User blog:Mattia Garavini/Pure Evil proposal: Torquemada



Be pure and be vigilant fellow members of villais wiki cause i'm on a roll with complete monster villains these days. the PE candidate of today. Torquemada, the twisted tyrant of the Termight empire and one of the most evil villains in 2000 AD Comics (which says alot).

What's the work?
Nemesis the Warlock is a grimdark space opera, with moments of black humor, comic book series written by infamous british author and all around edgelord Pat Mills, with the artwork of Kevin o'Neill. It was published on the pages of 2000 AD Magazine, of Judge Dredd fame. It's also one of the inspirations for Warhammer 40,000.

Nemesis the Warlock takes place in the distant future where Earth (called now Termight) and much of the known galaxy is ruled by totalitarian and expansionist Termight Empire, which follows the ideology of human supremacy and genetic purity to the extent of a genocide policy towards alien lifeforms and offspring of humans and aliens. This empire is led by Torquemada, whose power is backed by a cult of personality and religious following revolving around him. The Termight Empire keeps expanding in the galaxy, taking over one planet after another and massacring their alien inhabitants. Despite the might and humancentric ideology of the Empire, the life of the average citizen ("Termite") in Earth tends to be controlled, repressed and likely to end violently (literally: in one short story it is said outright that deaths from natural causes are few and far between).

The Termight Empire is resisted by an alliance of alien races of galaxy as well as a resistance movement of human dissidents opposing the rule of Torquemada. Both of these are more or less led by an alien anti-hero known as Nemesis. Belonging to the race of powerful, demonic aliens known as Warlocks, Nemesis is both a fearsome warrior and mighty wizard, who on several occasions brings forth his view of humans as trash that deserve no mercy. While Nemesis and his allies gain several important victories over the Termight Empire, they constantly fail to bring down the entire Empire, with Torquemada managing to get away with his life and Nemesis' plans to finish Torquemada failing or backfiring spectacularly. At least until the last chapters.

Who is he and what he has done?
Torquemada is the religious, xenophobic supreme ruler of the Termight Empire (Earth in the far future) with an immense hatred of aliens, who he considers a plague. He is Nemesis the Warlock's archenemy and the big bad of the series. He is considered the ultimate incarnation of human evi.

Even as a kid, he hated aliens even before being enslaved by a group of space pirates for several years, a situation which only made him determined to wipe them all out regardless of being guilty or innocent. He started as a chief of the Tube Police, but after having seized control by usurping his own brother and locking him in a madhouse with a disfigured face, Torquemada rules humanity and leads campaigns that kill billions of aliens. He also tortures and murders many humans, including children, just for disagreeing with him, or just to make sure they're not alien sympathisers anyways, or even if they’re merely in his way; even his supposedly-beloved wife Candida is basically discarded in favor of his crusade. Torquemada provokes a war and sabotages peace between humanity and aliens so that he'll have an excuse to exterminate them. Despite his rhetoric, Torquemada is a hypocrite who has no issues with using alien magic and life force to keep himself alive by murdering them, body jacking humans and aliens alike. When sent to the past, Torquemada's actions horrify even the original Tomas De Torquemada of the spanish inquisition, one of his earlier incarnations, before Torquemada murders Nemesis's young son Thoth. When he overthrows a rival, Torquemada's murder of him is a torture considered far too graphic to be shown. Torquemada even uses an alien to kill people, including his own men, hoping to turn humanity against Nemesis. In the end, Torquemada final plan is to activate his self-described "Final Solution": a bomb with the explosive potential of intergalactic magnitude to annihilate all aliens and any human who has ever come into contact with one.

Freudian excuse
Him being a slave of space pirates for several years as a young boy is a very weak excuse compared to the perverted atrocities he did against both innocent aliens and his fellow humans, and he's driven more by his ego and sadism than a genuine desire of defending mankind from alien threats.

Heinous standards
Torquemada's actions make him worthy of being the ultimate incarnation of human evil. In fact, most of his actions and the crimes that he has committed are seen as pure evil worthy moments. He has so many of them that the comic narration even lampshades it as when Torquemada was brought to trial in the final arc, it took the courtroom over a week just for them to read the charges against him. He, alongside Judge Death, sets the standard for depraved and pitiless 2000 AD villains.

Final verdict
Oh yes, this is an easy one. They really went all out to make Torquemada as despicable, petty and ruthless as it gets.