Well guys, it’s time to wrap up my little Indiegogo series of reviews, and (spoiler alert!) I’ve saved the best for last! Doug Tenapel’s Bigfoot Bill set the standard that I judged a lot of the quality of Indiegogo books that followed after it, but now with Earthworm Jim: Launch the Cow, that standard has been risen further.
A little background: Earthworm Jim began when the toy manufacturer Playmates, seeing the success of the franchise, decided to start their own. But rather than creating a toy line and cartoon simultaneously, upon seeing the success of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog, they decided to produce their own video game. They got together with Dave Perry, a programmer at Virgin Interactive, and gave him the money to create Shiny Entertainment, the team that designed and created Earthworm Jim.
Enter Doug TenNapel who designed the main characters of the game, help flesh out what backstory they had (including drawing the initial origin comic) AND doing those awesome voice clips for Jim from the game.
Alongside Jim we’d have his trusty sidekicks Peter Puppy and Snot, his love interest (somewhat) Princess What’s-Her-Name (yes seriously), and an amazingly clever rogues Gallery. In this comic alone we get Psy-Crow, Professor Monkey-For-A-Head, Evil The Cat, and Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-For-A-Butt (Or Slug-For-A-Butt for short).
Jim would receive two beloved games by the original team and 2 inferior games done more due to response from the criminally underrated cartoon adaption of the games. In fact the cartoon gave more personalities to the characters that line up with what we see in this comic.
And now to the main topic! After the success of Bigfoot Bill, as well as most of the EWJ team reuniting to work on a new installment finally, Doug was able to finally write that proper EWJ comic he’s wanted to do for so long. What resulted was an IGG campaign that would be the most successful single-comic-related campaign in the sites history! And it was well worth it!
Launch the Cow is basically an origin story for Jim that expands on what’s been established before, makes some necessary tweaks (The princess is now the Queen’s daughter, but the Making of Book reveals there’s more to it than that), and tells an incredible adventure that any fan of the character will love!
I adore this book! The writing and art are incredible, and I could hear the cartoon series voices in my head as I read it! I cannot recommend this book enough! Check out my in-depth review below to learn more!
