Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse
By: Ben Templesmith
Pub: IDW
123 Pages.
Right, this is going to be an interesting one to explain.
Take Doctor Who and remove the hyperactivity, the TARDIS, the robot dog, the long scarf, and the sofa to hide behind replace the above with an R rating, a strip club and its workers, heavy swearing and heavier drinking, and more tentacles than some of the more niche Japanese manga and you’d be getting somewhere close.
The titular Wormwood is a corpse possessing Helevant Worm, who has come to Earth because of the beer and the girls and music. With his home built clockwork drinking buddy Pendulum, and the assistance of Phoebe, his bodyguard and former stripper Wormwood tackles, well, whatever turns up really, which is normally trouble.
Seeped in equal parts the supernatural and dimension hopping science fiction Wormwood is joyously unpredictable and anarchic.
So far three trade paperback collections have slithered onto book shelves;
Birds, Bees, Blood & Beer. In which our intrepid trio try to find the cause behind a mounting pile of corpses appearing across the city, all appearing to have given birth in a horrifically terminal fashion.
It Only Hurts When I Pee. Infected with an almost incurable terminal disease during a riot at a Leprechaun fight Wormwood is forced to hop bodies and travel into Leprechaunia in a desperate search for treatment.
Calamari Rising. To go back to the Doctor Who analogy this would be the two part season finale, eating half the budget and looking fantastic. The Earth is invaded by Wormwoods nemesis and it’s up to the bloke in the meat suit to save reality as he knows it. Which means epically long fight scenes, and two of the best character entrances in comics, and tentacles, did I mention the tentacles?
The art style of the books is unique and as with all comic books a question of taste. The writing mashes together foul mouthed world building with brilliant world building and ridiculous plotting in such a small body of work.
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