Review by Karl Verhoven

Is Graham Greene still a novelist with a reputation or is his work disappearing with time? Presumably W. Maxwell Prince doesn’t care either way, as he opens this selection of imaginative, intelligent horror with a Greene pastiche. It’s set in Havana, but is more a pastiche of Greene’s general style than his novel Our Man in Havana, itself a pastiche. It works well up to a point, and despite the urgent narrative captions indicating otherwise, it’s meant to be funny, but the surreal discovery made by Agent Carrigan sacrifices the cultivated mood for a moment of silliness. There’s a point being made about the on again/off again activities of the Ice Cream Man, but the invasive nature makes it unsatisfying.

By contrast, the following story was divisive when published as a comic, and will probably remain so. The point Prince legitimately makes is of some real world events being far more shocking than the most graphic of horror stories, backed up with reproductions of newspaper front pages. It’s not subtle, yet isn’t intended as such. Those who don’t believe women should control their own bodies or that regular school shootings are unconnected with the ready availability of guns will just shrug their shoulders and enjoy another fine dose of that Marcos Martín art. However, there’s a feeling that earlier in the series Prince would have made the same points with greater nuance and panache.

That’s followed by a first for Ice Cream Man as a batch of writers other than Maxwell also contribute to a selection of single page horror stories. These folk are the cream of the crop: Frank Barbiere, Deniz Camp, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Geoff Johns, Jeff Lemire, Grant Morrison and Patton Oswald. Zoe Thorogood also gives Martín a break by drawing her strip, which is personal in reinforcing the point of reality’s horrors being worse than any other form. To an extent these are all an intellectual exercise, and some contributions are more ethereal than others, but only Camp, DeConnick, Lemire and Morrison manage to match Ice Cream Man’s existing tone. One of Maxwell’s strips is pure political indulgence continuing a previous theme, but surely even Republicans can cut him some slack over a single page in a quality series.

The closer is Craig Alabaster’s performance review at Holt Industries, which every regular reader knows to be an insidious and evil corporation experimenting on the population. It’s the most obvious comedy in this collection, a satire from beginning to end, the company’s board including a “VP in charge of Market Manipulation and Insider Trading”. What’s gradually revealed is how Alabaster went postal, but treated as if something to be considered by a company’s internal disciplinary process.

While Martín continues to draw the frankly insane things asked of him jaw-droppingly well, this is the patchiest Ice Cream Man collection for some while. It’s undeniably excellent in places, but while self-indulgence has been a series strength until now, it doesn’t always work for the best here.