Full disclosure here: I am not a fan of writer Mark Millar. I feel like he always goes for pure shock value regardless of good characterization or a coherent story. With works like Civil War, for example, he butchered the New Warriors and Iron Man to get bigger explosions and horrified expressions on the faces of the readers. With The Ultimates he did the same thing, only this time he used the excuse that it was a new continuity. With his creator-owned comics like Wanted, he doesn’t even bother with characterization in the first place, creating hollow shells to move around on his checkerboard while he goes for one over-the-top moment after another.

I am not a fan.

But when our friendly Shopkeep Jason challenged me to read Millar’s new book, Nemesis, I couldn’t refuse. I took it home, I read it, and… I wish I could say this book pulled the veil from my eyes and I found a new respect for the story that I didn’t expect. But that would be a huge lie. Nemesis #1 was, in fact, exactly what I came to expect-giant explosions, lots of blood, prodigious F-bombs, and absolutely zero character.

Nemesis is the story of the world’s only super-villain, a terrorist whose goal is to unmask righteous people as liars and hypocrites and destroy as many innocent lives as possible in the process. As he cuts a swath through law enforcement agencies around the world, Chief Blake Morrow of the Washington, D.C. police department finds himself as the criminal’s next target. So the question is, is he righteous, or just another hypocrite?

Basically, what you’ve got here is an evil Batman running around killing people in as violent a fashion as possible. The “unmasking the righteous” angle is perhaps the only original part of the book, and even then it’s only original as a supervillain motivation. Most people who have that mindset just create internet aliases and trash people on their blogs. Nemesis just takes that mindset to the extreme. Morrow, as a character, is simply too good to be believed. He’s nice, he’s sweet, he bloody remembers that one of his officers has given up caffeine for Lent. Either he’s the most boring person on the planet, or he’s going to turn out to have the bodies of dead transients in his basement, which will be just another story we’ve seen a thousand times.

Steve McNiven does some good artwork, to be fair. He’s called upon to draw some interesting action scenes, and while the plot is soulless, at least the action looks good. He does good destruction and good gore, even if his villain looks exactly like someone chopped off Batman’s ears and washed his costume with a little bleach.

The cover of this comic, referring Millar’s most recent comic, says it “Makes Kick-Ass look like $#!T”. I didn’t read Kick-Ass and didn’t particularly want to see the movie. If this is the comic that puts that to shame, I’ll actively avoid it at all costs.