Many comics are quite straightforward: here’s the hero/heroine, there’s the bad guy, punch ’em in the face, save the citizens, intergalactic threat, new costume, on to the next one. Every so often, however, you come across a cypher of a comic, an oddity, something confounding, where you’re forced to really think hard about what you’ve got in your hands, and that is definitely the landscape wherein Ice Cream Man resides. An anthology series from author W. Maxwell Prince, artist Martin Morazzo, colorist Chris O’Halloran, and letterer Good Old Neon, I.C.M. is a series of stories with themes of horror and loss, all tied together by the extremely sketchy title character, who possesses eerily green eyes, pristine white clothing, and a too-toothy smile. This series must be read to be believed, and it’s still fairly unbelievable.
Crossword puzzles and stony day labor
The story starts with a crossword puzzle being solved by Earl, Rita’s wife. She seems like the kind of person who complains about everything, and we see her voicing her suspicions that the contractors working in the backyard are smoking marijuana cigarettes. They’re building a guesthouse, even though Earl and Rita don’t have any friends. Rita blames Earl’s lack of companions on his obsession with puzzle-solving, and Earl deals with that criticism by exiting the house and heading to the corner store. Earl relates his thoughts in terms of crossword answers, which is a brilliant stroke from the creators of Ice Cream Man. In the corner store, Earl waxes philosophic while buying a paper with a crossword in it, but the clerk is the Ice Cream Man, which means things are about to get wild.
Rita has no chill, and Earl is losing it
Rita decides to go outside and give the construction workers a piece of her mind, and even more so when she sees one of them without a shirt on. The panels are interspersed with blank white and black squares, like a crossword puzzle, which is a nifty narrative choice. She goes back in, but thinks she hears them threatening her, which causes her to panic. Earl is sitting on a park bench, doing the crossword, when he seems to fall INTO his puzzle, where is is spoken to by the Ice Cream Man. He is taunted about the loss of his child, decades ago, and that’s a really low blow, fraught with emotion. Rita is convinced the workers are going to murder her, and she considers calling the police. Earl realizes he thinks Rita is cheating on him, while Rita has locked herself in the bedroom and is about to grab Earl’s revolver out of the dresser drawer to defend herself.
Sometimes you just need perseverance
Earl, still deep in the throes of the Ice Cream Man’s visions, thinks he himself has grabbed the revolver from the drawer, and is about to commit suicide (told you this was a weird comic). He stops himself, remembering that Rita needs him, and he heads home. Rita thinks the workers are about to break down the door and she prepares to fire, and the reader has been set up to think she’s going to kill her husband, which is just..grim, but she misses, blowing a hole in the wall. Earl does a little inspirational speech about giving up puzzles and rededicating himself to Rita, and everything seems hunky-dory. They cancel the rest of the work on the guesthouse and apologize to the workers, who take it in stride, but the final panel shows them exactly as Rita believed them to be: possessed by the Ice Cream Man, ready to kill.
What’s to be said about a comic like this?
All’s well that ends well, or so they say. Seems like it worked out for Earl and Rita. The Ice Cream Man didn’t claim any victims this time, so that’s good. Right? With this being an anthology series, there’s not a lot of correlation between stories, but it seems like the Ice Cream Man is a metaphor for despair. Everyone experiences despair, which, in a way, unifies us all, and a simple review just won’t explain why this comic is so good; it need to be viscerally experienced, firsthand.