Crawling up from the realm of the unexpected, my friend Mark Borok gave me a copy of his comic The Indomitable Worm-Man when we met at Boskone.
This full-color comic was a featured publication from the Boston Comics Roundtable and debuted at their MICE table in 2024.
The story involves a mystical wizard, Seaturtle-Mouseman and his apprentice in the mystical arts of transformation. If that sounds a little odd, it really is! Every page of this comic introduces some sort of really strange shape-shifting and cosmic danger, even though most of the story is being told by the old wizard to his young student.
The story itself is about the origin of Worm-Man, who is a salesman who quits his day job to fix up an old ice cream truck. Unfortunately for Worm-Man, he crashes the truck and is imprisoned by Doctor Beast. To escape, he discovers his own secret burrowing powers and wriggles his way to freedom.
Mark Borok did a great job of making a fantastical mayhem of plot twists into a visual narrative that you can actually follow. The combination of inexplicable weirdness experienced by an everyman reminded me of Mike Allred’s Madman.
If you can find a copy of this local gem, you will appreciate how many times a worm can turn in a single phantasmagoric issue!
