Ben Templesmith On How He Found Out His Wormwood Was To Be A TV Show

We’ve had a number of narratives recently about comic book creators left out of the exploitation of their comics in other media, whether in payment or in input, or both. This week, comic book creator Ben Templesmith added his own about the series Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, a supposed creator-owned series, but actually co-owned by Templesmith and IDW, and published by IDW Publishing.

Ben Templesmith writes, in a series of Tweets,

You know what’s fun? Having a voice actor let me know of their experience doing a table read for a potential Wormwood animated TV show, years later. ( Many thanks!). You know, a thing the creator of the whole thing was kept out of the loop on, paid no money, no say in the project

To put that in perspective, I was once actually up for an Art director job on another creator-owned comic I did, where I’d have to move to London for 6 months & work with the folks who do the Gorillaz stuff. Never happened but…

Different publisher.

Hey now, so long as the president & head of entertainment for the publisher are in the room during it, all the important people for the comic are there!

Management has revolved but ownership remains the same. Not that any of them know I exist anymore. Or any of the creatives that initially built the corporation.

I found out via press release I’d just be a “creative consultant” on it too. ( Which is a non-title title really )

He shall return one day. I’m just in it for the comics… and maybe not being made to feel insignificant & like garbage.

IDW Publishing has recently stated that it wants to be known as the home of creator-owned comic books, going forward but it will have to go a long way to addressing these kinds of issues first.

Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse is the second solo comic book series by creator Ben Templesmith which combines humor and horror. It was first published as short episodic serials within LOFI magazine from 2004 until it ceased publication. IDW Publishing then collected those serials in a single #0 issue called The Taster in 2006 before releasing new stories in the form of several miniseries, the most recent being Calamari Rising.