Nemesis 27: B&B #193

#27

Brave and the Bold #193 (December 1982)

Synopsis: 

The story begins with Batman swinging through Washington, DC (!?) when a statue of Justice explodes right below him. He catches the two terrorists responsible, who turn out to be cheap Chicago hoods. 

Confused, Batman remembers what happened that morning. As Bruce Wayne he was reading about the recent bombings in DC, and "Alfred" talked of a cancer that is Evil. Bruce immediately knew this wasn't the real Alfred. When confronted, "Alfred" admits to being Nemesis, who needs to contact the Batman. Nemesis leaves a note for the Batman to meet him that night outside Washington. We're now all caught up. 

Batman arrives at the meeting place, which is Marjorie Marshall's home. (Nemesis sent her on a vacation so that she would not become involved in his activities.) Nemesis explains to the Caped Crusader that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is behind the recent bombings, but that they are being financed by Irene Scarfield, of the mob-ruling Council. Nemesis explains that Senator Thomas "Long Tom" White is sponsoring a major anti-crime bill that, if passed, will cripple organized crime. The Council is making a delivery of guns and explosives to the terrorists, in exchange for a "random" explosion somewhere that will accidentally on purpose kill Senator White. Nemesis has learned where the drop-off is, so he asks Batman to go with him to stop it. 

The two heroes arrive and interrupt the arms exchange. While fighting the terrorists, they face-off against a rogue they did not know about named Bloodclaw. While Batman is battling this deadly adversary, Nemesis succeeds in blowing up the armaments. Then, they let the terrorists escape so that they can be tracked back to their hide-out. 

The heroes split up. Batman goes after the terrorists and Nemesis goes back to tracking the Council. To do so, Nemesis changes back into Irene's boyfriend, Peter. 

However, once the terrorists return to their hide-out, Bloodclaw finds the listening device that Batman placed on him. He destroys it, but knows Batman will probably find them regardless. He begins preparations for Batman and Nemesis to arrive. 

Meanwhile, Batman bas arrived in the general area when the tracker is destroyed. With no other choice he searches every building in the area individually. He is afraid that he won't be able to discover the terrorists before they depart to pull off their assassination attempt on the Senator.  

At the same time, Irene sneaks off from her hotel, so Nemesis follows her. He trails her as she boats down the Potomac. 

Batman eventually finds the hide-out, but Bloodclaw has already led a group to try to assassinate Senator White. Batman overhears enough to be able to guess the attempt's location. He rushes there and confronts the terrorists, saving the Senator's life. 

Nemesis trails Irene to her island base, where he overhears their plans to kill Senator White, too. Not knowing that Batman is involved, Irene sets off their bomb-loaded helicopter to destroy the bridge where the assassination is supposed to take place, killing the Senator if he isn't dead already, as well as the terrorists! 

Nemesis drops in to stop the goons, then jumps into the helicopter. Unfortunately, it is controlled by Irene and her inventor associate, so he finds himself trapped. He uses his concussion gun on the blades of the helicopter, which damages it enough to make it crash back onto the island base. A huge explosion kills the goons, Irene, the inventor, and Nemesis himself.  

Before leaving Washington, Batman returns to Marjorie's home. Having learned Nemesis' motivations and history from their last meeting, Batman in tribute to him puts a lead weight labelled "Nemesis" on the side of the scale of justice on Marjorie's mantelpiece. The murder of Ben Marshall has finally been balanced out.

  

Commentary: 

This was the last installment of the NEMESIS series in the pages of The Brave and the Bold. It appeared to be the end of the character, Nemesis, as well. 

Unfortunately, this particular adventure didn't hit the heights that creator Cary Burkett had reached during some of Nemesis' earlier stories. For one thing, Burkett was not teamed with his long-time artist, Dan Spiegle. B&B lead artist Jim Aparo is excellent, but I would have liked to have seen Spiegle handle Nemesis' exit, as he did his debut. 

Also, from the story side of things it reads like Burkett was trying extra hard to make this a Batman story. The first six pages have no appearance by Nemesis at all. Then the two only manage to actually work together in the story for six pages. So really, as a Batman-Nemesis team-up, this story doesn't work as well as their previous meeting. One can imagine that this plot would have made a good two-or-three additional installments of the Nemesis series, stille ending with his self-sacrifice, but some editorial decision was made to end the series quicker, so the solo Nemesis story was "shoe-horned" into a Batman vs Bloodclaw story.  

Although it wasn't known at the time of this story, The Brave and The Bold was soon to be cancelled. Clearly, in DC's eyes Nemesis needed to be taken care of. As the letter column mentioned a few issues ago, the decision was to wrap the series up with the successful pursuit of the Council, and to not leave any story strings hanging. Then for the next five issues (which turned out to be the last five)  we got full-length Batman team-up stories. 

Obviously, a story that ends with the death of the hero is somewhat disappointing. In the majority of comic book stories that I have read, the hero is able to escape from death traps. So this issue's locked booby-trapped helicopter should not have been successful in killing Our Hero. In fact, it was incredibly jarring to read that Nemesis appeared to be trapped and killed. Then Batman actually finds a bit of torn uniform, which strongly implies that he found the body. I remember being sad that such a cool concept as NEMESIS was ending, especially with his death. B'Wana Beast is still alive, but Nemesis had to die? Come on! 

There are two specific points in this story that I would like to comment on. First, I really missed seeing anyone from his supporting cast appear. We don't ever learn how or even if his landlords, the elderly couple whose name I don't remember, learn about Tom's death. And it would have been nice to see Nemesis' regular informant again, too. But most obviously missing is his would-be love interest and associate, Valerie. Valerie could have easily been included in the action, and served as a bridge from this stand-alone story to the regular series. Marjorie Marshall wasn't shown, either, which I think was a mistake. A scene between her and Batman instead of Batman just sneaking into her house would have been better, I think. They met in the course of Batman's earlier meeting of Nemesis, so it wouldn't have been too much trouble to include her. 

Lastly, I want to comment on this scene: 

Nemesis is made up to look like mob boss Irene's boy toy, Peter. He goes back to the hotel suite which they are sharing. And.....what was his intention if she hadn't been mad at him? To put it bluntly, if she had wanted to have sex, what would he have done? He couldn't very well have slept with her, not only for moral reasons but also because she would have noticed that Nemesis' body wasn't Peter's. Yet there is no thought balloon about him needing to come up with some argument excuse to sleep on the couch, or to somehow stay out of her bed. For a character (and series) that has always had all the options planned, this read like a huge coincidence. It fell flat, and I wondered if this is what Burkett intended or if he had to re-write something quickly. 

So that's the end of the NEMESIS installments. Nemesis did end up re-appearing Post Crisis, most notably in the pages of SUICIDE SQUAD, but I am not going to cover those appearances. To me, Nemesis died in B&B #193. Rest in Peace, Tom. 

 Nemesis Fact File:  

• This was the second and last time that Nemesis teamed up with Batman in B&B.  
• As this was the only story in this issue, all of the letters printed about it in The Brave & The Bold #197 mentioned Nemesis in one way or another. However, the responses have almost nothing to do with Nemesis. See reprints below:     

NEMESIS 

created by Cary Burkett and Dan Spiegle