Originally posted on Irish Comic News (19/Feb/2018)
Written by W. Maxwell Prince.
Line art by Martin Morazzo.
Colour art by Chris O’Halloran.
Letters by Good Old Neon.
Design by Ashley Walker.The Ice Cream Man is a character in the vein of the host of Tales from the Crypt or Morpheus in some of the issues of Sandman. What I mean by that is the Ice Cream Man appears in some scenes of the story but for the most part is a peripheral character. As I understand it, this series is planned as a series of one-shot stories with the Ice Cream Man as the character that will tying the stories together.
The story in the first issue does work as a stand-alone story but with some things within it that may relevance to the future stories in the series. The Ice Cream Man arrives in a suburban are to sell his ice-creams and the story follows one of the children home as they enjoy their purchase. At which point the story moves into the realm of horror. I enjoyed the scene that introduced detective Hwan to the story. It gave a feel for the character and planted some seeds for later in the story.
Ice Cream Man has a good character design. On a superficial level his customers have no reason to suspect that there’s anything sinister about him. The supporting cast and locations are well drawn in the various scenes, be it the general day-to-day of suburbia or the moments of horror and action. I liked the choice of colour for the sky that is used for much of the comic, it actually looked like a colour you would expect of an ice-cream. Also enjoyed the colours in the forest scene. The light coming through the trees was nicely done.
With the choice of lettering on the captions there’s a quick visual cue that the Ice Cream Man is providing commentary over the top of the story. As anyone who has read some of my reviews will know, when it comes to lettering I do enjoy looking at how the sound effects are done. The sound effects are clear and immediately noticeable in the panels. I did like how it was done when the Ice Cream Man snapped his fingers. It’s quite clear from how the “Snap!” is done that he is doing more than just merely snapping his fingers.
The first issue was enjoyable as a stand-alone story and gives the reader some idea of what to expect in terms of stories from the next issues. From a story point of view, it’ll be interesting to see what other types of stories the Ice Cream Man serves up to us as the series progresses.