Nemesis the Warlock

Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill introduced Nemesis in 2000 AD in 1980. The alien freedom fighter opposes Torquemada, ruler of a fanatically anti-alien human order based in Termight.

The chase between them grows into a sprawling conflict involving religion, empire, and rebellion. Later artists, including Bryan Talbot, expanded the series' visual world.

The strip reverses the usual human-centered alien invasion story. Its monstrous-looking hero is the opponent of a brutally exclusionary human regime.

Mills uses a sensational serial adventure to attack authoritarian certainty. The grotesque comedy makes the politics sharp without reducing the story to a sermon.

Termight's tunnels, living craft, and alien cultures make the future both technological and baroque. The speculative world externalizes a struggle over who is allowed to count as a person.

Torquemada's ideology turns difference into a target. Nemesis's resistance therefore becomes a defense of plurality across species and worlds.

O'Neill's intricate, jagged forms give the series a menacing energy. Its machines and bodies can seem almost fused, making the society itself feel diseased.

The visual excess is purposeful: a regime obsessed with purity inhabits a crowded, mutable world it cannot control.