“Killer Watt, Part II”
First print date: September 27 1980
Prog appearance: 179
Writer(s): Pat Mills
Artist(s): Kevin O'Neill
Total episodes: 2
As Torquemada heads over the Sea of Lost Souls Nemesis makes his move, rising from the depths of the ghost ocean to attack him. Caught off-guard, and more importantly, without his Terminators to protect him, the Chief of the Tube Police calls in reinforcements. However it is impossible to destroy Nemesis without the risk of injuring or even killing Torquemada himself, so they have to hold off. Nemesis's ship, the Blitzspear, wraps itself around the Shockwave Express so as to keep them together and make one target, ensuring the Terminators cannot shoot at him. However, fast as his ship may be, it seems the old Shockwave Express may be faster, and it begins to edge away from the Blitzspear, giving the Terminators the chance to launch an electocution weapon of twenty thousand “killer watts” (Kilowatts?) at Nemesis. Unfortunately for him, Torquemada is still too close and as thousands are caught in the shockwave, including Nemesis, he attempts to outrun the attack.
Rolling his final dice, Torquemada dials the College of Terminators, hoping that the teleporter there can whisk him to safety, but as luck would have it the Principal is right in the middle of an important torture, and refuses snappily to accept the call, saying he will call Torquemada back. Unable to materialise without proper authorisation and acceptance of the call, the Chief of the Tube Police is vapourised. Nemesis is luckier. He dials a friend of his, who, recognising the number and realising how urgent it must be for him to be calling her, admits the Blitzspear, which materialises inside her apartment, Nemesis inside safe and sound.
Back in the teleport lines, the “ghost” of Torquemada exults that though its body has been destroyed it is not finished, and will return to have a reckoning with Nemesis.
QUOTES
Terminator: “Your Eminence! We have located you and the deviant inside the cable. But if we electrocute Nemesis now we will also kill thousands of innocent people!”
Torquemada: “A mere technicality! But wait! Nemesis is too close! My
own life would be in danger! Tell all kill-trackers to remain on standby.”
Secretary: “It's Torquemada on the line, sir. Sounds urgent.”
Principal: “I'm in the middle of a torture, girl! Tell him I'll call him back!”
Torquemada: “Though I am dead I am not destroyed, and though my body is burned my id is whole. There must still be a final battle with Nemesis in which the forces of righteousness will prevail over the deviant. I will return!”
PCRs
Well, the title is suggested, as it even mentions, by the various artistes rock album
Killer Watts, reviewed by me in, I think it was,
Metal Month II.
As Torquemada powers through helpless crowds in a cowardly effort to save himself, he rages at them and calls them proles. This is short for proletariat, a term for the common people, and used in its shortened form most famously by George Orwell in
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The symbol on Torquemada's hood is that of the Greek letter psi, which can often be used to indicate parapsychology, connected with the paranormal or the supernatural. Perhaps not by accident, this symbol also incorporates the cross.
Laughing in the face of Death
It's pretty amusing to see the Principal of the Royal College of Terminators conducting a torture while what are obviously students stand behind him, watching and taking notes.
The whole idea of Torquemada dying because the Principal is unwilling to interrupt his work is hilarious. Essentially, Torquemada dies of a busy phone line!
Hmm...
When Nemesis's ship, the Blitzspear, breaks through the teleporter in the as-yet unnamed girl's apartment (I'm going to assume she's Purity Brown) it looks distinctly phallic. Given that it enters close to her breasts, and that once it's through fully she sits on it looking satisfied, well, draw your own conclusions here.
Questions?
How is Torquemada going to come back? Will it be explained? Perhaps, like a pattern temporarily lost in the buffers of the transporter in
Star Trek, his body can be reassembled. But will they go into this, or will we just be expected to believe – as it will be another year before the series proper begins – that it just happened, or will Mills even hope we had forgotten that Torquemada was supposed to be dead?
Who
is Nemesis? So far, we haven't seen him, and the only word he has said is the name of his resistance movement, “Credo”, but whereas initially I think I believed the Blitzspear
was Nemesis, you can clearly see there is a pilot. But readers of 2000 AD would have to wait a year to find out what he, she or it looked like. Readers of this journal won't have to wait quite as long. I hope.
And Death shall have dominion
Again, we're reminded of death when we see that the girl lives in an apartment in a city called Mausoleum, and of course there's another mention of the name of the capital, Necropolis.