Writer: W. Maxwell Prince
Art: Martin Morazzo, Chris O’Halloran, and Good Old Neon
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 29th, 2021
Image’s Ice Cream Man series is “The Twilight Zone” if it had been in color and directed by body horror auteurs like David Cronenberg or Guillermo Del Toro. Each issue is a self-contained horror tale (that may or may not have a twist) filled with heaping helpings of gore.
If you’re interested in this comic, series, related trades, or any others that were mentioned than simply click on the title/link to snag a copy through Amazon.
The Story
Ice Cream Man #27 is no exception.
This issue’s story begins with a group of roaches (their fractured dialogue consisting of words without vowels) living a carefree life in a disposed Fed Ex box until one of them suddenly starts to change into a human. What happens after that is a study in humanity from an outsider’s point of view, an outsider named “Greg” who has suddenly become one of us.
The most frustrating thing about the story is that there’s never any explanation for why this roach suddenly changes to a human. There are no sorcerors, curses, or scientific gizmos insight. Maybe he was bit by a radioactive human?
Otherwise, the story in Ice Cream Man #27 is very unsettling, because as you read it, you realize we humans aren’t much different from bugs. We’re constantly working like drones, most of us in office buildings filled with tiny segmented cubicles like beehives. Greg’s experiences reinforce this idea throughout the tale.
I liked Greg. In his human form, he’s as bland as a lukewarm glass of skim milk, but he has the naivete and optimism of a person who’s never had a bad experience in his life. We root for the guy as the story takes him through various encounters, very much a “Day in the Life” type tale that I wish could have continued after this issue.
Art
Martin Morazzo’s art for Ice Cream Man #27 deftly captures both the quiet and horrific moments of the issue. His cityscapes and suburbs remind me of Will Eisner’s art, the architecture looking timeless. His rendering of Greg as he mutates from roach to human is captured in a splash page, and it’s truly horrific, right down to the haunting pained expression on Greg’s face as he’s shown mid-transformation in a half-human half-roach form. I’d love to see what Morazzo could do on a superhero comic, especially with god-like characters like Superman. He could give Superman a sense of humanity that many artists haven’t been able to achieve.
Final Thoughts
Ice Cream Man #27 is a wonderfully done-in-one-issue story. It’s not full-out horror, it’s more like a David Lynch style thriller, a look at a bizarre event happening in a mundane world, but it’s a gripping story that I enjoyed, and it makes me want to go back and read previous stories in the series.