He doesn’t have any skeletons in the closet because he’s an animated corpse with a drinking problem and very literal worms in the head and everyone knows it. He’s a perfect candidate for our times! See below for preview pages and a review of Wormwood, Gentleman Corpse: Mr. Wormwood Goes To Washington #1.
(As always, minor spoilers below. And profanity.)
I almost felt like this issue needed a warning label, which is hilarious when you think about it, because all Wormwood books need a label. “Warning: Do Not Read If Your Sense Of Humor Has Been Surgically Removed.” “Warning: This Book Has High Ick Factor.” “Warning: Wormwood Stories Have Been Known To Cause Random Outbursts Of “OH EW DID YOU SEE WHAT JUST HAPPENED.” And all those are true of this book, but we also get some viewpoints from a political candidate in the first few pages.
The fight continues, with the moral superiority of private corporations and the Lord Jesus Christ, over the just-plain-evil forces of labor union thugs and their quest to make this country broke with above-minimum wages.
There’s also some complaints about lazy single mothers and communist regulations that prevent cheap breast milk substitutes coming over from China, and how “every time I say Jesus the dumb fucks who vote for me cheer and think I’m actually a good guy” but I think you get the idea. Every comment this guy said made me simultaneously laugh and want to hide under the bed, so I loved it, but if this ain’t your cup of tea, you’ve been warned. Because it’s only the first issue and it’s likely to get even worse better.
That’s before we find Wormwood, who’s been off the radar for a while, following what was probably the worst relationship he’s ever had, and he’s a corpse who has sex with corpses, so that’s saying something.
It’s not like it was a bad breakup. More like I was coming out of a Stockholm-Syndrome type situation.
That’s what I love about Wormwood: he may be a worm-animated rotting piece of meat but I can really identify with that last comment. Too much information? Moving on…
The art is pure Templesmith decadent violence. The splatters of paint, the layers of colors, the dark lines and the slashed letters in the sound effects…the whole effect is constantly angry. Just reading the issue feels cathartic, like you had a good temper tantrum, broke bottles and punched a wall and now you’re all relaxed. What? Don’t look at me like that, you’ve been there too. Liar.
I don’t know how I missed that this was coming out, but I’m sure glad it’s here. Considering our dumpster-fire of a political environment at the moment, this seems like a good book to have. (I’ve heard the opinion that the last season of House of Cards wasn’t any fun because it needed to be crazier than the politics we already have to be interesting. Somewhere Ben heard that and said “….hold my beer….”)
