NADIR,
INCORPORATED
NADIR,
INCORPORATED
Membership: Guards including Angus, "Gregoire," Jerome, "Marc," Mike, others; unidentified mutates (see comments), unidentified scientists, unidentified S.H.A.P.E. commissioner
Purpose: To carry out experiments into human mutation
Aliases: Nadir, Inc.
Affiliations: A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics), Blue 1 (see comments), Lords of War (Kaneda, Oda, Sakuragi)
Enemies: François Borillon, Euroforce (Argento/Michele Argento, Danger/Dolph Dongen, Deep Sight/Jane Melville, Key/Geyr Kluge, Nuage/Silvie Rouge, Picaro/Antonio Rey, Tiger/Hughes Aït-Kaci), EuroLab (Danger, Deep Sight, Key, Nuage, Picaro), S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate), Task Force (Argento, Blue Condor/Emilie Scholz, Dragonfly/Cornelia van der Valk, Iceboy/Hamish Alain Carlyle, Tiger), unidentified mutates ("Ugly Man," others) (see comments)
Base of Operations: France (presumably; see comments); (shown)
First Appearance: (Mentioned) Europa#1/2 (July 1996); (seen) Europa#2/2 (August 1996)
History:
(Europa#1/2 (fb) - BTS) - French multinational Nadir, Incorporated was a
front or subsidiary of A.I.M. (see comments).
(Europa#2/2 (fb) - BTS) - Picaro and Deep Sight, agents of Euromind's EuroLab team, grew suspicious of Nadir Inc., and began quietly monitoring and investigating its activities.
(Europa#1/2 (fb) - BTS) - Presumably unaware of Nadir's dubious ties, the Malaysian government offered them substantial tax breaks to invest in building a large laboratory complex on an island in the South China Sea off Western Malaya, five miles northeast of the city of Mersing. In this lab (and perhaps other locations - see comments) Nadir carried out experiments on human mutation. The results proved to be unstable, as a number of test subjects spontaneously mutated in public in several locations across Europe. Though the authorities failed to capture any of the mutates or officially corroborate the sightings, these events drew unwanted attention. Then two spontaneous public transformations occurred close together, one on an airliner bound for Venice Airport, causing the plane to crash into the Adriatic Sea a few miles off the Italian coast, and the other in a marketplace in Kuantan, Malaysia. Nadir agents swiftly extracted the latter before the authorities could respond, but the plane carrying the mutate went off course (see comments) and crashed near Mount Mulu. Nadir sent the mercenary Lords of War to clean up the crash site and remove any evidence of the mutates or leads back to Nadir.
(Europa#1/2
- BTS) - The Lords of War found S.H.I.E.L.D. rapid response unit Task Force
already at the crash site, having discovered a body with Nadir's insignia
on his uniform and documents with Nadir's logo. The Lords attacked Task Force,
slaying two of them and capturing a third, Iceboy, but two others escaped,
and returned to the Euromind base in Spain where they were stationed. Around
the same time EuroLab were sent to investigate the mutate sighting on the
plane in the Adriatic. While most of the team helped evacuate survivors from
the sinking vessel, Danger found the mutate, who chose to die rather than
risk falling back into Nadir's hands or hurting anyone else. Though Danger
failed to learn who had experimented on the mutate, EuroLab nevertheless
learned there was a mystery to investigate.
(Europa#2/2) - Near death, Iceboy was taken back to Nadir's lab, where the scientists "re-animated" him and began putting him through the mutate process.
(Europa#2/2 - BTS) - Since both Task Force and EuroLab worked for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s European branch Euromind, itself answerable to S.H.A.P.E. (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), Nadir sought to forestall any further interference by having their mole in S.H.A.P.E. arrange to order both teams to drop their investigations, and instructed agents planted within Euromind's security forces to execute the teams while making it look like the teams had been slain after going rogue. This assassination attempt failed, with the two teams banding together to escape and come hunting for their missing comrade.
(Europa#3/2) - Now calling themselves Euroforce, the combined hero teams infiltrated Nadir's lab complex, apparently gaining initial access through the men's room. After knocking out a guard, Jerome, they accessed the base's computerized map and split into two teams, one heading for the computer records and the other for the lab holding Iceboy. The group heading to the database found the route they were taking blocked by two more guards (Mike and an unidentified other), so Picaro approached them and told them he was on his way to repair the database when they challenged him. Mike told Picaro that he was heading the wrong way and provided correct directions. Picaro apologized for getting mixed up, and Mike told him not to worry, admitting he had found the layout confusing too at the beginning. Slightly sharper than Mike, his compatriot interrupted to remind his fellow guard that they hadn't seen Picaro's authorization, but the distraction had allowed Euroforce's Danger and Argento to sneak up behind them, and the pair were swiftly knocked out.
A few minutes later Jerome managed to wriggle enough to dislodge himself from the bathroom ceiling where he had been hidden and raise the alarm. In the computer room, guards hurried to get ready to defend the database, but Euroforce arrived moments later and easily overpowered them. One holdout managed to hit Danger from behind with an electrified staff weapon, but when the mutant easily withstood the assault the guard accepted it was time to give up. Those guards not already rendered unconscious surrendered, and watched as the intruders hacked the database. However, moments later the superpowered mercenaries the Lords of War blasted into the room to challenge Euroforce.
Deeper down in the base, Euroforce's Key and Tiger were spotted and shot at. Tiger's hardened skin withstood the guards' small arms and allowed him to shield his teammate as they raced for Iceboy's lab, so the guards brought up a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher when the pair were forced to halt temporarily while Key hacked the electronic lock on the lab's heavily-reinforced door. Just making it inside ahead of the explosion, the pair locked the door behind themselves to slow their pursuers.
(Europa#4/2)
- In the computer room, the bound guards watched helplessly as Euroforce destroyed
the database, defeated the Lords of War, then fled. Down in the lab the guards
breached the door and opened fire on Key and Tiger, who were trying to release
a mutated Iceboy from his container. The heroes dived for cover, and the
shots shattered the containers instead. Not normally allowed into the mutate
labs, the guards watched in shock as dead mutates spilled out of most of
the containers...and one menacingly alive one, Iceboy, also stepped free.
One guard asked his friend, Angus, if he knew what they were facing, but
Angus he didn't.
Spotting Tiger trying to get his confused friend to take cover, a guard shot the intruder in the head, a pointless exercise given Tiger's bulletproof skin. However, seeing his friend shot angered Iceboy and stirred his memories of what had been done to him. Enraged, he ripped the guards to shreds before expiring himself. One dying guard hung on long enough to try and shoot Key, but was knocked out before he could fire by the arriving Nuage.
Jerome and two fellow guards were patrolling the perimeter of the base, though Jerome deemed this a pointless exercise because the intruders were already inside, and because the three of them wouldn't stand a chance anyway if they ran into Euroforce. Nuage telepathically prevented the trio from spotting Euroforce as they snuck past, but other guards farther away weren't affected and opened fire. Alerted by the shots, Jerome's group tried unsuccessfully to spot the intruders, and witnessed Euroforce's plane zoom into the sky.
Comments: Created by Xavier Marturet and Paco Diaz for Marvel Italia.
Since Nadir is identified as a French multinational, it presumably has multiple bases of operation around the world, with its main one being somewhere in France. However, the only one we saw was the lab in Malaya.
The mutate aboard the plane that crashed off Italy told Danger that "they warned us of the risks," which makes it sound like he and others willingly underwent the mutate process. However, we know from Iceboy's example that not every test subject volunteered. We're not informed as to whether the mutates who popped up around Europe and the one who appeared in Kuantan had escaped Nadir, had been let loose deliberately as field tests, or had not been prisoners to begin with. Given that at least some of the mutates seemed to be volunteers and that one had been relatively close to the lab when he transformed, I'm personally leaning towards the latter. If they had escaped, I'd expect them to try and put as much distance as they could between themselves and the lab, not be hanging around a marketplace in a neighboring country. Let loose as field tests seems to be disproven by Nadir's desperate attempts to hush up the mutate rampages. My estimation is that A.I.M. was trying to create super-soldiers who could pass for normal but transform on cue. However, the process proved unstable, forcing Nadir to do clean-up after several unplanned public displays by the mutates. Why did Iceboy get put through the process then, and who were the other mutates seen in the same lab as him, locked away in tubes? Given A.I.M.'s lack of ethics, I'd expect A.I.M. to only use volunteers for what they had believed was the perfected process, the mutates who would serve you willingly in the field. All the risky test phases, including re-testing the process to try and determine why it hadn't worked as anticipated, would be carried out on convenient victims, such as captured prisoners.
It is also possible that Nadir was carrying out their mutate experiments in multiple labs around the world. This might explain why there had been several mutate sightings across Europe, and only one (that Euromind knew of) near the lab in Malaya.
Blue 1 was the assassination squad within Euromind who were instructed to eliminate EuroLab and Task Force. It's not clear whether these were A.I.M./Nadir agents who had infiltrated Euromind, or simply corrupt Euromind members. For the sake of profiling things, I've left them off this profile and will include them in Euromind's profile.
Nadir is affiliated with A.I.M., but the exact level of this isn't clear. It might be that Nadir exists in name only, purely a front for A.I.M. with a few employees in offices round the world who might not know the truth to provide window dressing, but with most being full A.I.M. agents. Conversely, Nadir might be a faction that has broken off from A.I.M. proper, something we've seen on more than one occasion; their slightly different looking uniforms might be considered evidence favoring this option. Or Nadir might be a legit company that has become affiliated with or infiltrated by A.I.M.
No reason is provided for why the
plane that went down near Mount Mulu crashed. The most obvious explanation
is that the mutate got free and rampaged. 
The location of the crash is somewhat confused - text identifies it as being Mount Mulu on the Malacca Peninsula of Malaysia.
However, as far as I can tell
from a little research, Mount
Mulu is on the island of Borneo, not the Malacca Peninsula (if anyone
reading
this knows better, please do correct me).
See the map to the left, where
I've marked approximate locations from the story.
1 is Kuantan, where the mutate was sighted
2 is the rough
location of Nadir's lab;
3 is Mount
Mulu.
So the plane went a long way off course!
Profile by Loki, with comic translations by Angelo Mammone.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Nadir, Inc. has no known connections to:
(Europa#1/2 (fb) - BTS) - An unidentified man was one of several experimented on by Nadir, Inc., apparently with the intention of giving the test subjects superhuman power. He was warned of the risks involved, but went ahead with the process anyway. At some point afterwards, he left Nadir's lab in Malaysia, and caught a flight to Venice, Italy.
(Europa#1/2) - Only a few minutes from the destination, while the plane was flying over the city of Chioggia, the man felt the painful transformation coming over him, and erupted from his seat in agony as his muscles monstrously expanded, terrifying both passengers and a stewardess. Seemingly driven berserk by the pain, he smashed into the cockpit and slew the pilots.
(Europa#1/2 (fb) - BTS) - The plane crashlanded in the Adriatic Sea off the Italian coast. Surviving passengers mostly fled to the front of the plane, while the mutate moved to the rear and hid. Calmer now, he took care of a young girl whose mother had died in the crash, and who had been left behind by the other passengers. However, when he heard people coming down into the plane looking for him, he got scared and ran away.
(Europa#1/2) - He was found by Danger, a member of EuroLab, a team from Euromind sent to investigate the reported monster sighting on the plane. Seeing that the mutate was both injured and not apparently hostile, Danger promised to get him out safely, but the mutate told him he knew who Danger was, but that it didn't matter if he was saved, because those responsible for mutating him would make him disappear in a moment. However, that didn't concern the mutate, because he considered his life a living nightmare, never knowing when he would transform. Not willing to risk hurting any more innocents, the mutate pulled a hatch release, flooding the section of the plane he was in and presumably drowning.
Comments: The unlucky mutate on the plane wasn't named, so in the great Marvel tradition of naming monstrous characters using whatever term witnesses first use to describe them ("Fan out men! We've got to find that--that Hulk!"; "He's turned into a--a--some sort of a Thing!") I've gone with Ugly Man, the term the little girl on the plane used for him. As codenames go, it's not the greatest, but someone who dies within a couple of pages doesn't get to have dibs on the cool codenames.
The mutate said he knew who Danger was, and indeed he called Danger by name before he killed himself, despite Danger not introducing himself. It seems unlikely that Nadir would have briefed their agents on such a relatively obscure individual as Danger or obscure group as EuroLab, but perhaps Nadir had been aware for a while that two members of EuroLab had been investigating them, and perhaps as a result the mutate, having grown unhappy with the self-described nightmare of his existence, had learned of them while looking for someone to run for help to.
(Europa#2/2 - BTS) - Secretly loyal to A.I.M. and Nadir rather than the S.H.A.P.E., an unidentified member of the commission S.H.A.P.E. had appointed to oversee Euromind's operations ensured that the agency was instructed to stop investigating the mystery of the mutates that had been appearing around Europe and in Malaysia. He then ordered the assassination of the two paranormal teams, EuroLab and Task Force, who had been carrying out the investigation.
(Europa#2/2) - While listening in on covert surveillance of EuroLab meeting with Task Force's Tiger, the commissioner overhead them agreeing to work round their orders not to investigate the mutate by instead trying to rescue missing Task Force member Iceboy, who had been taken prisoner by the people behind the mutates. Hearing this, he checked on his assassins within Euromind, Blue 1, who reassured him that one target, Task Force's Argento, had already been eliminated (he hadn't; they were mistaken), and that they were proceeding to eliminate the rest of the targets shortly.
(Europa#3/2) - Effectively incognito as just one of the many members of the commission, A.I.M.'s operative took part in a conference call with Euromind Director François Borillon, during which EuroLab and Task Force were framed for murdering Euromind agents (actually slain by Blue 1) and declared terrorists.
(Europa#4/2) - The commissioner received reports that the plane carrying Euroforce (the combined EuroLab and Task Force) had exploded after being seemingly attacked by the mercenary Lords of War, but that the three Lords who had been working for Nadir were confirmed to be unconscious at the time of the attack. His assistant interrupted his musings to let him know Borillon was calling on multiconference. The Euromind Director informed all the commissioners that Euroforce had been confirmed to be dead, though the cause remained as yet unknown.
Comments: The S.H.A.P.E. commissioner appears to be someone with a level of authority in either Nadir or A.I.M., rather than just a corrupt official working for them, as he's the one who issues the command to assassinate EuroLab and Task Force. However, it's hard to figure out if the commissioner is actually part of Nadir, or just A.I.M.
(Europa#3/2) - Jerome was an A.I.M. agent working in Nadir's Malaysian lab complex. Having been working alongside a female agent, he took a toilet break, during which he removed his uniform helmet to examine it. Speaking aloud, he complained about the helmet's design, noting aloud that if it wasn't for the good pay... Before he could complete the sentence, he was shocked into unconsciousness by the telepath Nuage, who had been trying to mask the presence of Euroforce from him. They stripped Jerome of his uniform (see comments), tied and gagged him, then hid him in the tiled ceiling. However, he soon managed to dislodge himself and dropped through the tiles, surprising other agents now using the facilities. When they removed his gag, Jerome told them to stop standing around and raise the alarm (see comments).
(Europa#4/2) - Outside the base Jerome and two other guards were patrolling the perimeter until Jerome stopped, complaining that their duty was pointless since the intruders were inside. Complaining of the heat, he removed his helmet, prompting his fellow guards to chastise him. Unrepentant, Jerome sat down to rest and reminded the other guards that he had already encountered the intruders, insisting that they had no chance of defeating the intruders even if they did run into them. Unaware the intruders had just emerged from the lab nearby because Nuage was once again blocking the guards' ability to perceive them, Jerome bet his fellow guards that they wouldn't even see the intruders. However, other guards further away weren't affected and opened fire on the departing Euroforce. Hearing the shots, one of Jerome's compatriots ordered the resting guard to put his helmet on or he'd shoot Jerome in the head himself. Complaining, Jerome complied. Still unable to see Euroforce, the third guard declared that a hunter always knew the way to get the prey out into the open, and strafed the undergrowth, to no effect. Moments later Euroforce's plane launched noisily into the air in front of the trio's eyes, prompting Jerome to sarcastically congratulate his fellow on how well he'd scared the intruders. Annoyed, the other guard swore to Jerome that one day he would head-shoot him.
Comments: It's not really clear why Euroforce bothered to strip Jerome of his uniform, leaving him only wearing underpants. They were rushed for time, needing to move fact before they were detected, so spending valuable seconds stripping him would only make sense if they wanted to use his uniform as a disguise, which none of them did. Granted, Euroforce appeared to use strips from his uniform to gag him, and probably to bind him, but not enough to require leaving him nearly naked.
For all their work for an agency that prides itself in being more intelligent than the average, A.I.M. guards aren't the smartest. You'd think that finding one of their fellow guards tied up and hidden in the ceiling of the men's room would be enough of a clue to alert someone to the likelihood that the base had intruders, without Jerome needing to spell it out for them.
In the picture of three A.I.M. guards above right Jerome is the one on the far right, with the smallest gun. The one on the left, with the handheld rifle, is the guard who threatened to shoot him in the head if he didn't put his helmet back on. The middle guard, with the biggest gun, is the one who started blasting the undergrowth.
"Marc" (left) and "Gregoire" (right) were A.I.M. agents working at Nadir's Malaysian lab. Having worked for M.O.D.O.K., M.O.D.A.M. and the Scientist Supreme in the ancient undersea base, "Gregoire" had witnessed attacks against A.I.M. by Iron Man and the Hulk, and shared this reminiscence with "Marc," who pointed out that Nadir was a paradise compared to... "Marc's" comparison was interrupted by a loud creak that presaged a bound Jerome falling from the ceiling where he had been hidden by the intruders Euroforce. Once they removed his gag, Jerome told them to raise the alarm.
Comments: Unnamed in the issue, I've dubbed the pair Marc and Gregoire to make the profile easier to follow. The choice comes from Marc Gregoire, founder of the Tefal company, which produces (among other things) non-stick frying pans. They had a memorable ad campaign in the U.K. in the 1980s that led to the phrase Tefal-head entering the lexicon, and if you check out an image from it, you might be able to figure out why A.I.M. agents (and Jerome's complaints) remind me of Tefal scientists.
"Marc" and "Gregoire" might appear in Europa#4/2 as well, as there are several agents in full costume, including the face-covering masks. They might even be the pair outside the base with Jerome when Euroforce made their escape.
--Europa#3/2
images: (without ads)
Europa#3/2, p1, pan 1 (Nadir, Inc's Malaysian base)
Europa#2/2, p9, pan 1 (Nadir, Inc's mutation lab)
Europa#4/2, p16, pan 3 (Jerome and two fellow agents in full uniform)
Google and Photoshop (map of region where Nadir was operating)
Europa#1/2, p2-3, pan 1 ("Ugly Man" mutated)
Europa#1/2, p1, pan 4 ("Ugly Man" about to mutate)
Europa#4/2, p19, pan 2 (S.H.A.P.E. commissioner and assistant)
Europa#3/2, p2, pan 2 (Jerome)
Europa#3/2, p10, pan 2 ("Marc" and "Gregoire")
Appearances:
Europa#1-4 (July-October, 1996) - Xavier Marturet (writer), Paco Diaz (art),
Enrico Fornaroli; Marco M. Lupoi; Miguel Carrasco (editors)
First Posted: 01/18/2019
Last updated: 01/18/2019
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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