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Ice Cream Man
Ice Cream Man, Volume 10: Imperious Wrecks
The strangest comic currently being published continues…to be published! Here, some downright daffy an Apocalypse Now full of Figglybumps; a whole town of Gary; and a 2-part decompression about decompression and compression and certain impressions those things tend to make. That familiar music is coming from around the corner…get your wallet ready!
Collects ICE CREAM MAN #37-40
Collects ICE CREAM MAN #37-40
136 pages, Paperback
First published September 10, 2024
7 people are currently reading
105 people want to read
About the author
W. Maxwell Prince
108 books185 followersW. Maxwell Prince writes in Brooklyn and lives with his wife, daughter, and two cats called Mischief and Mayhem. He is the author of One Week in the Library, The Electric Sublime, and Judas: The Last Days. When not writing, he tries to render all of human experience in chart form.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
January 21, 2025
It's a rare anthology book that keeps getting better and better even as it hits its 10th volume but here we are!
The stories here are once again pretty high concept but ultimately a richly satisfying way to engage with very uncomfortable, at times downright horrific, aspects of our human existence.
What passes for a happy ending in this universe.
Highly recommended.
The stories here are once again pretty high concept but ultimately a richly satisfying way to engage with very uncomfortable, at times downright horrific, aspects of our human existence.
What passes for a happy ending in this universe.
Highly recommended.
February 14, 2025
Who hurt you, Mr. Prince and why do you have to hurt us?
One of the best volumes of this series. This is art.
One of the best volumes of this series. This is art.
July 11, 2025
Another absolutely mind melting collection of stories that stretch and compress time. I was trying to describe these stories to my parents- they’re not exactly scary, they do make you uncomfortable but not with gore or overt pain- just this kind of discomfort creeps over you and into your mind. The only comparison I could make was The Shivering Truth on adult swim which didn’t really help me explain it to my parents at all.
But I’m a good Gary- I read the comics that’s my job!
But I’m a good Gary- I read the comics that’s my job!
February 17, 2025
This title is genius and has been genius since it started. Proves that the anthology horror series is far from gone. (Someone pick this up for an anime or tv series!)
Highlights:
- "Flight of the Figgly Bumps" is a weird comic about bunnyesque beings who are going to war against space robots. The dialogue is both hilarious and wrong, but when you add in that the story is being told as a brother and sister go through the stuff remaining of their brother after his suicide.
- "Escape From Garyland" is a story of a repressed society of clones who are controlled so strongly that when one of them begins to question their situation, they are taken out. One Gary escapes and is able to live free.
- The final two stories, titled "Decompression in a Wreck" is some of the most fantastic, meta, self-aware, comic storytelling I have ever seen. Breaking down the events and lives contained in the 10 second collision of a family car and a truck, as well a commentary on how comics can use panels and the spaces between them to make certain actions last so much longer.
I want to go back to the actual Ice Cream Man and his opposite soon, but I will read this comic for as long as it runs.
Strong recommend.
Highlights:
- "Flight of the Figgly Bumps" is a weird comic about bunnyesque beings who are going to war against space robots. The dialogue is both hilarious and wrong, but when you add in that the story is being told as a brother and sister go through the stuff remaining of their brother after his suicide.
- "Escape From Garyland" is a story of a repressed society of clones who are controlled so strongly that when one of them begins to question their situation, they are taken out. One Gary escapes and is able to live free.
- The final two stories, titled "Decompression in a Wreck" is some of the most fantastic, meta, self-aware, comic storytelling I have ever seen. Breaking down the events and lives contained in the 10 second collision of a family car and a truck, as well a commentary on how comics can use panels and the spaces between them to make certain actions last so much longer.
I want to go back to the actual Ice Cream Man and his opposite soon, but I will read this comic for as long as it runs.
Strong recommend.
December 3, 2024
Wow, the accident 😭
December 20, 2025
A masterclass in interconnected horror, storytelling craft, and emotional weight.
This is perhaps the most consistent volume I have read of ICM. All four stories hit it out of the park. Prince is firing on all cylinders here, and the interconnectivity between the issues elevates the overall experience. Or maybe it's that I'm noticing things a little better now ;)
- In Flight of the Figglybumps, we get the creepiest/cutest little weird animals standing in as a Vietnam War–style conflict metaphor. It is the weakest of the four, but still strong on its own terms. The issue also connects nicely to ICM #17 (the superhero homage/parody issue), where we see the Figglybumps become meals for Rick. It handles themes of grief and suicide with surprising nuance. (good)
- Next is Escape from Garyland, where multiple Gary copies are stuck in mundane, inconsequential jobs, eating vanilla ice cream (almost certainly distributed by the same Ice Cream Man enterprise we see throughout the series - and that we see in the final two issues of this volume). The story is certainly part of the experiments being conducted by the creepy researchers shown in charge back in #30, Experimental Storytelling. Good luck, Gary #38! (pretty good)
- Then we get to the crème de la crème with Decompression in a Wreck (Parts One and Two). A family in a car (the Johnsons) and two drivers/friends/coworkers in a truck (Jud and Mike) are on a collision course. Prince explores the craft of decompression in comics, stretching five seconds into two issues while moving backward in time, forward, into alternate possibilities, and back again. These may be the two issues that have resonated with me the most in the entire series. They also connect to Issue #33, The Kind of Story I Want to Write (with Jud’s story at the end), and Issue #31, A Scale (Sort of a Poem), whose main characters make a brief cameo in the foreground of a panel. (excellent)
This is perhaps the most consistent volume I have read of ICM. All four stories hit it out of the park. Prince is firing on all cylinders here, and the interconnectivity between the issues elevates the overall experience. Or maybe it's that I'm noticing things a little better now ;)
- In Flight of the Figglybumps, we get the creepiest/cutest little weird animals standing in as a Vietnam War–style conflict metaphor. It is the weakest of the four, but still strong on its own terms. The issue also connects nicely to ICM #17 (the superhero homage/parody issue), where we see the Figglybumps become meals for Rick. It handles themes of grief and suicide with surprising nuance. (good)
- Next is Escape from Garyland, where multiple Gary copies are stuck in mundane, inconsequential jobs, eating vanilla ice cream (almost certainly distributed by the same Ice Cream Man enterprise we see throughout the series - and that we see in the final two issues of this volume). The story is certainly part of the experiments being conducted by the creepy researchers shown in charge back in #30, Experimental Storytelling. Good luck, Gary #38! (pretty good)
- Then we get to the crème de la crème with Decompression in a Wreck (Parts One and Two). A family in a car (the Johnsons) and two drivers/friends/coworkers in a truck (Jud and Mike) are on a collision course. Prince explores the craft of decompression in comics, stretching five seconds into two issues while moving backward in time, forward, into alternate possibilities, and back again. These may be the two issues that have resonated with me the most in the entire series. They also connect to Issue #33, The Kind of Story I Want to Write (with Jud’s story at the end), and Issue #31, A Scale (Sort of a Poem), whose main characters make a brief cameo in the foreground of a panel. (excellent)
November 25, 2025
Ice Cream Man is the ultimate bummer comic book, but I keep reading.
July 20, 2025
I haven't read Ice Cream Man in nearly 2 years, but he always wows me with his creativity. I really adore this series and it constantly brings something fresh to the table. I wasn't impressed by the first story, but the next 2 novellas did all the heavy lifting. The second story featured clones of the same fellow locked in a prison doing menial tasks until they realize their predicament. The final story was the most impactful because it featured a car crash told in slow motion. This was especially triggering because I was in my first automobile accident four months ago where my car was totaled. The emotions are still pretty fresh and I reacted to this story very strongly. It was very meta and I loved how they highlighted to the reader that comics are told through panels and it can't express everything in real time. It was very well done and I'm looking forward to the next volume. I'm sure this issue wouldn't be as momentous if I hadn't had that incident.
December 6, 2024
2.5
This collection didn’t do it for me. I found the first story fun, the second story meh, and the last two boring. The last two actually felt like I’d read something similar in another W. Maxwell Prince vehicle. Still really like the art and generally I like Prince’s writing so I’ll definitely continue the series. This volume just didn’t hit it out of the park.
This collection didn’t do it for me. I found the first story fun, the second story meh, and the last two boring. The last two actually felt like I’d read something similar in another W. Maxwell Prince vehicle. Still really like the art and generally I like Prince’s writing so I’ll definitely continue the series. This volume just didn’t hit it out of the park.
January 29, 2025
Not the strongest volume. 3 stories.
Figgly Bumps - a sibling kills himself and the other two dig through his stuff. He's the creator of an odd comic series about furry creatures.
Escape from Garyland - the strongest of the stories. A bunch of Gary clones realize there's more to life than their time in a prison like facility.
Decompression in a Wreck - Prince plays around with time in comics, showing a 5 second crash in 2 issues. It's interesting but a bit of a drag.
Figgly Bumps - a sibling kills himself and the other two dig through his stuff. He's the creator of an odd comic series about furry creatures.
Escape from Garyland - the strongest of the stories. A bunch of Gary clones realize there's more to life than their time in a prison like facility.
Decompression in a Wreck - Prince plays around with time in comics, showing a 5 second crash in 2 issues. It's interesting but a bit of a drag.
November 21, 2024
Might be the best collection of stories so far.
May 25, 2025
“To vanish into oblivion--It’s easy to do.” Elliot Smith, “Miss Misery”--the epigraph for Volume 10
I have been a fan of W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzi’s Ice Cream Man horror comics from the beginning, as they explore multiple ways to represent the genre, as well as explore the uses and limits of narrative with a combination of chilling story, humor and invention. Of course not all the pieces work as well as others, but as a collective investigation, it is visually impressive and entertaining, intelligent, emerging out of a kind of abstract , meta-fictional series of opening stories to sometimes profound and humane moments. I think this may be the peak volume so far, a favorite comics event for me of the year.
Three of the four stories here are explicitly linked: “Flight of the Figgly Bumps” appears by the cover to be a military issue where the soldiers are treacly inspid marshmallow figures, but that’s the story within the story, as a brother and sister read the cartoon series written by their brother who has committed suicide. The comics issue we read with them is about a suicide mission in Viet Nam. In the fourth and final story a family views a tv adaptation of this comic, the night before the father, a truck driver, is killed in a head-on collision. Much of the doilaogue is entertainingly silly, escapist, until we see it is about Viet Nam.
“Escape from Garyland” is a story about societal alienation, a nightmare about a group of cloned men who live in an encampment, clueless as to what happens outside this world. The MC is Gary #38, of 478 Garys who live in Garyland, who rakes leaves for his designated job. The Garys are monitored by a couple of researchers; but what might happen if you realize you are a clone? This is good, but the least remarkable or formally challenging of the four pieces. But still very good! And with its existential dread and multiple deaths, it fits with the draker aspects of the volume
The masterpiece of this collection is entitled “Decompression in a Wreck, Part One” which depicts--in slow motion, in 28 pages--the five-second head-on collision that ends the life of a family of four, also illustrating the comics (and narrative) technique of decompression as a way of helping us both see the event and also reflect on the people in the accident as it occurs. Brilliant, and here is my review of this one issue which is nominated for the 2025 Eisner Award for single issues. The boy in the back seat is reading a comic that uses decompression to show a plane landing.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
“Decompression in a Wreck, Part Two” is the same wreck seen and experienced from the perspective of the truck driver and his rider, who is reading the same comic that the boy in the car is reading.
The driver has a PhD in English but the best job he can get is driving truck; but as we get to know him in these 28 pages, we learn he is a much rejected writer of fiction, though just before the crash we also learn he has his first story accepted by The New Yorker. In the epilogue the one survivor, the rider in the cab, reads the shory story, prophesying a happy ending of the very head-on crash of his truck with the car we know does not end happily. The story, which we read in its entirety near the end of the issue concludes, “in memory of Jud Terrapin.”
Just by the way, the driver’s name as I just said is Terrapin. A terrapin is a species of turtle, of course, but it is also named in The Grateful Dead’s 1977 album, Terrapin Station, which is relevant here in many ways, imho:
I can't figure out, Terrapin, if it's the end or beginning (Terrapin)
But the train's put it's brakes on (Terrapin)
And the whistle is screaming (Terrapin)
I have been a fan of W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzi’s Ice Cream Man horror comics from the beginning, as they explore multiple ways to represent the genre, as well as explore the uses and limits of narrative with a combination of chilling story, humor and invention. Of course not all the pieces work as well as others, but as a collective investigation, it is visually impressive and entertaining, intelligent, emerging out of a kind of abstract , meta-fictional series of opening stories to sometimes profound and humane moments. I think this may be the peak volume so far, a favorite comics event for me of the year.
Three of the four stories here are explicitly linked: “Flight of the Figgly Bumps” appears by the cover to be a military issue where the soldiers are treacly inspid marshmallow figures, but that’s the story within the story, as a brother and sister read the cartoon series written by their brother who has committed suicide. The comics issue we read with them is about a suicide mission in Viet Nam. In the fourth and final story a family views a tv adaptation of this comic, the night before the father, a truck driver, is killed in a head-on collision. Much of the doilaogue is entertainingly silly, escapist, until we see it is about Viet Nam.
“Escape from Garyland” is a story about societal alienation, a nightmare about a group of cloned men who live in an encampment, clueless as to what happens outside this world. The MC is Gary #38, of 478 Garys who live in Garyland, who rakes leaves for his designated job. The Garys are monitored by a couple of researchers; but what might happen if you realize you are a clone? This is good, but the least remarkable or formally challenging of the four pieces. But still very good! And with its existential dread and multiple deaths, it fits with the draker aspects of the volume
The masterpiece of this collection is entitled “Decompression in a Wreck, Part One” which depicts--in slow motion, in 28 pages--the five-second head-on collision that ends the life of a family of four, also illustrating the comics (and narrative) technique of decompression as a way of helping us both see the event and also reflect on the people in the accident as it occurs. Brilliant, and here is my review of this one issue which is nominated for the 2025 Eisner Award for single issues. The boy in the back seat is reading a comic that uses decompression to show a plane landing.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
“Decompression in a Wreck, Part Two” is the same wreck seen and experienced from the perspective of the truck driver and his rider, who is reading the same comic that the boy in the car is reading.
The driver has a PhD in English but the best job he can get is driving truck; but as we get to know him in these 28 pages, we learn he is a much rejected writer of fiction, though just before the crash we also learn he has his first story accepted by The New Yorker. In the epilogue the one survivor, the rider in the cab, reads the shory story, prophesying a happy ending of the very head-on crash of his truck with the car we know does not end happily. The story, which we read in its entirety near the end of the issue concludes, “in memory of Jud Terrapin.”
Just by the way, the driver’s name as I just said is Terrapin. A terrapin is a species of turtle, of course, but it is also named in The Grateful Dead’s 1977 album, Terrapin Station, which is relevant here in many ways, imho:
I can't figure out, Terrapin, if it's the end or beginning (Terrapin)
But the train's put it's brakes on (Terrapin)
And the whistle is screaming (Terrapin)
Read
March 23, 2025Solid enough, but overall still diminishing returns. The Figglybumps issue is just Happy Tree Friends-core juxtaposition with a debate on the ethics of suicide sloppily overlaid on it, the Gary issue is kind of fun but nothing we haven’t seen before (and nothing we probably haven’t seen in the past 40 issues, although I can’t say I remember them all), and the Wreck issues are interesting but not really what I wanted to read with where my head’s been at w/r/t the concept of death. Art is fine but remains unimpressive and the easter eggs scattered throughout feel perfunctory. The problem with this series is that it either needed a slightly stronger through line or no through line at all and committed to complete anthology. Sometimes the best of both worlds doesn’t leave much left over.
July 24, 2025
2025 Eisner Award finalist - Best Single Issue/One-Shot (issue #39: “”Decompression in a Wreck, Part One”)
This anthology of diverse one-shots (tied together very loosely by some clever easter eggs) is often uncomfortable reading, but like The Twilight Zone, there are strong lessons to be learned from each one. The Eisner nominated story tells the story of a 5-second fatal car crash over the course of 28 pages, decompressing time in an interesting way (Part Two in issue #40 shows the same accident from the perspective of the other vehicle). It's definitely a sad tale, but whatever moral you leave with, it makes you think. Martín Morazzo's artwork is deceptively simple and remarkably robust, aptly fitting each story.
This anthology of diverse one-shots (tied together very loosely by some clever easter eggs) is often uncomfortable reading, but like The Twilight Zone, there are strong lessons to be learned from each one. The Eisner nominated story tells the story of a 5-second fatal car crash over the course of 28 pages, decompressing time in an interesting way (Part Two in issue #40 shows the same accident from the perspective of the other vehicle). It's definitely a sad tale, but whatever moral you leave with, it makes you think. Martín Morazzo's artwork is deceptively simple and remarkably robust, aptly fitting each story.
August 3, 2025
I've been reading Ice Cream Man since the start, and I sincerely struggle to read the issues of the most recent volume, largely because it feels empty of the meaning early issues had while repeating the same ideas and themes that the series has already hammered home in better installments. It feels like Prince has lately fallen into a hole of meta commentary, fixating on his writing process or on how comics are made, and it makes some of these issues feel overly repetitive, both within the context of the issues themselves and within the context of the series as a whole. I wish I had nicer things to say, as this is a series I've held dear for many years, but I do think Ice Cream Man has reached a point of diminishing returns, at least for me.
February 4, 2025
The stories in this volume are so... sad. I've gotten so used to expecting stories that are horrifying or unsettling or even plain weird but this level of sadness was not something that I was expecting. Damn. The decompression stories alone were enough to leave you completely heartbroken. I think that this was an interesting direction to take this last couple of issues and I really enjoyed the slight deviation we got from the main story arc and typical horror.
November 28, 2024
Insanity ensues as the Figglybumps take over, and then a commune of Garys face their own mortality, and a five second car crash becomes two twenty-eight page issues in an exercise in decompression. Ice Cream Man continues to disgust and delight in equal measure, poking at horror in the strangest of ways that keeps me entertained in every way. I just wish it came out a little more often.
November 13, 2025
The FigglyBumps didn't really do it for me because the only horror element is the mention of the Ice Cream Man.
Gary clones was fun, but I guess I thought it was all in the head of a Gary and it...wasn't?
And then the crash story(s) were well done but took a while to read. I guess that's the point.
I'll keep reading this!
Gary clones was fun, but I guess I thought it was all in the head of a Gary and it...wasn't?
And then the crash story(s) were well done but took a while to read. I guess that's the point.
I'll keep reading this!
December 9, 2024
This is now my favorite Ice Cream Man.
I do wish the Garyland story gave more than it did.
The last two stories tying together the way they did with the story at the end was incredible.
I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.
I do wish the Garyland story gave more than it did.
The last two stories tying together the way they did with the story at the end was incredible.
I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.
August 4, 2024
"Time stretches out, or bunches up, or foes back and forth like an accordion. It can blow out quick--whoosh--like a candle.
Or it can last a long, long time."
Or it can last a long, long time."
December 28, 2024
I think he’s getting tired of writing these, but stuck in some sort of shotty contract. Art brut isn’t great, but hey it something different 👍🏽
January 8, 2025
Volume 10 felt a little shorter, but no less fucked up as it usually is. Glad to have a new volume!
January 29, 2025
This series doesnt disappoint.
March 23, 2025
Another solid volume. Ice Cream Man can do no wrong with me.
October 27, 2025
This title just rarely disappoints. Love the decompression conceit and how it played throughout.
November 12, 2025
Weird, weird, weird. And not "good" weird...
November 26, 2025
Chocolate?
November 27, 2025
Nothing like returning to an evil buddy
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews