LogFAQs > #930049578

Worm
Web Serial

"Don't fucking underestimate me."

I have a weird relationship with superhero media. I really like it, read comics sometimes, have seen every Marvel movie, but very little of it ends up being one of my 'favorite things'. It's easy to digest but doesn't tend to leave a huge impact on me. So when I chanced upon Worm and the first chapter revealed the main character to be a bullied high school girl who just got bug powers, I didn't expect too much going forward.

Yeah, uh, I did not know what I was getting myself into. Worm is the superhero story I've been looking for all my life. It takes the genre and synthesizes it with a real-world setting while adding in a copious amount of horror elements, and boy oh boy is the result a trip. Worm's worldbuilding is one of the best I've ever experienced. Society is circling the drain, with people trying and mostly failing to take a world suddenly populated by superbeings (and much worse) and forge it into something resembling stability and order. They often fail.
Bad things happen in Worm. Major events have weight. People die - or worse. Worm's world reminds me of Berserk's in that it is one defined by a neverending struggle just to tread water, and that struggle is fascinating to watch. Also going to award major bonus point to the story for having some of the best, most inventive fight scenes I've ever read. It's easy to get immersed in the overarching struggle when I'm always on the edge of my seat.

There's a lot of disparate elements of Worm that come together to form something special (I haven't even mentioned the fantastic side characters or wildly imaginative scenarios), but the glue that holds it all together is the protagonist, Taylor. She's simple on the surface-level and becomes increasingly fascinating the more you analyze her and her impact on the story's tone. I have a soft spot for characters that are awful at self-reflection, and Worm utilizes Taylor's habits of repression and compartmentalization to further Worm's feel of a constant struggle. It's easy to get sucked into her mindset, just going with the flow, rushing headlong into every challenge, agreeing that it was the only way...only for the reader to take a step back and wonder how the fuck they ended up in this situation. Her overall mindset is way more compelling to experience than you would initially expect.

Worm has flaws, of course. It's a self-published web serial that was never edited, and while the quality of the writing is phenomenal considering that, every now and then the by-the-week writing format can be felt. Its pacing can be problematic, and for the opposite reason of most other series. It does a great job at keeping tension going but every now and then you wish the story would take a chill pill. There's also a very questionable arc near the end of the series that is just...not as good as everything up until that point. Thankfully, it caps off the story with an incredible ending, so hey. Worm is awesome and I recommend it to anyone who remotely likes superhero media, or even just the idea of superhero media - one with actual stakes.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.