival and told him how inspiring I found his work. He laughed and clapped me on the back, and jokingly said I’d be hearing from his lawyers. In the celebration issue of  Volume Ten of my Requiem Vampire Knight, (with art co-creator Olivier Ledroit), Druillet drew a special pin up for us.

I had Torquemada urge the citizens of Termight: ‘Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!’ I had no idea what it meant – I just wanted something ludicrous for Torquemada to say. Bear in mind, to figure out the logic of the Terminators would have required more development time which I simply could not afford to take off.

Similarly, I had no idea who or what Nemesis was.

Pursuant of the crazy one-off stories by Caza, I was greatly struck by the wild rock videos of the time. And I’d seen a comic strip version of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ by the Rolling Stones that had appeared in Heavy Metal magazine. So I knew there was a connection between comics and rock music which I wanted to explore. I envisaged taking a music title and using it to write a crazy story. I felt by calling it a Comic Rock story it would provide a loose Caza-like theme and keep us away from what can be a straitjacket of orthodox world-building, which is exciting for a while but often eventually runs out of steam. 

A variation on 2000AD’s Future Shocks, if you like.

I wanted the series Kevin and I started to remain super hot and open to similar creators. Brian Bolland expressed an interest, and just imagine what artists Brendan (Mad Max) and Jim McCarthy (Sex Pistols) would have done with the idea.

It would have been pointless explaining any of this to 2000AD editorial. I’m pretty certain they’d never seen Caza and the logic of the series-building I was thinking of would have been lost on them. You’ll see more of that in a while. Fortunately, they just left us to get on with it, which was a big improvement on Bartholomew a few years earlier.

So Kevin drew the most wonderful Comic Rock cover with the caption: This comic should be played at 45 rpm. Fantastic!

If we didn’t see the Comic Rock concept all the way through, blame it on the lack of development time needed to execute it properly. Instead, we were forced to make things up as we went along, for better or worse.

Terror Tube was a big hit with the readers and 2000AD editorial understandably, if unimaginatively, would have just wanted more and more of the same. Classic British safe comic thinking, but we were following the French model, a more exciting and dangerous role model and hence our next story: Killer Watt.

Next week: a casualty of the readers’ vote charts!