Nelson Gruber was a laboratory assistant to Professor Huddleston. An avid reader and studious researcher, Nelson was frustrated at his lack of a social life and tendency of people to put him down. Particularly his colleague Whitney Cooper III. He took the night shift in an experiment monitoring Rich Sheridan‘s dream activities.
He synthesized the electric impulses for Rick’s mind and amplified them a million-fold for a more detailed investigation. The system overloaded and bathed him in energy, mutating him. Gruber gained the ability to draw on the power of the Mindscape to generate solid images of anything mentioned in his books. He could control the images as weapons. For example, an image of King Arthur could sword fight like an actual man.
Figuring it was time for some payback against his “enemies”, Nelson went after Cooper. Using images of Amazons against the womanizer. The following day he faced Sleepwalker who had the power to disperse his living images. Nevertheless, Nelson produced a small army of images to keep his foe busy.
Alyssa Conover, Nelson’s love interest, suddenly offered him new pages to use. He was delighted to have her help him. Before realizing the pages were blank. His confusion slowing him down enough for Sleepy to take him down. He ended up in a jail cell, prevented from having any reading material.
Out of jail, Nelson was quickly back to his old ways. He created a whole Emerald City out of the book ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Seeking a throne for himself within his creation, he was met with resistance from the Wicked Witch of the West. She cut off his right hand and bound it to the book, this grounding herself to this reality. Gruber fled trough the Last Door and enlisted the aid of the Scarlet Witch. Upon confronting the Scarlet Witch, the Wicked Witch told her that Gruber hadn’t created them, but that they had all come from the Ideaverse. The Scarlet Witch used her spells to return the inhabitants of the Emerald City to Ideaverse, sending Gruber with them.
Creation
Bookworm was created by Bob Budiansky and Rick Leonardi in 1991 and first appeared in Sleepwalker # 4.
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