Worm by Wildbow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's practically nothing I can say in a review that would do this work justice.

For one, it's only one review for a work that spans 1.7 million words. Serialized, finished in 2011, I'm frankly flabbergasted it was never given a more serious treatment, complete with many, many volumes for sale in all the major bookstores. It absolutely deserves it. It's frankly a rather monumental work of imagination.

But what is it? It's a superhero/supervillain tale on par with a super long-running comic of the independent vein. It's grimdark, it's super grounded, it's multidimensional, mind-bending, epic and scary in scale and emotionally wrenching.

If I was to to put it in its proper place, I'd be comparing it directly to the Invincible comic that came out at roughly the same time. If I was to compare it to later works that got very popular later, I'd point to some of the best parts of My Hero Academia and The Boys. Specifically the deep dive into the villains, the grey ground, how crappy heroes can be.

But here's the real deal. This work has so many arcs it might as well be a FULL IP all by itself on the SAME level of Spiderman or Superman. And the end is... frankly mind-blowing. Amazing.


Again, there's no way to encapsulate the feelings I have for Skitter/Weaver as a character. She's very complicated. And in my heart, she's a real hero. Even if she went full-out nuts. I'm a real fan.

And I'm actually very afraid that this work will be forgotten or slip through the cracks. It really shouldn't be. It should have a heroes seat. Hopefully something more than the one Skitter/Weaver sits on.


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