Advance Review: Brevity Is Key In ‘Ice Cream Man #43’
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
The perfect issue for those of use with miniscule attention spans. The all-star creative team tells 22 one-page horror stories over the course of this issue. As you might expect, some are terrific while others miss the mark. But they are all a testament to sparsity in storytelling.
Overall
8/10As any writer will tell you, being concise takes time. Look no further than Mark Twain’s famous quote, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”
Choosing exactly what to express, and then how to express it, is an art as well as a challenge. The guest creators in Ice Cream Man #43 have embraced that challenge, telling 22 one-page horror stories. Certainly, having an artist like Martin Morazzo illustrating the tales helps to get each point across.
But this ventures into extreme storytelling. You need to instantly hook the reader then quickly pay off that introduction with a satisfying (or frightening) conclusion. It helps that series regular W. Maxwell Prince enlists the gifts of some of the industry’s top talents, including Grant Morrison, Matt Fraction, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Geoff Johns, among many others.
Trying to review each of the short tales would take more room than the comic itself, so here are some of the highlights. Deniz Camp’s “Real Page-Turner” manages to have you looking over your shoulder despite writing a story with no words. In “For James,” Zoe Thorogood walks us through – in words and illustrations – the real-life agony she and her family endured after her brother’s suicide. Morrison’s “The Horror” shows what happens when you play with snail and razors.
Of course, with an anthology this diverse, not every story lands. Prince’s “How to Impress People at a Party” starts strongly but ends with a bizarre non-sequitur. Similarly, letterer Good Old Neon pitches in “A Taxonomy of Old-Timey Diseases,” which is easier skipped instead of trying to navigate.
For years, Ice Cream Man has been a reliably creepy – at times downright frightening – horror series. It’s unclear exactly why the main creative team chose this approach for this issue (or why it’s taken them this long to pull it off). Perhaps they simply wanted to work with some of their comic heroes. Whatever the case, it’s a nice diversion from their usual storytelling.
But it’s just a diversion. Let’s get back to the real thing next issue.
Ice Cream Man #43 will be available for purchase on January 29th, 2025.
