Nemesis

Context

Nemesis is a DC Comics vigilante who appeared in 1980 (hence the haircut). He was both a spy type and a master of disguise. All the events depicted here took place pre-Crisis, but they were likely very similar post-Crisis.

This profile chiefly covers his 1980s appearances in The Brave and the Bold and Suicide Squad, plus various other 1980s and 1990s appearances. It continues with the Nemesis (Thomas Tresser) (Wonder Woman era) about the 2000s and beyond.

This profile has a companion profile of sorts. Reading the entry about the Council after this profile will give you further details about Nemesis’ adventures.

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Nemesis is a talented and well-trained FBI agent. He has extensive investigation and combat skills that he further developed as a vigilante. Unlike most agents, Nemesis is technically proficient – he’s in fact an excellent gadgeteer .

Note the lack of Genius in his DC Heroes RPG stats. Nemesis can “only” build Gadgets that are either variant of existing equipment (often with some Miniaturisation thrown in) or or a few years ahead of the available technology. His talent for planning gives him an Omni-Gadget.

For some reason, Nemesis wasn’t using Gadgets as much during his time with the Suicide Squad. Except of course for his masks and disguise.

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Master of disguise

Nemesis’s most distinctive tactic is using his quick-change masks technology. These masks are very lifelike, and along with appropriate clothing and his acting talent, Nemesis can pull daring feats of infiltration. Another edge is that enemies who know about his masks usually get paranoid — any man around them, at any moment, could be Nemesis !

However, Nemesis still has to imitate voices, mannerisms, etc. which has its limits. He’s a good actor, not an uncanny one. Thus, Nemesis tends to adopt the face of background individuals who do not talk much, such as butlers, guards, cleaning gents, etc. to reduce his chances to be discovered.

Knocking somebody out to take his clothes, wear a prepared mask of that person, and shoving the bound and gagged man in a handy broom closet is a reliable classic.

Other assets

Tresser’s main assets are his keen intelligence (in DC Heroes terms INT, WIL), drive and planning ability. He’s usually smarter than his opponents, and that is how he wins – not by shooting it out or punching people. Many older Nemesis stories are mostly about seeing how his clever plan unfolds and traps the criminals with a subtle series of manipulations and disguises.

He’s a capable action hero type. He can shoot, fight, drive, perform stunts, sneak around, etc.. He can generally handle ordinary thugs and criminals until somebody gets lucky, but his action competence is best described as being low cinematic .

When a firefight with multiple gunmen erupts, the first thing he does is to get cover (often by using furniture, such as flipping over a nearby table) and try to get out of there. If he doesn’t have a choice he’ll have to burn Hero Points  to shoot everyone before they can hit him.

As with most action heroes of his time, Nemesis knows pressure points to knock out a man with a touch (Martial Artist (EV) with a little special effect).

Headquarters

Nemesis’s apartment held extensive file cabinets with fiches and mugshots of criminals, an ample wardrobe for disguise purposes, disguise kits and products to create masks, reversible clothing for quick changes, that sort of things.

He later bought a building using Council money with a Lab, a gym, his archives, etc.. The building also housed a costume shop operated by an elderly couple. This base was presumably lost after his apparent death in Washington.

Foxy lady

When he plots against the West Coast division of the Council, Nemesis runs into another vigilante. This one is a hot-headed young woman who tries to take out the local Council head with a suicide bombing. Nemesis saves her, and soon learns that she’s determined to help him defeat the Council whether he wants it or not.

The young lady, one Valerie Foxworth, had seen her father driven to suicide after he gambled away his savings in the Council’s rigged casino. She became determined to take some indiscriminate revenge against the Council.

Nemesis had described Valerie as being “independent as a cat and stubborn as a mule”, which is a fair assessment. She vocally dislikes orders and authority and wants to do things her way, now. She was of course secretly in love with Nemesis because, hey, 1981.

She usually acted as Nemesis’s getaway pilot, having learned to pilot an helicopter in record time.

To protect her, Nemesis created her a fake ID as Valerie Richards, so the Council would not find her.

History

Ben Marshall was a FBI man, who climbed every step of the hierarchical ladder during his career with the Bureau. His best friend was one Chet Tresser, a widower raising two boys. Ben and Chat spent a lot of time together, and Ben pretty much became the uncle of the Tresser kids, Craig and Tom.

The kids greatly admired Mr. Marshall, and were very impressed by his work as a G-Man. Both boys considered becoming agents as they grew up, though Tom also thought about becoming an actor. He later changed his mind and decided that he would join the Diplomatic Corps, even learning Russian (and possibly Standard Arabic) to prepare for that.

Mr. Tresser later passed away from a heart attack. This prompted Tom and Craig to re-evaluate what they wanted to do with their life. Both were now old enough to become law enforcement officers, which was what their father had wanted.

Quantico

The Tresser brothers decided to join the Bureau — especially since that meant working for Marshall, now a senior FBI officer. The brothers attended the academy, and both made the grade.

(In that scene, Tom and Craig seem very young – Tom might be 19 and Craig 16. Maybe they looked younger than their actual age, since the minimum age to join the FBI is 23. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that this minimum age is lower in the DC Universe. The DCU has more numerous examples of very young people achieving extraordinary results, and a much higher casualty rate among police).

At Quantico, Tom had displayed a talent for inventiveness and technical subjects. He was requested to join the Special Equipment Section – whereas Craig became a field agent.

Tom was initially disappointed, but soon discovered that he tremendously enjoyed his work. He produced such assets as advanced bugs, incredibly lifelike masks which could be dissolved in seconds with a tailor-made chemical spray, or plastic bullets delivering a paralysing compound.

Everything goes wrong

One day, Craig came home ranting incoherently about Marshall, then stormed off. This left Tom puzzled. On the next day, during the ceremony where Ben Marshall was made the new head of the FBI, Craig came in screaming unclear accusations and shot Marshall dead. He was immediately gunned down by security.

The murder of the soon-to-be FBI Chief was of course big news. Tom — as the brother of the assassin of a beloved lawman — soon found himself ostracised, encountering hostility wherever he went. The Tresser name was now terribly blackened, and Tom himself had lost his father figure and his brother.

A name of justice and retribution

Tom decided that he would discover why his brother and unofficial uncle had died, no matter what it took. He left the FBI, and decided to renounce his name until justice could be done. He called himself Nemesis after the ancient Greek goddess of retribution (popularly considered a divinity of justice).

He had two identical statuettes made. Those represented Lady Justice holding two weighing scales in balance. One pan held a heavy weight marked with Ben Marshall’s name, and on the other Nemesis would add much smaller weights as he performed acts of justice, until the day when the scales would be balanced. He had one of the statues delivered to Marjorie Marshall, Ben’s widow, and kept one for his own use.

Nemesis then started a long career as a vigilante honouring Ben Marshall’s memory. As a former LEO, his main objective was to provide enough proof to the police to arrest criminals they couldn’t otherwise touch.

Crimebuster

In an early case, the tricky Nemesis collected evidence on a crime lord who always went through middlemen and never could be convicted. Disguised as a bum, Nemesis planted a bug on a hitman working for his target, fully recording oral orders for a contract.

While interrogating some lowlives, Nemesis was told that the Kingston Mob was now feared, since they had killed Ben Marshall. Tresser thus realised that there was somebody behind his brother’s incomprehensible act.

Investigating, he eventually discovered that a top-level criminal organisation called the Council was behind the death of his brother. They had brainwashed him using special technology after capturing him during an undercover mission, then sent him to kill Ben Marshall.

Nemesis’s investigation led him to Gotham City. There he allied with Batman, and they succeeded in tracking down the Head of the Council. Nemesis almost killed the Head, but Batman and Marjorie Marshall (who had been kidnapped by the Head) talked him out of it.

Seconds later, a hireling, whom the Head had cruelly shot, used his last moments to kill the Head in revenge.

Beyond vengeance

Though the man responsible for the deaths of Craig and Ben had been killed, Nemesis considered that the scales had not been balanced. His vengeance against the Head felt hollow, and the name of Tresser was still blackened.

Nemesis decided to continue his activities, focusing on the various directors of the Council previously reporting to the Head. Bruce Wayne bought one of Tresser’s patents with generous royalties, financing his activities.

Nemesis had the head of the West Coast Division of the Council arrested after luring him in an elaborate trap where the police caught him and his lieutenants red-handed. He then flew to London as the Council wouldn’t expect him there. In the UK, he narrowly derailed the local Council boss’s once-in-a-lifetime master plan to kidnap the Queen.

During these adventures, Nemesis acquired a sidekick of sorts – Valerie Foxworth, a young woman also out for revenge against the Council.

Finishing the Council off

When Nemesis tried to gather intelligence on the East Coast Division head, the crime lord lured him into a trap and captured him. This man wanted Nemesis to take out the remaining division chiefs, leaving the East Coast Division to dominate the Council.

Forced to comply by a booby-trapped cardiac stimulator, Nemesis managed to fake his death and remove the stimulator. He then took down the East Coast division chief. Using the files of the East Coast man, Nemesis took out all remaining division chiefs but the Midwest one.

The last senior members of the Council then launched a nationwide campaign of terrorism. The goal was to dissuade representatives from voting for a new set of anti-crime measures – since such laws would finish them off. Seeing the extent of the plan, Nemesis requested Batman help by contacting Bruce Wayne, disguising himself as Alfred Pennyworth to reach him.

Batman and Nemesis managed to foil Operation:Overkill. However the remains of the Council activated their last-ditch weapon – a remote-controlled helicopter full of explosives sent to kill the Senator sponsoring the anti-crime bill. Nemesis managed to board the helicopter as it took off, but the controls were dead.

Seeing but one solution, he blasted the rotor off with his air gun, leaving the helicopter to fall on the Council base and kill all inside, destroying the Council.

Nemesis was assumed dead, as Batman found torn remains of his uniform in the smoking ruins. Grieving the passing of a fellow champion of justice, Batman had a weight engraved with Nemesis’s name made, and finally put the two pans of Nemesis’s weighing scale in balance — with the Nemesis weight counterbalancing the Ben Marshall weight.

Survivor

Tresser actually survived. However he had been badly wounded when jumping from the helicopter before it would explode. He was carried about a mile by the Potomac, and was found hours if not days later by FBI agent investigating what had happened.

Nemesis’s wounds had become infected, and while he received extensive medical care, it took years for him to recover from the ordeal. Since the FBI men who found him laying in the mud knew him as Tresser, the Federal government paid for the hospitalisation.

This lengthy medical care was what Amanda Waller used as a lever to convince Nemesis to join the newly reformed Task Force X. This new organisation was centred on the new Suicide Squad. Waller also promised that working with her would allow Nemesis to bring justice on a broader scale.

Tresser agreed to stay with the Squad until he felt that he had repaid the government for saving his life and the scales were balanced.

Suicide blond, part 1

When the Suicide Squad was deployed to strike against Qurac’s superhuman terror force the Jihad, Nemesis was — along with Nightshade — already positioned.

He was disguised as Colonel Mushtaq, a veteran terrorist who had been recruited by the Quraci president as a consultant and security specialist. Unbeknownst to the Quraci the real Mushtaq had been killed in a firefight some weeks before.

Once the tactical operation was launched, Nemesis proved even more invaluable than planned. One Suicide Squad member, Plastique, unexpectedly approached “Mushtaq” to defect to the Jihad.

During his time with the Squad, Nemesis became close to Nightshade (Eve Eden), though her attraction toward Rick Flag meant they just stayed friends despite the obvious romantic chemistry.

Suicide blond, part 2

Nemesis continued to serve as a master infiltrator preparing Squad missions. When the Squad attempted to abduct a Soviet dissident, he disguised himself as a new senior doctor sent by Moscow to tighten things up. He then helped the ops team improvise a long and difficult exfiltration from Russia.

However, seeing the group operate infuriated Nemesis, especially when team members Penguin and Deadshot planned to execute civilians to facilitate exfiltration.

Nemesis beat up and disarmed Deadshot, announced that he was quitting, and volunteered to stay behind and cover the retreat of the Squad. This was both to balance accounts with the government and out of respect for some Squad members, especially Nightshade.

Nemesis was eventually knocked out by the People’s Heroes, who probed his mind to find the rest of the Squad, and had to be left behind.

To the gulag and back

The Soviets made a lot of noise about the capture of Nemesis, hoping to lure in some more American agents. Two men decided that they would take the bait. These were Nemesis’s old ally Batman, and Suicide Squad field leader Rick Flag, who had a strong ethos of not leaving soldiers behind.

Flag picked a Squad team and left before anyone realised that no such mission had been authorised. As soon as the President learned of this, the Justice League International (including Batman) was told that a contingent of American villains was about to attack a Soviet prison and asked to intervene.

The JL ended up taking Nemesis to the US embassy in custody to “investigate”, with the understanding that Nemesis would “escape” a few days later, defusing the international incident.

Suicide watch

Though it took some months, Nemesis then returned to the Squad. He considered that he owed Flag for getting him out and needed to balance this scale. Flag soon went MIA following a mission of vengeance, but Nemesis was drafted since the Squad was joining Earth’s defence forces against the Invasion. Waller convinced him to stick around until Flag would return.

When the Suicide Squad clashed with the lost government agency Argent, Nemesis worked as a human target. Disguising himself as Amanda Waller, he was shot by a Argent hit team as planned. Being disguised as Waller meant that Nemesis wore ample padding and numerous layers of Kevlar, allowing him survive unscathed.

That was the last time he helped her, though. He soon got fed up with her manipulations and the way she used his sense of duty against him, and left after a very public screaming match with the Wall.

Back to solo ops

Nemesis resumed solo operations, and broadened the scope of his mission of justice.

The one known case during this time involved the complete identity theft of a corporate raider, who had bought a large company to gut it and sell it piecemeal for tax evasion purposes. Nemesis, impersonating the raider, had all the assets of the company turned over to the employees, gave the man’s fortune to charity and had him sent to a psychiatric hospital.

Meanwhile, the Squad learned that Rick Flag had a son, who had just been kidnapped by Koschei the Deathless. Nemesis agreed to help – but only because Nightshade asked him to. Disguised as Flag, Nemesis came to meet Koschei.

After assessing the situation, Tresser revealed that he wasn’t Flag and that the real Flag was dead. He used these facts to convince Koschei to release the boy. Nemesis ran out with the boy, made contact with the ops team, and everybody got out alive.

In the wake of this mission, Tresser and Nightshade started a romance, though her service for Waller — whom Nemesis wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole — presumably meant that they only saw each other infrequently.

That relationship soon disintegrated as Eve lost touch with her humanity thanks to the Succubus. She came to blame the Squad for this, and everything that reminded her of the Squad – including Nemesis.

The darkness within

During the early 1990s, Nemesis considered joining the task force assembled to stop Eclipso. Howbeit he was quite wary since the force was led by Amanda Waller.

Nevertheless, given the menace Eclipso posed, he worked closely with the Wall and her force. The Wall’s plan again called for Nemesis to trick enemy forces into thinking that he was one of their own and ruining their intelligence and chain of command.

Despite this, the initial strike against Eclipso turned into a massacre, and Nemesis felt responsible to some extent. He convinced his former lover Nightshade into ferrying him, Chunk and Professor Bennet to recover the bodies of the fallen. The mission succeeded and Tom tried to rebuild bridges with Eve, but she was too damaged psychologically at that point.

Some years later, using information provided by Oracle, Nemesis approached Catwoman. His goal was to approach a CBI agent who had gone missing to assess his status, and he needed advanced B&E training to convincingly pass for a world-class burglar.

Having something for men with an Irrational Attraction toward Seeking Justice, Catwoman was charmed by Nemesis and agreed to give him the requested crash courses.

While they were quite attracted toward each other and Catwoman even gave him her real first name, Nemesis made it look like he had been shot to death after accomplishing his mission. A distraught Catwoman left the scene, leaving Nemesis free to slip away.

A likely reason for this deception was that Nemesis realised that they were falling in love but knew it was impossible for him to become the lover of a criminal.

Perhaps as a result of this CBI job, Nemesis would soon return to governmental law-enforcement agencies. But this is another story, and he was a changed man.

Description

The pre-Crisis Nemesis had an… intensely late 1970s look. Very Big Jim.

Personality

Nemesis is a very by-the-book person, who likes everything to be tidy, organised and following the proper regulations. While he’s perfectly capable of improvising and handling situations on the fly, he prefers meticulous plans relying on deception and leveraging his opponents’s weak points. His lab and tools bench are clean and perfectly organised.

He has something of an obsessive personality. This was true even before he loses his brother and his father figure. Once he commits to something (such as balancing the scales of justice), his whole existence becomes goal-oriented. He’s liable to ignore anything outside of that goal, such as having a life.

While he’s very good at social engineering, he’s not a people person. He’s not really charismatic, prefers to be alone and wishes people were quieter and less unruly. As could be guessed, he likes cats.

Nemesis occasionally makes late 1970s action hero quips, but this is at this point more a sign of the time than a genuine character trait. Also unlike some 1970s action heroes, he’s not a killer. If he *has* to kill a proven criminal, he will do so without regret, but what he wants for them is a regular trial.

Balancing debts

Nemesis’s sense of justice starts at home. He has a strong sense of duty, and a personal accounting of what he owes to people and institutions. If somebody helps him, he feels obligated to return the favour until the scales are, in his opinion, balanced.

This is one-way. He feels bad when he hasn’t balanced his personal scale, but if the other person is the one not paying their debt he reacts normally, not generally obsessing about it.

Another matter of principle is decency. Nemesis does the right thing no matter what the consequences, such as staying with the fatally wounded Soviet dissident Firebird so she wouldn’t die alone. That was despite knowing that it would probably result in his imprisonment in USSR.

Nemesis is forcefully Lawful Good . He’s a good guy with great moral clarity, and that was key to his career with the Suicide Squad. This is also what attracted Nightshade.

During the 1990s, he starts being less rigid and less wooden, apparently as a result of his failed relationship with Nightshade.

Quotes

“I no longer have a name, Batman.”

“When I agreed to let you work with me, you promised to do things my way. You’ll find out about the [plan] later.”

“I’ve watched the way this group operates and I’ve had a bellyful ! Creeps like Deadshot and the Penguin don’t belong on the street ! They belong where they were ! In prison !”

“The real truth is — you’re a bully, Mrs. Waller. You run the Squad by intimidation and fear. You demand loyalty but you give none. You manipulate people — and tell yourself it’s for the good of the country. All you’re doing is playing power games, and I’ve had enough. Now, get out of my way or I’ll put you in the hospital.” (nods toward the assembled Suicide Squad) “And no one here will lift a finger to stop me.” (leaves)

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: DC Universe.

Helper(s): Darci, Capita_Senyera.

Writeup completed on the 18^th of January, 2011.