Nexus

AUTHOR: Baron, Mike

ARTIST: Steve Rude (illustrator); Les Dorscheid (colorist); George Freeman (colorist); Jeff Butler (letterer); Jeff Kaysen (letterer); Todd Klein (letterer); Mary Pulliam (letterer); Paul Gulacy (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: Dark Horse Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1981-1991

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2005

Publication History

Writer Mike Baron and artist Steve Rude began working on their first story, the science-fiction comic book “Encyclopedias,” in 1980. Though Capital Comics rejected the story, the company was impressed with the quality of their work and asked the duo to create a superhero comic book. Nexus was the result.

Beginning in 1981 as a three-issue black-and-white magazine from Capital Comics, Nexus was later printed in color, with six issues published by Capital and seventy-four published by First Comics. The Next Nexus, a miniseries tied to the main narrative, appeared in 1989. Following the demise of First Comics, Dark Horse Comics published a series of one-shots and miniseries from 1992 to 1996. The series was concluded with Nexus: Space Opera, a self-published four-issue miniseries from Rude’s company, Rude Dude Productions, in 2006. Altogether, there have been 102 issues of Nexus. No more issues are planned and all major story lines are resolved. From 2005 to 2010, Dark Horse published hardcover volumes that collected previously released material.

Plot

Horatio Hellpop, later known as Nexus, is the son of a Soviet general who once commanded the planet Vradic. When the population of Vradic revolted, General Hellpop destroyed the planet and escaped with his pregnant wife through a black hole. Prior to the couple’s departure, Brother Lathe, an Elvonic priest and the brother of General Hellpop’s wife Marlis, offered a malediction for their unborn child: “The child’s life will be a nightmare and he will beg for release.”

The Hellpops emerge from the black hole near twin moons and settle on one, called Ylum, where they find the remains of a departed alien civilization. It is here that Horatio is born. He is aided in his development by his friends Alph and Beta, mysterious alien entities who appear only to him. After his mother dies and his father descends into madness, Horatio has nightmares about the genocide on Vradic, and subsequently kills his father with an unknown power.

More dreams follow. The dreams grow progressively worse and sometimes manifest physical symptoms such as painful headaches, which Horatio escapes from at first by entering a tank filled with a mysterious liquid. When this proves inadequate, he dons the costume laid out by Alph and Beta and becomes Nexus, charged with assassinating mass murderers on behalf of humanity.

Victims of the murderers executed by Nexus follow him back to Ylum, where they form a new democratic culture. Sundra Peale, a reporter later revealed to be a member of an elite spy network, comes to Ylum seeking information. When she falls in love with Nexus, her superior officer, Ursula X. X. Imada, arrives and confronts her. Imada seduces Nexus during an off-world mission and later gives birth to two daughters. The son of Nexus’s best friend Dave becomes a mercenary known as Judah Maccabee, the Hammer; he is a fusionkaster, able to draw power from nearby stars. Nexus inspires Judah’s primary mission, in which he seeks out slavers who decapitate sentient beings to harness their mental energy.

Judah, Sundra, and Dave help Nexus discover the truth of his origins. The last remaining member of a powerful species, the Merk, sleeps at the core of Ylum. He sends Nexus the dreams, the headaches, and the power to execute mass murderers in order to satisfy his vision of justice. The Merk agrees to stop Nexus’s headaches but not the dreams. To live his own life as a scholar, Nexus commissions the Quatro assassins Kreed and Sinclair to carry out some of his executions. However, the Quatros are overtaken by bloodlust and kill more than three thousand people, most of them innocents. Nexus refuses to hand over Kreed and Sinclair to Martian authorities, but Kreed turns himself in to free Nexus from harassment.

As Nexus goes on his missions of execution, he creates enemies. The Loomis sisters, children of Nexus victim General Loomis, vow vengeance. After Horatio resigns as Nexus, the girls make psychic contact with the Merk and assume the mantle. They attempt to execute Horatio for the murders commissioned by the Merk but are thwarted by Horatio’s daughters, who inherited some of his Nexus powers.

After the Loomis sisters are defeated, the Merk finds another replacement, Russian history professor Stanislaus Korivitsky. The new Nexus’s adversaries are corporate and religious figures. When Horatio sees Korivitsky abusing his power, he resumes the Nexus mantle with the help of another Merk, the returned GQ. Nexus and Sundra settle into their life together and have a son, and Sundra is elected president of Ylum.

Volumes

•Nexus Archives, Volume 1 (2005). Collects Volume 1, issues 1-3, and Volume 2, issues 1-4. Introduces principal characters and the central conflicts dealing with justice and self-determination.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 2 (2006). Collects Volume 2, issues 5-11. Societies begin to codify and Nexus questions his calling, seeking escape through mind-altering surgery. Introduces the Lizigator Clonezone, an absurdist Borscht Belt comedian.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 3 (2006). Collects Volume 2, issues 12-18. After Nexus assassinates an old friend of his father, he proceeds with surgical alteration. Indulging in hedonism, he lapses in his duties as executioner, until Alph and Beta reappear and force him back to his task. Themes of inevitability and predestination come into play.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 4 (2006). Collects Volume 2, issues 19-25. The Merk appears. The key question of this sequence is the negotiability of justice, as Nexus and the Merk try to come to terms over the responsibilities of a reluctant executioner.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 5 (2007). Collects Volume 2, issues 26-32. Nexus tries to subcontract his responsibilities to the Quatros, with disastrous results, and reunites with his daughters. Issues of loyalty are at the forefront.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 6 (2007). Collects Volume 2, issues 33-39. With the Quatros’s blood frenzy ended, Dave must try to counsel them, as Sov refugees try to enter Ylum. Nexus goes from executioner to savior as he rescues a reluctant philosopher, who ultimately rejects his aid.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 7 (2008). Collects Volume 2, issues 40-46. At the behest of Mars, Nexus and Judah return to the bowl-shaped world in search of power to save the Web. Central themes of responsibility to society versus personal needs are at the fringe. Ylum is not in the Web, and Nexus is hated for his role in the Quatro killings.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 8 (2009). Collects Volume 2, issues 47-52, and Next Nexus, issue 1. Kreed accepts his death sentence. Nexus saves the Web. The Merk assigns the Loomis girls the task of assassinating Horatio. The overarching moral concern regards the blindness of justice.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 9 (2009). Collects Volume 2, issues 53-57, and Next Nexus, issues 2-4. Explores issues of justice and loyalty as Nexus’s daughters defend their father against the Loomis sisters. Introduces Korivitsky, who hopes to start a university on Ylum.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 10 (2010). Collects Volume 2, issues 58-65. Korivitsky is chosen as the new Nexus and pursues A. J. Cronin, chief executive officer of the dubious company Scorporation.

•Nexus Archives, Volume 11 (2010). Collects Volume 2, issues 66-73. Ylum cuts ties with the new Nexus over his zeal. The antitechnology activities of the Elvonic order threaten to destroy Ylum. Plays out the unifying theme of the cost of zealotry, as Horatio prepares to fight to resume the mantle of Nexus.

Characters

•Horatio Valdemar Hellpop, a.k.a. Nexus, the protagonist, is a human. Moody, introspective, and emotional, he serves as the focus of the series.

•Sundra Peale is the human female lead. She is an industrialist, a politician, an adventurer, and a former spy. Her initiative drives Horatio, and her autonomy from Nexus is instrumental in the ongoing growth of Ylum.

•Dave is Horatio’s most trusted friend. A member of the simian Thune species, he has a goatee, a tuft of hair, and a body covered with brown fur. As a survivor of Nexus’s first public mission, Dave has known Nexus longer than anyone except his uncle and serves as a sort of conscience for him.

•Judah Maccabee, a.k.a. the Hammer, a.k.a. Fred, is Dave’s son. Presumed lost when the humans took over Dave’s factory, he was raised by rabbis and trained in the Thune martial art of tengu. Judah is a mercenary and adventurer who often causes as many problems as he solves.

•Tyrone is from a species of unknown origin. He is thin, angular, blue-skinned, and hairless, with a shark fin atop his head. He is violent and driven by both justice and revenge. He was the first elected president of Ylum.

•Ursula X. X. Imada is a human. She is the head of a secret Web organization called Branch Corps until its dissolution, then becomes owner and ruler of a paramilitary planet. Nexus is the father of her twin daughters, Scarlett and Sheena. While she fights Sundra for his affections, she also has greater ambitions.

•Kreed, a Quatro, is more than eight feet tall. He has gray skin, one eye, and four arms. Kreed is Nexus’s most ardent devotee. Trained as a Gucci assassin, he lives by a strict moral code that he would rather die than violate.

•The Merk is the last remaining member of the race that originally inhabited Ylum. He gives Nexus his dreams, power, and mission. Having slept for millennia before being awakened by Nexus and Sundra, his interactions with other species are unpredictable.

•The Loomis sisters are humans. Stacy (seventeen), Lonnie (fifteen), and Michana (eight) have sworn vengeance against Nexus, who killed their father, General Loomis. They all become the new Nexus in order to kill Horatio.

•Clonezone the Hilariator is a Lizigator. Green, scaly, and bug-eyed, he resembles a funny-animal version of an alligator. Clonezone is an old-school Borscht Belt comedian in outer space. He cannot be trusted in any way and is, by his own assertion, frankly hilarious. His periodic encounters with Nexus and Judah are a counterpoint to the grim events in their lives.

Artistic Style

Rude, the primary artist and co-creator of Nexus, is heavily influenced by Russ Manning’s work on Magnus, Robot Fighter (1963). His lithe characters and elegant control of light and dark create a deliberate atmosphere in Nexus. He further cites Alex Toth as an influence and has said that Nexus’s costume is inspired by Toth’s designs for Space Ghost. In discussing figure drawing, Rude often refers to Andrew Loomis. He also cites Jack Kirby as a major influence and has done several books in Kirby style for DC. While his figures are much more streamlined than Kirby’s, they share a tendency toward dynamic, exaggerated poses.

Other artists are referenced in Rude’s work. Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers inspired the cover of issue 27, included in Nexus Archives, Volume 5. Whether intentional or not, there are also artistic allusions to the work of Bernard Krigstein, especially in the brief period of experimentation with reduction (bordering on elimination) of line in favor of shadow. This sequence, found in issues 40 and 41 of the original comic and in Nexus Archives, Volume 7, is an extension of battle scenes from earlier issues, in which violence is often shown only in cast shadows.

Rude’s layouts are innovative but always serve the story. Seldom relying on conventional grids, every page offers at least one departure from the norm, ranging from open panels to varying border shapes and the use of border angles to reinforce action. In intimate or romantic moments, he often uses silhouettes superimposed on skylines, a device echoing the work of science-fiction artist Virgil Finlay. Rude’s strength as a designer is especially apparent in the first three issues, done in gray scale. While this earlier art has a more tentative quality than later pieces, there is an experimental aspect to the page designs. As the artist’s skill increases in later issues, these design aspects become less prominent, reinforcing rather than competing with the illustration.

At various points in the narrative, when Rude had an excessive workload, other artists contributed fill-in issues. These artists sometimes attempted to maintain a stylistic continuity with Rude. The most successful in this regard were Paul Smith; Eric Shanower, who did related backup stories; and inker/colorist Les Dorscheid.Other fill-in artists, including George Pérez, Gerald Forton, Mike Mignola, and Greg Guler, brought their own stylistic interpretations to the series with varying degrees of success relative to Rude’s work, which remains the standard for Nexus.

Themes

As a narrative, Nexus is concerned with concepts of free will, the machinations of politics and religion, and the nature of sacrifice. Several faiths vie for the attention of the inhabitants of this future universe. The fictional faiths of Elvon and Alvin are in bitter opposition, despite their primary differences being semantic.

The narrative implies numerous moral questions. Are beings of different value systems answerable to one another? If so, how can this be enforced? Also, is it possible or desirable to truly understand the moral code of another society? By prefacing each issue with a quote, Baron sets a moral tone for that issue’s story. For example, the story of the Merk’s revelation to Nexus begins with a quote from author Timothy J. Cooney: “Tell us that Smith is a moral man, and we are not at all sure we want to be involved with him.” Baron has stated that Nexus has two themes: revenge and moral ambiguity.

The series also contains a message about self-determinism. Humanity does need Nexus’s help, but unless it is ultimately willing to fend for itself, it is doomed. This is an extension of the ideas in Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter. A two-issue Nexus/Magnus crossover appeared in 1993, reinforcing this idea.

In trying to come to terms with his responsibilities, Horatio denies himself the possibility of joy. His companions Dave, Sundra, and Judah all have differing forms of the balanced life he lacks. Dave is calm and centered. Sundra is determined and eager to embrace whatever life offers. Judah is driven by a Spartan ethic of the glories of battle and is a superb chef, a character part epicure and part hedonist.

Impact

Nexus appeared during the comics publishing boom of the early 1980’s. It was intended to launch a new publisher, along with Baron and Jeff Butler’s The Badger (1983-1984) and Steven Grant and Rich Larson’s Whisper (1983-1984). When that publisher, Capital Comics, discovered that distributing books was more profitable than publishing them, Nexus jumped to Illinois publisher First Comics.

The series was critically acclaimed, with Nexus at the forefront of a new crop of comic antiheroes. Others from the same publisher included Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! (1983-1989), John Ostrander’s Grimjack (1984-1991), and The Badger, which had also emigrated from Capitol. However, the core idea behind these particular antiheroes is not so much that the heroes themselves are flawed as that their worlds are. While these books are steeped in cynicism, there is also an understanding that humanity itself is more complex than comics had previously acknowledged.

Critical acclaim did not translate into sales. While Nexus was profitable, it was never the runaway hit for which Baron and Rude had hoped. In fact, during its Dark Horse run, the book was briefly put on hold for low sales.

Further Reading

Evanier, Mark, and Steve Rude. Space Ghost (1987).

Manning, Russ. Magnus, Robot Fighter (1963).

Motter, Dean, and Ken Steacy. The Sacred and the Profane (1987).

Robinson, James, and Tony Harris. Starman (1994-2001).

Bibliography

Manning, Russ. Magnus, Robot Fighter: 4000 A.D. 3 vols. Milwaukie, Ore.: Dark Horse Books, 2004-2006.

Rude, Steve, and John Fleskes. Steve Rude: Artist in Motion. Santa Cruz, Calif.: Flesk, 2007.

Wolk, Douglas. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2007.