Nemesis
41 years ago - Thomas Andrew Tresser is born.
24 years ago - 17-year-old Thomas's brother Craig attends the Air Force Academy.
23 years ago - 18-year-old Thomas begins attending MIT.
19 years ago - 22-year-old Thomas graduates from MIT and begins working for a tech firm, but when he discovers that his brother Craig has left the military to work for the secret extra governmental organization S.H.A.D.E., he returns to school to study criminology, intent on following in his brother's footsteps.
17 years ago - 24-year-old Thomas attends training to become an Argus agent, but is recruited into their tech division.
14 years ago - 27-year-old Thomas becomes a senior developer in Argus's tech devision, working on innovations in disguise technology.
11 years ago - 30-year-old Thomas's brother Craig stages an assassination of the Ben Marshall, Head of Intelligence of Argus. Seeing the trail of injustice caused by his brother & wanting to balance the scales, Thomas goes rogue from Argus, staging his own death and begins using his own spy tech, targeting S.H.A.D.E. as Nemesis.
8 years ago - 33-year-old Thomas's brother Craig escapes from prison. Thomas tracks him, actively working to protect him from being re-captured, until he can find the location of his information safehouse built inside Mount Rushmore. They fight on top of the monument, and Craig falls to his death.
7 years ago - 34-year-old Thomas exposes S.H.A.D.E's history to Scandal Savage, who helps him shut down the agency. He turns himself in to Argus, going to prison for his time as a rogue agent.
5 years ago - 36-year-old Thomas is released from prison, and earns a provisional appointment as an Argus agent.
2 years ago - 39-year-old Thomas is recruited by Amanda Waller as the new field leader of the Suicide Squad, using his past crimes as leverage against him. He begins working to undermine her control of the organization.
Thomas Tresser's Nemesis is a character idea that feels like is should be a little more prevelant in DC's large tapestry of characters. The smart, gadget-using spy is a popular concept, and while you could argue that there are other characters that might fit the role, Nemesis is unquestioningly DC's most prominent reflection of the trope. His relatively small role is likely just do the the era in which he was created whe DCs attention was elsewhere... but it's easy to imagine a more prominent spy thriller version of the character.
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Nemesis Comic HistoryNemesis first appeared as a back up story in Brave and the Bold #166 in 1980, a creation of writer Carey Burkett and artist Dan Spiegle, both of whom did quite a bit of work on the series. Thomas Tresser was a deliberate attempt to create a classic spy character for DC in the vein a Marvel's Nick Fury. He was a former tech guy for a government agency that was blacklisted when his brother, a fellow agent, assassinated the head of their agency. He stages his own death and begins working as a rogue agent to 'balance the scales of justice'.
There's a lot to like in the Nemesis concept; Tresser had a lot of neat specialty spy gear like his ability to rapidly deploy quick-desolving disguises worn one over the other, or his special knockout toxin gun. In practice, the story was perhaps a little overly self-serious, when it probably should have enjoyed itself more. It actually reminds me of all those 80s era tv action series... the sort of program that really lived or died on the charima of it's lead actor, like Remmington Steele, Magnum PI, or Macguyver. Unfortunately, Thomas didn't really have a lot of charisma on the page, a fact that was definitely not helped by his notably bad 80s haircut. Still, Nemesis continued to appear for a full two years in Brave and the Bold. |
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Nemesis returned a few years later as one of the founding members of Ostrander's new Suicide Squad, his cool disguise powers bringing a lot of utility to the team. This role actually saw him appearing quite a bit in the latter half of the 80s, as the Suicide Squad was heavily featured in a lot of major crossovers.
While he would make occasional appearances, Nemesis was largely absent for most of the 90s and early 2000s. This changed with Allan Heinberg's new Wonder Woman series in 2007 which reimagined Diana by giving her a secret identity as a secret agent with the DEO, and gave her a partner in Thomas Tresser. The character was largely reimagined here, now actively working for a government agency rather than as a rogue agent. He was still notably roguish, but his main purpose now was to serve as a straight man, and potential love interest, for Diana. When Gail Simone took over the series she leaned harder into this idea, having her actively court him by the traditions of her people, even going so far as having him become an honorary Amazon. This characterization essentially defined the remainer of his appearances, although he did have a small notable miniseries of his own in 2010. DC had tried to introduce concepts like Brother Eye and the Global Peace Agency from Jack Kirbys OMAC series into modern continuity during the Infinite Crisis crossover, and tried to tie him into them here. |
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Our Nemesis StoryThere's actually a ton to like in Nemesis' original concept. The whole idea of a secret agent going rogue and using his own spy technology to take apart an evil organization really seems like it would be great if it was given the space and resources to thrive, which is I think is why he's continued to appear all over DC in lots of tiny little references. We can all see, very clearly, that there was a great idea here that just needed better execution.
For our story, we primarily wanted to make sure we gave some very deliberate beats to set up his origin, giving him a background in technology before he starts working toward becoming a government agent. His relationship with his brother should be a core feature of his story, and we even invented a beat where he finally gets to confront his brother; first working to protect him so he can be tracked, and then finally engaging in a fight on top of a monument. It should all feel like a smart but extremely high-budget spy thriller. We've also made Tresser a huge part of the evolution of the covert organizations in our story, because he actually does eventually succeed. He's responsible for the dissolution of S.H.A.D.E. He'll hand himself in and, after some jailtime, start provisionally returning to Argus... until Amanda Waller turns up to manipulate him into becoming the new field leader of the Suicide Squad. I love the idea of this cool spy character agreeing, outwardly, to work with her, but to then secretly work behind the scenes to take her down. It's a really cool expression of a character archetype that can be so much fun. |
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