On a distant alien world centuries in the future, a young man dreams. Only his dreams are the stuff of nightmares. And they are real, as he relives the crimes committed by an interstellar rogue's gallery of butchers and tyrants. Incapable of preventing intergalactic injustice, it falls to the mysterious man named Nexus to mete out punishment for atrocities that cry out for retribution.
Compelled by his visions, which are somehow connected to his mysterious array of superpowers, Nexus hunts these vicious murderers down. And then he kills them.
This is the basic premise of Nexus, a successful independent comic book of the early 1980s created by Mike Baron and Steve Rude which is presently the subject of a prestige hardcover "archive" reprinting by Dark Horse Comics
Set in the year 2841, the story opens as the young man born Horatio Hellpop has long since become the godlike superbeing called Nexus. From his base on the moon Ylum, Nexus both protects an odd assortment of refugees who have come to him for asylum and travels to other worlds as a sort of vigilante judge, jury and executioner.
A sometimes uneven blend of science fiction elements and some of the traditions of superhero comics such as Batman, Nexus is haunted by his own family history and often struggles with his role. Often reluctant to carry out the punishment his powers seemingly require, Nexus struggles with guilt and hopes to somehow one day be relieved of both his powers and the urge to serve as some sort of "final solution" in terms of interstellar justice.
Nexus Archives Volume 1 recaptures the earliest tales of the character, and contains Nexus #1-3 (Vol. 1, black and white) and Nexus #1-4 (Vol. 2, full color). These issues were originally published by Capital Comics (after Capital's demise, the comic was published by First Comics, which also printed such titles as American Flagg!, Grimjack, Jon Sable: Freelance, and the like). Given that they were the product of "independent" comics, Baron and Rude were able to be far more unconventional than one might find with more mainstream publishers.
The comic let them examine issues of morality - indeed, that is one of the central conceits of the story. As it opens, reporter Sundra Peale has managed to land on Ylum and wants to know the answers to a variety of questions - from the origin of his mysterious powers to his claims that he acts only in "self-defense" and whether he has any real moral code of his own. A number of his targets had actually repented of their guilt; some sought to atone for their crimes in a variety of ways, and a few were even unaware that their actions had caused such devastating harm to others.
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