Ice Cream Man #7
Image Comics
Writer: W. Maxwell Prince
Artist: Martin Morazzo
The curse of the anthology comic is that each issue you get to tell a new story, and while that is nice, you also live and die by each issue. There is no continuing story to bolster a low-quality issue. Ice Cream Man has already suffered from this more than once, and the curse seems to be at work in this latest release. Let’s dive in!
Lucy is a nine-year-old girl who has lost her best friend, Kayla, to bone cancer. Lucy is dealing with this loss by pretending Kayla is still always around. They swing together. Go on adventures together. They draw together. This is classic invisible friend material. The parents are getting tired of this defense mechanism, so they come down on her about it thinking they can fix the problem. It seems to work, until later that night when “Kayla” wants to go on an adventure. Lucy obliges and the “two” set off into the woods where they discover a winding road made of sprinkles. From here the story turns sinister, which is something I like about this series – the ability to go full-on horror and not hold back in the midst of any storyline. Our elusive cowboy character from a previous issue returns. However, here more than ever, the ice cream man and his savagery are shoehorned in. The story of Lucy was heartbreaking and emotional and could have stood on its own as a story of a child dealing with death and loss. Adding in the horror element just didn’t work here. I was prepared for Lucy to get a real story with a real ending. While Prince’s ending here isn’t bad, it had so much potential to be even better. The title of this issue is “My Little Poltergeist”. I just wish the title actually matched the story. It suggests more than we get here.
Prince is extremely capable of writing these issues. His story of Lucy was woeful and real. We care about her and we feel for her parents who don’t know what to do. Grief and depression can be a hard topic to resonate with readers. Prince nails this part, but the story didn’t benefit from the shock-horror that Ice Cream Man does so well. Creatively, I feel he went the wrong way with the tone and the book suffered. I would have taken supernatural or spiritual over what we got.
Morazzo is doing his job, as to be expected. When the story calls for gruesome, he (and his pencil) are ready. Otherwise, he does just as good of a job drawing the primary everyday characters and situations. He is a good fit for the series, and I hope he stays on for the duration
There you have it! Ice Cream Man #7 could have been a fantastic story of ghosts or even resurrection, but it wasn’t. This is the one time where I wish the ice cream man character could have stayed away. As always, I will keep subscribing to this comic because most are good, some are great, and few are bad.
Ice Cream Man #7
The Ice Cream Man rollercoaster takes another turn down. This time the horror element feels shoehorned in, and the story would have been better without it.
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