THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2025! Is there anyone working in UK indie comics who can match the truly visceral visual storytelling of Erika Price? Last year at Broken Frontier the first part of her Worms series was reviewed during our Thought Bubble coverage for 2024. Worms Book the Second makes its print debut in Harrogate this year, collecting her ongoing Patreon comic, and it’s just as unsettling (if not more so) than that initial issue.
When we last entered the shadowy world of Worms the contentious and possibly malign appointment of the new Pope Sixtus VI looked set to have disturbing consequences not just for the inhabitants of Vatican City but also the wider world. Young priest Eulogius Eley, himself undergoing a crisis of faith, was one of those having severe misgivings about these developments as something deeply sinister appeared to be growing in influence in the Varican.
In Book the Second Eulogius’s fears seem to become more pronounced and proved correct as Sixtus’s presence continues to poison and corrupt the church. Given a mission by Cardinal Leontinus to observe and report back, the priest experiences the growing horrors first hand. But, unfortunately, he is about to discover just how far the new Pope’s malevolent influence extends…
The sheer unrelenting claustrophobia of the story is echoed in the stygian darkness of Price’s pages. This is work that seems to swallow the reader up in its remorseless dread and foreboding; a bombardment of body horror and organic terror. It absolutely rewards re-reading, every new visit to its pages emphasising its sense of brooding apprehension and impending doom all the more intensely. Especially where it concerns those ever present worms…
Price’s use of language is just as effective in communicating the fetid air of corruption that soaks the pages of Worms as her art is. It’s a nightmarish poetry that reverberates across the panels of each page with an almost threatening tempo. If you like comics that will disturb, disquiet and disconcert then Worms Book the Second is for you.
Erika Price (W/A) • Self-published
Review by Andy Oliver
Find Erika Price’s Patreon here
Erika Price is at Table B9 in the 2000 AD Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2025 runs from November 1oth-16th with the convention weekend taking place on the 15th-16th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2025 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster by Ng Yin Shian
