Ice Cream Man #11 Review

Writer: W. Maxwell Prince
Artist: Martin Morazzo
Colorist: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Good Old Neon
Publisher: Image Comics

Because Ice Cream Man isn’t necessarily an on-going story, the series has the ability to do amazingly creative things like they’ve done with this eleventh issue. I really enjoy the different themes that different issues take on and seeing how W. Maxwell Prince inputs the Ice Cream Man character into these different themes. I also love seeing Martin Morazzo’s vision for these bizarre scenarios.

I have written very positive things about every issue of this series so far except one that I didn’t necessarily love. This is going to be another issue that I am going to say just a few negative things about.

Ice Cream Man #11 follows one man as he jumps from TV show to TV show, each with a disturbing twist to it. I love the darkness and the gore that each show displays. This entire issue is interesting and funny and creepy, which stays very true to the Ice Cream Man series that I love.

However, I feel like this series has, at times, toed the line between being too edgy versus just weird. The series has tackled some societal criticism with its bizarreness but impressively has not really done so without making the societal criticism too over-the-top. As much as I loved this issue’s theme and execution, I didn’t really love the slightly overdone stab at reality TV. Now, I don’t know that that was W. Maxwell Prince’s aim with this issue, but it came across a little bit. I felt this when reading the first segment that was a spoof of the Bachlorette, but it didn’t truly become too obvious to me until the Keeping Up With The Kardashians spoof that portrayed them as zombies. This felt like a very tired and lazy critique of a show and family that has been an easy target for these exact kinds of spoofs. I have nothing for or against that family or show, and I didn’t find it offensive in the slightest, but I was a tad disappointed with the grab at the low hanging fruit.

Apart from that underlying commentary, the situations and TV show hopping was enjoyable and imaginative. I especially love the Ice Cream Man showing up as different hosts on each show because he adds such a creepy layer to everything he’s a part of.

Martin Morazzo’s artwork also shines in these types of issues where we have several different themes side by side. He is amazing at creating a surreal and shocking atmosphere with his visuals. This entire issue felt like a terrible dream, and Morazzo’s illustrations brought me into this wonderfully terrible dream and had me immersed.

While the slightly overdone commentary on modern reality TV was a little unsatisfying, the issue as a whole had a lot of imagination and horror. Regardless of how I felt about the issue’s tired criticism of society, everything I’ve loved about previous issues of Ice Cream Man are here as well.