Review by Karl Verhoven
Ice Cream Man is the most consistently creative horror comic since the prime of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. It features a malign demonic presence, the Ice Cream Man himself, but it’s very often the case that his is merely a cameo role if he appears at all. Horror, therefore, is generated not by traditional beasts, nor stalk and slash, but via the forensic inspection of human lives, be they tragic, unfortunate or authors of their own downfall.
W. Maxwell Prince frequently adds an additional layer of intellectual exercise by playing with the technical boundaries of comics, such as the opening strip being designed in palindromic form. It makes perfect disturbing sense whether read from front to back or from back to front, although story is sacrificed, so it’s inventive in one way, but falls short in another. It’s a rare lapse. That’s not the case with the following strip being based on a crossword puzzle, nor one constructed as a set of manual instructions.
The varying visual demands certainly challenge Martín Morazzo, but there’s not a strip here where he doesn’t rise to the occasion, whether that’s his straightforward staring-eyed title character, a Dr. Seuss impersonation or the simplicity of a children’s storybook. Morazzo shouldn’t be remembered for the gimmicks, though, but for the solidity and haunting characteristics of the regular material.
“Perhaps you’re the unwitting host of a televised fundraiser that’s failing to raise enough revenue to keep you alive” is a suitably miserable thought that sums up the Ice Cream Man ethos. Take it home with you and contemplate for bit.
The Sundae Edition Volume One only included strips previously available in paperback, and most stories here are found in Tiny Lives, Other Confections and Just Desserts, but the final strips haven’t previously been collected. ‘Haha’ is the cheerless tale of a clown dying on the inside. As Morazzo always has him in clown make-up and costume, he resembles a darker version of Krusty from The Simpsons, although the attitude is downbeat depression rather than comical cynicism. Compared with some of the earlier material it’s straightforward and predictable, although still very readable as Prince dissects yet another person without hope.
Closure comes with a batch of short stories originally produced during covid quarantine, and they take that as a theme by all featuring someone who’s trapped and looking for a way out. Strangely, the only exception, a daft Green Lantern origin pastiche, is the weakest of them. The remainder feature a writer considering Shakespeare in rhyme, Eve in the garden of Eden, Mike recalling his past, a couple divorcing and a trip to the end of the universe. All are sharp snippets of what makes Ice Cream Man so great. They’re visually inventive and communicate with the demon inside us all.
