- Name: James Nicola Bradley
- Code Names: Dr. Nemesis, Dr. Death
- First Appearance: Lightning Comics #6 (1941)
- Powers: Hyperevolved Intellect
- Teams Affiliation: Battle-Axis, X-Club, X-Force
About
There is something about science that appeals to me and I think it is the sense of discovery. Finding something new is an experience I have always yearned for. That sense of discovery was half the reason I started this site. Still in a field that I am familiar in it takes a little bit to actually surprise me but as I got into researching Dr. Nemesis I was blown away by just how little I knew.
I knew Dr. Nemesis was an old character but I never dreamed that his history would be so fascinating. He first appeared in Lightning Comics in 1941 but he wasn’t written as a mutant at the time, he wasn’t even a Marvel character. Dr. James Bradley had developed a serum that, when injected, put the patient in a trance like state where they could only tell the truth. Donning a surgical mask and a long trench coat Bradley swore to fight crime as Dr. Nemesis and he was a pretty standard pulp hero. He battled mob bosses, corrupt landlords, murder by poisoned bowling ball, and fraudulent insurance claims and while they were engaging stories with solid art they weren’t particularly memorable. Publisher Ace Magazines was hit hard by the publishing of Seduction of the Innocent, the public out roar against comic books, and the eventual implementation of the comic’s code and had to shut its doors in 1956. Trademarks were not something that Ace thought much about and eventually Dr. Nemesis fell into public domain.
Art credits for Lightning Comics were nonexistent
Nemesis would have existed as a weird footnote if not of the work of comic’s legend Roy Thomas. Thomas was relaunching the WWII superhero action book The Invaders in 1993 and needed some new character for Capt’s team to battle. He decided to use public domain pulp heroes from the era and bring them back as the Battle-Axis, a team aligned with the Nazi’s who, while not necessarily believing in Hitler’s ideals, thought that the United States had no business fighting in the war. Their leader went by the name Dr. Death, James Bradley had returned after nearly 50 years. Thomas reveled that Bradley assisted Dr. Phineas Horton in creating the original Human Torch android and after the two parted ways over Bradley’s abrasive personality, he created an android of his own called Voltron, the Human Generator. He was later approached by the Nazi’s to form the Battle-Axis and created a plan to cause devastating earthquakes to the west coast. He enlisted his creation Voltron but the android turned on his master and Dr. Death was thought to be dead.
Art by Dave Hoover, Brian Garvey, and Paul Becton
The good Doctor could have easily been forgotten again but thankfully Matt Fraction decided he was too good of an idea to stay relegated to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe. After the mutant population was decimated by M-Day, Beast searched for the best and the brightest minds to help reverse the Scarlet Witch’s spell. Based on the 19th century dining club of English supporters of natural selection, Beast was inspired to develop his own think tank and took the name of the group as his own. Beast traveled to Argentina to recruit Dr. Nemesis in the X-Club. Nemesis had barley aged thanks to manipulating his biology with a special serum, he had recanted his role with the Battle-Axis and found a unique form of penance. He spend his days hunting Nazi’s who had fled to South America after the war and was focused on destroying their creation and legacy. He was aggressively intelligent, intensely self-absorbed, and driven by a love for science. Nemesis was of the belief that it wasn’t a magic spell that caused the decimation, to him there was no magic, and he could reverse it using super science. He followed Hank to San Francisco and set up shop with the X-Men, determined to solve this new problem in front of him.
Art by Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson, and Justin Ponsor
The X-Club had noticed that, while mutants had existed since nearly the dawn of time, the recent up swell in mutant births only started in at the dawn of the 20th century. They decided to travel back in time before the birth of the first mutant of the boom and collect tissue samples from the child’s parents, Nicola and Catherine Bradley. The Bradley’s were inventors caught in the cross hairs of the Hellfire Club for a generator they were developing, and they had just discovered they had become pregnant with their first child. James wanted to avoid any contact with his parents but his hand was forced when Catherine was attacked by the Hellfire Club. The Doctor came to her aid but advocated that she be put on bed rest, a demand that did not sit well with the precocious Catherine. Nicola’s generator was acquired by the Hellfire Club, he thought he was presenting San Francisco with free wireless energy but the Club used the device to power a robotic guardian they called a Sentinel. X-Club was able to defeat the construct, and inadvertently caused the famous 1906 earthquake, but Nicola was killed in the crossfire. Dr. Nemesis was upset at having to watch his father die and did all he could to save him, but it was too late. The X-Club returned to their time, dejected at the defeat, but Dr. Nemesis knew he couldn’t leave it at that. Secretly returning to the past on the day he was born, James came to his mother’s aid and delivered himself, knowing that his mother would die in childbirth but she wouldn’t be alone.
Art by Yanick Paquette, Karl Story, and Justin Ponsor
Nemesis proved to be the shining star of the X-Club and was a huge asset when Utopia was raised from the sea. He focused on turning the former Asteroid M into a living, breathing home for the mutant race. During the Second Coming event Bradley and the rest of X-Club were caught in a trap by Bastion and barley escaped with their lives. Nemesis was a constant among the leaders of Utopia and was there for Hope when she awakened the first Light, the 5 reborn mutants since Hope’s return. When the mutants split up during Schism, Nemesis knew that the school would hold nothing for him and Utopia was his home now.
X-Club soon revealed their latest accomplishment, the world’s first space elevator and Nemesis was determined to let people know how easy it was for him. During the opening press event, Terrigen, the chemical compound behind Inhuman’s transformation, found its way into the waters below and began having a violent reaction with both the sea life and the Atlantians below Utopia. One creature given to the transformation was a starfish that developed empathic abilities and bonded itself to Dr. Nemesis and revealed his inner monologue to the unworthy universe. He dove into the ocean to find the source of the mutagen and found something the confounded even his mind, a section of alternate realities superimposed on each other and a tanker with the logo of the company X-Club had partnered with on the space elevator. He then road a giant hammerhead shark back to the elevator to further study the mystery on the crackling wings of science. As he worked his way into the lower levels of the facility, conducting science in the laboratory of violence along the way. He didn’t need to wait long to get answers as the mastermind of the project revealed himself, he was Strängestrum, an eleventh dimensional Nazi bent on finding a reality where he could rule in Hitler’s stead. Willing to sacrifice his life for nothing less than all of reality, Dr. Nemesis injected himself with the reality warping strain of Terrigen and battled Strängestrum in the abstraction of exoversality, eventually defeating him across all realities.
Art by Paul Davidson and Rachelle Rosenberg
After the destruction of Utopia in Avengers Vs X-Men, Dr. Nemesis got an unnecessary new costume and joined Cable’s new X-Force team to stop threats before they happened. There he became a begrudging friend to Forge and assisted the team with their science needs. When the group folded in with Storm’s Uncanny X-Force, Bradley stayed with Cable and was the lead scientist for this new X-Force and helped save Hope’s consciousness after the Alexandria incident. Sadly Dr. Nemesis has not appeared in the post-Secret Wars universe but it is only a matter of time before he returns to science again.
Art by Salvador Larroca and Frabk D’Armata
Must Read
Fraction may have resurrected Dr. Nemesis from obscurity but Si Spurrier’s one true calling is to write Dr. Nemesis. Anything he has written the character on would move to the top of the must read pile but only one book captures the sheer madcap science that is Dr. Nemesis and that’s X-Club by Spurrier and Paul Davidson. That five issue mini-series gets to the core of the character so well and it’s one of the few chances he had had to be in the direct spotlight. Davidson has a messy style that perfectly suits the chaos of the book and captures the exuberance that Nemesis has for all things science. This series is collected on Marvel Unlimited or in a single trade.
Art by Nick Bradshaw
Ranking
I am an engineer in real life, I have a deep desire to see how things work and make them better. I tend to put on a hyper competent personal that makes it seem like I am always on top of situations. I also have a bit of an ego and tend to think of myself as better than others, and no I am not proud of that. I say this to let you know how much I relate to Dr. Nemesis, he has all the right things to push my buttons and he just clicks with me more than even my beloved Maggott. This is one that I comes right down to what solo book would I buy first and if we are being honest I would take a Dr. Nemesis adventure over Cannonball, another character I said I really related to. Because of that the good doctor ends up as the new number 3 in the Xavier Files.
Dr. Nemesis was requested by /u/Droid85, /u/Bromao, and /u/wherearemycomics on reddit and self-aware-andy-droid and a couple of annons on tumble. Thanks for the request everyone I loved writing this one! If YOU have a character you want me to do, leave a comment and I’ll get it added to the list.
If you liked what you read be sure to subscribe to the tumblr so you never miss an update. You can also follow me on twitter@Xavierfiles where I throw out my thoughts about the X-Books that come out each week. That’s also where I harass Cullen Bunn and Dennis Hopeless about getting Maggott back into the X-Men books, join in on that fun with #BringBackMaggott! Or like the Facebook page!
Next week we open with one of the toughest chicks to ever call herself an X-Man. Frenzy joins the list. See you then!
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
