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Ice Cream Man

Ice Cream Man, Volume 1: Rainbow Sprinkles

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Chocolate, vanilla, existential horror, addiction, musical fantasy…there’s a flavor for everyone’s misery. ICE CREAM MAN is a genre-defying comic book series, featuring disparate “one-shot” tales of sorrow, wonder, and redemption. Each installment features its own cast of strange characters, dealing with their own special sundae of suffering. And on the periphery of all of them, like the twinkly music of his colorful truck, is the Ice Cream Man—a weaver of stories, a purveyor of sweet treats. Friend. Foe. God. Demon. The man who, with a snap of his fingers—lickety split!—can change the course of your life forever. Written by W. MAXWELL PRINCE (ONE WEEK IN THE LIBRARY), with art by MARTÍN MORAZZO (SNOWFALL, GREAT PACIFIC). Collects ICE CREAM MAN #1-4

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 26, 2018

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5817 people want to read

About the author

W. Maxwell Prince

108 books185 followers
W. 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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5 stars
1,047 (18%)
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3 stars
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507 (9%)
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107 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 809 reviews
Profile Image for Sam Quixote.
4,801 reviews13.4k followers
June 19, 2018
Satan’s taken many forms in fiction: John Milton’s tragic fallen angel; the popular cartoonish red horned dude with cloven feet; Ned Flanders in that Simpsons Halloween episode; and now… an ice cream seller?! I don’t know exactly why they made that choice, other than some kind of playful juxtaposition with the innocence of childhood, but so it goes with W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo’s pretty decent horror anthology comic, Ice Cream Man.

There are four stories here in four issues, each with an increasingly tenuous link to the Ice Cream Man. Prince either needed to give us more on the character or just drop the contrivance entirely - as it is, the character/framing device is very underwritten. And, while the book starts well, unfortunately each succeeding story gets progressively worse.

My favourite flavour was the first, about a weird kid whose best friend is a spider – but where are his parents? I liked the blend of dark humour and twisty storytelling – it’s a very imaginative and fun read. The second story is an unoriginal and predictable episode on the opioid epidemic currently gripping America as a pair of heroin addicts struggle to maintain their habits. It’s a well-written/told piece but not nearly as creative as the first and, if you’ve read enough stories about heroin addicts as I have, it’s as generic as you can get with this kind of tale.

The third story is about a one-hit wonder trying futilely to write another great rock song. If you accept that the Ice Cream Man is the Devil then the idea of selling your soul to become an amazing musician is an old one, most famously linked to the legendary Delta bluesman, Robert Johnson, so it’s an unoriginal concept. It’s a trippy episode with musical characters like Major Tom and Eleanor Rigby popping up but it’s largely pointless and unsatisfying.

The fourth story is even more so: a guy who’s thinking of skipping out on his pregnant wife meets his dead friend’s father who did something similar years ago and… they have a drink. It’s so utterly forgettable - honestly, I’ve had to remind myself twice now how that one ended. What a steep drop in quality from the first issue to the fourth!

Martin Morazzo’s art is quite good. He nails the horror scenes when he needs to and he shows versatility in drawing both stark realism and fantastical dream sequences with equal confidence. I don’t love his style but I don’t dislike it either.

It’s no must-read but if you’re after a mildly diverting mix of contemporary horror comics, Ice Cream Man, Volume 1: Rainbow Sprinkles has a few treats to tantalise those taste buds - lickety split!
Profile Image for Jon Nakapalau.
6,488 reviews1,022 followers
November 1, 2025
'Twilight Zonish' - and I mean that as a very high compliment! The interweaving of stories through an enigmatic 'Ice Cream Man' who serves up dharma flavors you must choke on - fantastic! Horror comics have been neglected for a long time - hope this series rekindles the fire for creepy stories that send a shiver down your spine!
Profile Image for Donovan.
734 reviews106 followers
June 29, 2019
The best thing I’ve read all year. A sharp, funny, surreal, surprising nightmare. Like Grant Morrison meets Hitchcock. The Ice Cream Man is this bizarre trickster demi-god going around screwing with the mind space of a small unaware town. And beautifully illustrated. I’ll leave it that.
Profile Image for A.J..
603 reviews84 followers
July 24, 2022
A chilling start to this Twilight Zone-esque horror anthology. I picked this up after hearing constantly for the past couple of years how good it was, and my friends telling me I would like it since I’m a big TZ fan. I just never pulled the trigger for some reason, but I saw the trade for Volume 1 had a Dr. Suess parody cover and I just had to indulge. And I’m glad I did. This was pretty fucking awesome for the most part and totally worth the $5 I payed for the Suess Parody TPB.

I loved Martin Morazzo’s art, which was consistent throughout even if the stories wavered a bit in quality. It was like a weirdly perfect mix of the best aspects of Steve Dillon and Frank Quitely, along with some of Morazzo’s own personal touch. Really want to see him draw more books like this. W. Maxwell Prince does have a pretty solid grasp on comic writing too, and I’m intrigued to see what else he does in his career. Never heard of him before this.

I don’t think this was as good as some of my friends have been telling me it was (they really did hype this up a bit too much), but I’ll definitely check out the other volumes. Apparently, a hardcover is coming out soon so I might just wait until my library gets it before continuing this run. Morazzo’s art blown up may be worth it. Might have to check out what else this creative team has done in the meantime though.

Individual reviews for each issue can be found below:

Chapter One: "Raspberry Surprise” ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2

Awesome set-up issue to this series and a great introduction to the world, but I definitely could’ve gone my whole life without knowing what priapism is. A little boy has a spider, and that spider may or may not have a fucked up connection to the ICM.

Chapter Two: "Rainbow Sprinkles” ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

A duo of junkies gets sucked into the Ice Cream Man's games while trying to deal with their dope sick. Prince’s narration for the drug-addicted main character feels realistic, and sadly so does the story as a whole. Morazzo’s facial expressions really shine in this issue too. Depressing but well-made.

Chapter Three: "Good Ol’ Fashioned Vanilla” ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2

The first story that wavers in quality for me. It’s not bad or anything, but it didn’t do all that much for me in the end. Just about some one-hit wonder in some fantasy post-apocalypse where he is the key to saving the world. I did like some of the crazy imagery we got though.

Chapter Four: "Every Good Boy Does Fine” ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2

Even though this had some super creepy imagery in the interlude, I just didn’t connect with this one as much as I did the first two. Not sure why, it just felt a bit off. A dad and friend mend the loss of their son/friend in a very odd way.

TLDR; I’d recommend this to any fans of horror anthologies in comics, as this is already one of the better ones I’ve read. It’s not perfect by any means, but Prince and Morrazo are both doing so incredible work. Can't wait to dive into the rest of this whenever the Sundae edition comes out.
Profile Image for Dave Schaafsma.
Author 6 books32.1k followers
September 18, 2018
In the past few years there I have read a few horror comics that trade in nostalgia, including Al Columbia’s Pim and Francie: The Golden Bear Days, Tom Neely’s The Blot, Cole Closser’s Black Rat and Little Tommy Lost, though I am sure there are many many others doing this. The idea with all of them seems to feature a love of early twentieth century comics which they then turn into objects of terror. All of them are aesthetically interesting and also often disturbing.

Ice Cream Man by W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo (illustrator) isn’t about comics nostalgia, but it is about cultural nostalgia, for the days in which the ice cream man and his brightly colored musical truck was a fixture on the summer streets of America. What flavor do you want? The ice cream is all good, brings smiles to your faces. Yeah, right, Prince and Morazzo say, just like clowns, and see where the love of them got ya? Each tale sort of whimsically or more sinisterly features a kind of evil ice cream guy offering an ice cream cone that may or may not be centrally featured in the stories, but our guy is always there. The frame for it all is pink and blue pastels, pop art, pretty pretty pretty and: BANG.

The first volume of this comics series features four different stories. The first is about a kid with a pet spider, and. . . no parents. Creepy fun. This one is so promising and good. All the stories are trying new angles, not restricted to one approach to horror, but the others don’t work quite as well. The second is about a couple heroin addicts who get a “gift” from the ice cream man of a huge bag of smack, but given the opioid epidemic in America it feels flat and isn’t very entertaining. It is a different kind of horror, for sure, more realistic vibe, and is well done.

The third is about a guy who wrote one (only) hit song, who is willing to sell his soul to write just one more good one, but again, it feels flat—though it features characters from other sad songs like Eleanor Rigby. It’s surreal more than horror, maybe. Maybe that’s the point, a surreal nightmare. The fourth is about a guy who wants to leave his wife. Uh, okay. The point I guess is that the ice cream man makes all the bad things happen, so this is cool, a really good idea to take a sweet idea and make it poison in different ways. I thought the first one was great and the art was solid but the rest of them were just okay. I'm maybe about 3.5 about it at the moment, but the over all concept is inventive and has lots of possibilities, so I will definitely read more of it.
Profile Image for Matthew.
1,223 reviews10.3k followers
April 29, 2020
If you are a fan of episodic horror like Tales from the Darkside, Tales from the Crypt, Creepshow, etc. then this is the graphic novel for you!



This first volume of the series is broken up into 4 unrelated tales that are pulled together through a maniacal and supernatural Ice Cream Man (who most likely calls the deepest and darkest levels of Hell his home). Each tale is told to shock, terrify, confuse the reader – and, in the midst of all these emotions, you might be entertained as well.



As this is volume one, I am hoping that the stories get a little tighter. For me, some of the terror was lost because I just didn’t get the point or an overall storyline was wrapped up way too quickly for me to feel like it wasn’t just conveniently brought to an end because they were running out of pages. Since it was just a first attempt, and I was entertained enough to continue with the next volume, I am hoping for improvements in that area.



The artwork was okay. Definitely not my favorite. Not that I could do better, but I wasn’t “wowed” by what I was seeing.



Again, worth a look if you are into horror comics – especially serials. But you may not be quite as into it as you hope going in. I look forward to what I hope is a better volume 2!
Profile Image for Bookishrealm.
3,241 reviews6,432 followers
October 5, 2022
This comic was so freaking strange!!! I really enjoyed it though. The artwork was interesting and the stories...they were crazy. If you haven’t read this definitely give it a chance. I’ll be posting my full review here once it goes live on my blog.
Profile Image for Chad.
10.3k reviews1,060 followers
April 28, 2019
Stephen King's Needful Things with some Twilight Zone weirdness sprinkled in. Four stand alone horror stories set in a small town connected by an Ice Cream Man who briefly appears in each story. There's some half baked attempt in the last issue to set a larger narrative but it doesn't go over well given the stories had been completely stand alone up to this point and the Ice Cream Man was barely in them.
Profile Image for Dan.
3,205 reviews10.8k followers
June 9, 2020
Ice Cream Man, Vol. 1: Rainbow Sprinkles collects issues 1-4 of Ice Cream Man.

I'm a fan of Tales from the Crypt and similar horror anthologies from way back so this seemed right up my alley. And it was cheap.

There are four unrelated tales in this collection, bound together by the mysterious Ice Cream Man. The tales feature a kid living with the corpses of his dead parents, a couple junkies, a down and out one hit wonder, and a man giving his best friend a eulogy.

The art by Martin Morazzo is oddly unsettling, a mix of the ordinary and the grotesque. The stories remind me both of the EC horror books and of House of Mystery under Joe Orlando's regime, nice little horror tales. The writing reminds me of Stephen King's Needful Things more than anything else, maybe with a dash of Sandman and Twilight Zone.

The Ice Cream Man himself reminds me of Leland Guant quite a bit, showing up just when people need him but his gifts always have a price. The fourth tale gives a tiny hint of his true nature.

Ice Cream Man: Rainbow Sprinkles is a sweet treat! I'm on board for the duration. Four out of five ice cream cones.
Profile Image for James DeSantis.
Author 17 books1,205 followers
September 5, 2018
Extremely weird, sometimes aimless, yet entertaining read.

This is a little town where the Ice Cream Man resides to hand out, well, Ice cream to everyone. No, he's not a creepy pedo, which was my first guess when seeing the cover or reading about him. Instead, he almost haunts the town like the grim reaper. Going around doing the bye byes for most people in the town and showing them true horrors. This is four stories, all varying from really creepy and entertaining to just okay. The highlights being a story about a boy and his spider and the final story about a father letting go of his son who has passed.

Good: The darkness is always there. Even in the funnier or lighter moments you can feel the evil in the background. The terrible fate of most characters comes quick and sometimes shocking ways. The first and last story really show this well. The Ice Cream man is also very creepy, even with his big fucking smile.

Bad: The middle of the book suffers from being "okay". Not bad stories by any means but never anything all that enthralling. I also thought the third story was the worst.

Overall, a very interesting first volume. While not always great, it has great moments, and for that I want a second book. I'll hit this with a 3 out of 5.
Profile Image for Richard.
1,062 reviews473 followers
October 7, 2018


This new comic anthology features strange stories that take place in the same small town. And let me tell you, this book is totally NUTS! To best describe this book, it's best to use a quote from the book itself:
"I'm telling' ya, this town is really something else. It's just filled to the fucking brim with kooks and crazies and thirty-one flavors of weird shit."
Profile Image for L. McCoy.
742 reviews8 followers
July 30, 2019
SUPER FAST REVIEW:
Mixed thoughts on this comic. Some parts are interesting, some parts are lame. It’s very unpredictable and weird but the art... yeah not a fan and I didn’t care about the characters in any of these stories. It’s sorta like a comic book version of the Twilight Zone but not as cool. Overall this volume is decent enough but I’m not sure if I’ll bother reading more of this series (the ending is slightly intriguing so leaning a bit towards adding volume 2 to my reading list).

3/5
Profile Image for Drew Canole.
3,168 reviews43 followers
October 6, 2022
I've read up to Issue 32 so far.

It's just a fantastic two-man anthology. Prince writing and Morazzo illustrating. The illustrations are simple, and seem "fun" but has such a dark overtone. It's pitch perfect for Prince's stories. The stories range from weird and creepy to straight horror. Each issue is wildly different and some are quite experimental.

It's a perfect monthly comic and I'm shocked more comics don't use a format like this.
Profile Image for Jordan West.
251 reviews151 followers
July 4, 2018
3.5; a pleasingly offbeat, promising debut volume that gets a lot of mileage out of its enigmatic titular character, whose actions vary from mischievousness to pure malevolence, while the ending hints at the introduction of a larger mythology that is quite intriguing.
Profile Image for The Lion's Share.
530 reviews91 followers
October 15, 2018
A mismatch of ice cream, arachnophobia, death and utter shite writing.
Profile Image for Max Washington.
76 reviews11 followers
April 20, 2019
Unnerving, deep, and brilliant. And frightening.
Great writing, great artwork. I hope it becomes a TV show.
Profile Image for Artemy.
1,045 reviews964 followers
September 18, 2018
A fairly mediocre collection of horror-ish/supernatural (at Image these days, what isn’t?) one-shots loosely connected together by appearances of the titular Ice Cream Man, a sinister dude who is a devil or something. Not a terrible read by all means, but not a particularly memorable one, either.
Profile Image for Rachels_booknook_.
446 reviews257 followers
January 7, 2019
I feel like this series is a bit overhyped. Okay art, hit or miss stories. It reminded me a bit of Stephen King’s Needful Things.
Profile Image for Erica.
1,472 reviews498 followers
December 12, 2018
I suppose I liked this well enough but I know it's not going to stay with me.
It's like if Paper Girls had no time travel and was narrated by Rod Serling but for hipsters. Oh. I think that's called "Welcome to Nightvale," actually.

Normal-seeming town with strange goings-ons. Kids with killer spiders, a sinister ice cream man (because aren't they all?), a cop, music, death...you know, that kind of stuff.

The art is probably decent but it's not to my taste, though I wasn't visually offended, either.

I'll read the next one if it comes across my desk but I won't be seeking it intentionally.

2.5 stars.
Profile Image for Mel (Epic Reading).
1,114 reviews351 followers
February 1, 2023
These first four comics in this series appear to be completely unrelated save for two things:
1) the ice cream man is in all of them,
2) the incidents appear to all happen in the same town

Obviously the intrigue and mystery of the ice cream man is not explained early on. Each of the four stories is horrific or depressing in its own way and are not necessarily bad stand alone stories (kind of like Creepshow). But overall they are not that good.
I’ve been told to hang on until the next volume (at least) so some of the lore of the ice cream man and what is really going on (and why) comes into play. So I’m going to do that.
So far glad I’m boring these from the library and didn’t purchase them. But we will see…
Profile Image for Zec.
415 reviews17 followers
December 11, 2018
I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t really like anything about it. The Ice Cream Man doesn’t really make much sense and the stories are meh. The art is good.
Profile Image for Rachel (TheShadesofOrange).
2,887 reviews4,799 followers
July 9, 2018
3.0 Stars
This is a weird collection of short and, sometimes, horrifying short graphic stories. The first story was my favourite. I didn't particularly enjoy the other ones, but the ice cream man was still very creepy.
Profile Image for Jenbebookish.
716 reviews199 followers
June 18, 2025
Read June 18, 2025

This was somewhere around a 3.5 for me. I’ve been hearing about this for a while now, a lot of people have been putting these volumes in their best ofs for a long time now, & the concept appealed to me—self contained stories that can be read as individual stories, but with easter eggy type things linking them. That’s basically how I’ve heard it explained.

Now after reading the first volume (the first 4 stories) I’m not sure what to think. They were sort of nonsensical, with a vague theme? Themes like…the desolation of junkies, the allure of walking out on loved ones & being free from all responsibility & connection, the fear that one has already peaked & is only going downhill. Obviously very bleak themes, mixed in with horror elements. There was a lot going on that felt like it was going over my head, the whole ice cream man thing was the thing that tied them all together but I’m not sure what the point is. He might be the devil on all our shoulders? The voice that leads us astray, the possibility of choosing what we know is wrong, but that sometimes can still be enticing. The allure of all that is wrong. There might even be some metaphor mixed in there via the ice cream man for how we want to eat sweet stuff even tho we know it’s not good for us. I’m not sure how it all fits together. The fact that in the first story the ice cream man seemed to turn into a werewolf led me to doubting what he was supposed to represent. Or if he represented anything at all. If he was representative of how bad things can lure us, then why did he turn into a werewolf? What was the point of that? Ice cream man is a monster in disguise?! Idfk.

I’m not gonna lie, this sorta kinda made me feel stupid. I obviously had the vague notion that there was meaning in all these stories, but I couldn’t fully grasp it.

At the end of the first volume there was a cowboy-esque type dude that seemed like he might possibly be some sort of foil to the ice cream man? Some force for good maybe? I would like it if that’s what he was, if there was some redemption possible, or some good that could triumph over all the evil. I don’t think I would like it if it was all ugliness & grossness & human weaknesses & flaws. I can stand that sometimes, but not if it just goes on and on and on in every Ice Cream Man issue. Like the whole thing is just gross evilness. I could accept that trope if it was a limited arc, not an ongoing series saying the same shit over & over in different gross ways.

I don’t know, I was left weirded out and confused and I definitely felt like I needed to read a lot more to be able to really understand the common thread, so in that sense the stories aren’t really self contained. I might read one more volume just to see if things start coming together more.

Or I might not. The art was average. My feelings about this overall are…a little more than apathetic, but a little less than interested.
Profile Image for Renee Nicole.
299 reviews215 followers
January 10, 2021
I've had my eye on this series for a while, and was finally able to grab a copy of Vol. 1 last week. As a horror anthology that sways between feeling like Tales from the Crypt and Twilight Zone fan-fiction, I must say I was a bit underwhelmed by it.

The 4 stories told in this volume get progressively worse. The only thing that ties them together is the demonic Ice Cream Man, a mixture of 32 different flavors of evil. I was able to somewhat connect with the first story of Byron and his venomous pet spider. But the volume seemed to unravel from there, until I just didn't really care about figuring out what the final story was even about.

Neither the art nor the writing were anything special. As this is just the first volume, I will probably give it one more try if I ever stumble across Vol. 2 at my comic book store. I like the concept, I just feel like the whole thing needs a little more work.
Profile Image for The Artisan Geek.
445 reviews7,298 followers
December 23, 2018
This was soo good! This definitely gave me American Horror Story Vibes! Each chapter story deals with another topic another story, from scary spiders to meth addicts killing people. The thread that connects them is the ice cream man, who at first sight looks like an incredibly friendly and likable person, but turns out to be something completely different. The way different types of horrors are used also reminds me a lot of Junji Ito (one of my favourites!), but with less physical gore. Would definitely read again!

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Profile Image for Rue.
276 reviews240 followers
October 14, 2019
IMG-20191014-WA0001

For past couple of days I am in a zone for reading spooky (horrific) stories, And the once that i have read were remarkably amazing.
So when i picked this one up, i could see the loose ends and the unexplained nature of each anthology. Which didn't really resonate with me that well. I would describe it to be collection of stranger stories about some messed up people. I think what makes Ice cream man a rather devilish character is that, he somehow appears in those disturbing and weird happenings around this small town. Other then that he isn't fleshed out as much in this Volume.

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