[[quoteright:181:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wormwood.jpg]]

''Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse'' is an irregular comedy-horror comic series by Creator/BenTemplesmith, published by Creator/IDWPublishing as a series of one-shots and miniseries during the 2000s. Although no new comic issues were produced for some years, it was announced in 2016 that an AnimatedAdaptation was entering development, and a new miniseries ''Wormwood Goes to Washington'' was published in 2017 followed by a [[ChristmasEpisode Christmas one-shot]].

Wormwood is not in fact a zombie, but an extra-dimensional magical larva who can use human corpses as puppets. Most of the time he can be found drinking in the Dark Alley Club, a sinister strip joint ("Sad, seedy loners welcome") with his buddy Mr. Pendulum, appearing to anybody who can't pierce his PerceptionFilter to be a seedy upper-class Soho alcoholic. He's actually, however, one of the main entities protecting Earth from a wide variety of extra-dimensional horrors, although he doesn't feel the need to be nice about it.

Not to be confused with ''ComicBook/TheChroniclesOfWormwood'', although there are some tonal similarities.

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!!This comic provides examples of:
* AchillesInHisTent: Wormwood spends years sulking in an extra-dimensional jungle prior to "Mr. Wormwood Goes to Washington" following an unfortunate romantic relationship.
* AmazonBrigade: The Gamelei Collective, a bunch of gratuitously violent magical girl strippers. (Yes.)
* AnimatedTattoo: Every member of the Gamelei Collective of strippers cum hired thugs is marked with a unique animal tattoo she can animate to destroy her enemies.
* TheAssimilator: The Calimari Brotherhood are like the Borg, but with tentacles instead of metal.
* BadGuyBar: The Dark Alley Club is where the heroes hang out, but has this kind of atmosphere.
* BarbieDollAnatomy: It's a running gag that Mr. Pendulum has no "bits". In one story, Wormwood installs some on him, but after discovering the Leprechaun Queen is better-hung than he is, Mr. Pendulum despondently requests they be removed.
* TheCoatsAreOff: When Mr. Pendulum does this, he not only increases in asskicking, he also increases in size.
* ColorCodedSpeech: All the major characters have different colour text in their speech bubbles. Undead or magical people have different colours of text on black speech bubbles (mostly red, but Medusa has white, the Calimari Brotherhood have mauve, and Buel has green), normal humans have black on white, and Mr. Pendulum uniquely has blue on black.
* CreepyChild: In one story, Wormwood's usual body gets rendered uninhabitable by a leprechaun bite, so he ends up in the corpse of a little girl.
* DisposableSexWorker: The hookers who Wormwood supplies the Four Horsemen with don't survive the experience for long.
* EverybodySmokes: Wormwood and Phoebe chain-smoke cigarettes, Mr. Pendulum probably only doesn't because he's a robot.
* EyeScream: Wormwood likes to sit in the eye socket of his vessel.
* FaceFullOfAlienWingWong: Happens in the stories with incredible frequency. In one case, this was caused by [[spoiler:an EldritchAbomination pretending to be human masturbating into people's beer]].
* GentlemanWizard: Wormwood acts like a peculiar hybrid of this and a TrenchcoatBrigade figure, with the dress, speech and manners of the former but the lifestyle and behaviour patterns of the latter.
* GhostlyGoals: Trotsky (no relation) was a lazy, incompetent cop who is forced to stay as a ghost until all the cases he failed to solve are cleared up.
* GodEating: Wormwood's species feeds on dead gods, [[spoiler:giving them immense power]].
* GunFu: What Phoebe uses to fight until things get really serious.
* {{Hellgate}}: The Dark Alley Club is one. Medusa is officially meant to be its guardian, but she's worryingly lackadaisical about it.
* HorsemenOfTheApocalypse: The Four Horsemen arrived a long time ago, but they liked drugs, sex, and junk food too much to bring themselves to do the whole "reap a quarter of the population" bit. Wormwood keeps them supplied with cocaine, hookers, cheese snacks, and a penthouse suite so that they stay too distracted to trigger the Apocalypse.
* ItsPersonal: The Calimari Brotherhood have a personal grudge against Wormwood after he destroyed a whole solar system rather than let them assimilate it.
* KillTally: Phoebe puts a new small scar on one of her upper arms as a tally every time she kills someone.
* LastOfItsKind: The Calimari Brotherhood destroys the Leprechaun world, leaving the Queen the only one not infected.
* {{Leprechaun}}: They are depraved, ultraviolent little stereotypically Irish monsters.
* LoanShark: How the capitalist demons got to take over Christmas from Santa.
* LovecraftLite: The Earth is constantly under threat from various tentacular abominations but it's usually played for laughs.
* MaliciousMisnaming: Wormwood drives an abomination pretending to be human to reveal itself in rage by repeatedly mispronouncing his name, "Leroy".
* {{Medusa}}: The owner of the Dark Alley Club, leader of the Gamelei, and Wormwood's ex-girlfriend, Medusa, is strongly implied to be '''the''' Medusa.
* TheMenInBlack: Averted. Apparently the religious right got them shut down for being heretical.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: A very recognisable UsefulNotes/RupertMurdoch and Roger Ailes are plotting with the Ghorass in "Wormwood Goes to Washington".
* OneGenderRace: Leprechauns are all male. Even the queen. We aren't given details on how they reproduce.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Wormwood is a ParasiteZombie type, although he also has elements of the RevenantZombie, being a self-sufficient and individualist being with no particular interest in reproducing or spreading an infection.
* PerceptionFilter: Only magical people or people who he wants to will see Wormwood as anything but a living human.
* PreMortemOneLiner: Lincoln to the Ghorass:
-->'''Lincoln''': This one's on the House. The House. Get it?
* RevengeIsADishBestServed: The very first issue establishes just how far the comic will go into black comedy by combining this with [[spoiler:Face Full Of Alien Wing Wong]]. Seriously.
* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: Mr. Pendulum can drink beer, is not particularly servile, and apart from being metal looks like an elderly outlaw biker.
* SavingChristmas: The Christmas special has Wormwood forced to save Christmas after capitalist demons kill Santa and try to take it over.
* SelfDeprecation: Ben Templesmith appears in the issue "Segue to Destruction" at the Dark Alley, where Wormwood describes him as "my biographer". None of the cast have any respect for him at all, and mock his defensively citing his three Eisner nominations: "No idea what those are, but he seems obsessed with them."
* ServileSnarker: Both Mr. Pendulum and Phoebe have this kind of relationship to Wormwood.
* StrawmanPolitical: Jerry from Minnesota was a particularly nasty Republican even before he got possessed.
* SubbingForSanta: Wormwood recruits the Roman god Saturn to permanently take over for Santa after he is murdered.
* TakeThat: The Ghorass announces that Sarah Palin has "no spark of life" for it to feed on.
* TankTopTomboy: Phoebe wears a white tank top and is a tough professional thug into her booze and fags.
* TelescopingRobot: Mr. Pendulum can extend his limbs in combat.
* TextualCelebrityResemblance: There are several references to Wormwood's PerceptionFilter appearance looking like Creator/BradPitt, although the resemblance on the few occasions the reader sees it are not particularly strong. There's one panel where it looks scarily like Creator/DavidTennant.
* UsurpingSanta: In the Christmas special, Santa is killed and usurped by capitalist demons, and then replaced with the god Saturn.
* WeDidntStartTheFuhrer: "Wormwood Goes to Washington" suggests that the Third Reich was due to mass possession by a type of extra-dimensional creature known as Ghorass Fungus.
* WeaponisedLandmark: At the climax of "Wormwood Goes to Washington", Abraham Lincoln's spirit possesses the Lincoln Memorial.
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