Ice Cream Man #1
Ice Cream Man is a darkly mysterious comic written by W. Maxwell Prince with art by Martin Morazzo and Chris O’Halloran. Issue 1 starts out normal enough with a typical suburban summer scene: there’s the friendly ice cream man selling sweet treats to the neighborhood children, everything is normal. The peaceful scene doesn’t last long before all hell breaks loose. Nothing causes a dark turn of events like realizing the “happy” child in the previous panels is living with the dead bodies of his parents.
Things go downhill from there; it turns out the parents died because of the Brazilian Wandering Spider their son has been keeping as a pet; this spider is considered the most venomous spider in the world.
Brazilian Wandering Spider venom has some truly nasty side effects such as; total loss of muscle control, inflammation, paralysis, and if the victim has the parts, a never-ending erection. It’s truly an awful way to die.
Morazzo and O’Halloran make a visually appealing comic. While some pages are almost reminiscent of another Image hit, Paper Girls, due to the colors and style, some pages are very macabre. There’s dead bodies, a skeletonized cat, and the Joker-esque final image of the Ice Cream Man. It’s a stunning image that really solidifies the creep factor of this character.
Prince’s narrative is solid, but it ultimately has an unsatisfactory ending. Most of the loose ends aren’t wrapped up and the story almost feels incomplete. With each issue slated to be its own mini story may be a problem until Prince really gets into his zone for this comic.
While the ending isn’t satisfying, the writing is great and the art is beautiful. Ice Cream Man isn’t perfect, but it’s worth a read.There’s enough mystery that will keep you coming back wanting to see just what will happen with the next story.
