Despite his boastful claims of startling originality, in reality Mark Millar's greatest strength as a writer is his ability to make a familiar concept seem novel. The idea of an evil Batman is not a new one. In Millar's hands, however, it is a fun little exercise to behold. Just not as fun as you'd expect from the team that delivered a Venom T-Rex and a family of inbred Hulks.

Nemesis is strangely subdued for a Mark Millar comic. Don't get me wrong, it has plenty of cursing and killing – so much so that it almost feels like Millar is using both to cover up for the blandness of his core concept. That or Millar really believes the idea of an evil Batman is strong and fresh enough to prop up the rest of the underwhelming scenes he tries to build on top of it. Either way, Nemesis #1 doesn't spring to fully-formed, depraved life quite like Millar's previous projects have. The spectacles just aren't as spectacular, the perversions not quite as perverse.Even more surprisingly, McNiven doesn't make up for the shortcomings of Millar's script; in places, he even accentuates them. McNiven's work here isn't nearly as impressive as it was in Old Man Logan or even Civil War, in large part due to a minimalist approach on his part that, while most likely a stylistic choice, still feels like a shortcut. Many panels lack backgrounds, and none of the settings – not even shots of entire cities – feel like vibrant places. There's a Frank Quitely-esque distortion to many of his figures, but that deliberate ugliness doesn't work nearly as well or as naturally for McNiven as it does for Quitely. On the other hand, his storytelling is topnotch as always, and when Air Force One crashes through the streets of Washington DC, you can follow its destructive path effortlessly from start to finish.My biggest problem with this first issue is that Millar never really adds any depth to either of his two main characters. We're told the villain is a deranged, evil mastermind because he derails trains, crashes planes and kills cops. So what? We're told his hero is the best cop on the damn planet because he executes a bunch of robbers, and because, well, he just is. In both cases, neither character comes across as more than a bare-bones idea.Millar has made a name for himself as the master of spectacle driven, in-your-face comics, and his past work has entertained me enough to convince me Nemesis deserves the benefit of the doubt. At times, when Millar is riffing on a few age old Joker tropes, you can almost sense the story about to spring to life. Sadly, though, it never does in this first issue. The ideas just kind of sit there while Millar and McNiven wave their hands and try to grab our attention with violence and potty language. It's kind of a bad sign when you derive more entertainment out of a comic's text afterward than you do the comic itself.