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W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo's horror anthology Ice Cream Man has long been one of Image's most consistently daring comics, but of late it's become clear that it's a truly great one, too – see issue #39 and #40's heart-wrenching two-part 'Decompression in a Wreck.' That story was both a dazzling exercise in exploring how time works in graphic storytelling and an agonising moment-by-moment breakdown of a car crashing into a lorry that spanned just five seconds in the lives (and deaths) of its characters. But while the book has always been chilling (er, pun sort of intended, I guess), it's also always been blackly comic too.
This week's Ice Cream Man #43 moves between both these tones and more on any given page. It's a special issue which breaks from tradition by bringing onboard writers other than Prince for the first time. And what writers! Yer actual Grant Morrison! Kelly Sue DeConnick, Patton Oswalt, Matt Fraction, and more. It's a starry selection, with the contributors each delivering a horror story over the course of a single page.
That feels like a very tight constraint. Realistically, how much story can you fit into a single page? The answer to that, it turns out, is: much more than you think. Over the course of 22 individual tales, the contributors play with time, space, and format in a way that's genuinely dazzling.
Some stories can be read in the blink of an eye: Deniz Camp's dialogue-free 'Real Page Turner' and Grant Morrison's closing 'At Home With The Colonel' all do their thing in just a few panels. Others, however, force the reader to slow down and absorb every last detail. Geoff Johns' 'Lickety Split' uses a rigid 16-panel grid, ending with a methodically-paced punchline. Prince's 'Who's In Charge?' is a simple concept, but one that engages the reader in some fourth-wall-breaking fun with the book's titular host. Matt Fraction's 'Life By Misadventure' manages to tell five stories in the space of its single page before uniting them satisfactorily. There's even a full-page prose piece – a witty extrapolation of one of the original ultra-short stories: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Then there's 'For James' by Zoe Thorogood. This tale – the only one in the book also illustrated by its writer – appears to directly address the death of her brother. It's a touching and heartfelt piece, but also a devastating one. Partial proceeds from sales of the issue will go to charity on James' behalf, and the entire issue is dedicated to him. A beautiful piece of work, it reminds you just how flexible the horror genre really is.
With 22 stories here there are, of course, a couple that don't quite land. 'Horror, Cont'd' is simply a reprint of the New York Times cover declaring Trump's victory over Kamala Harris with a caption. That is a very real nightmare, I agree, but it adds little to the issue. And occasionally a story will feel like the sort of goofy idea you find on the Bad Two Sentence Horror subreddit. Still, given how brief these pieces are, you'll most likely simply chuckle and move on to the next one, which will almost certainly be a banger.
While the writers are taking the top billing this issue, we must give a big shout out to artist Martin Morazzo, colorist Chris O'Halloran, and letterer Good Old Neon (who gets his own chance to shine with 'A Taxonomy of Old-Timey Diseases'). Ice Cream Man has always been a great-looking comic, but here the team are given the opportunity to really stretch themselves across a range of different genres and tones. There's such a pure-hearted love of the medium on display here that it makes Ice Cream Man #43, despite its frequently very dark subject matter, simply a joy to read.
Ice Cream Man #43 is out now from Image Comics.
Ice Cream Man made our list of the best comics of 2024.
