Ice Cream Man, Volume 9: Heavy Narration

Ice Cream Man

by W. Maxwell Prince, Martín Morazzo (Artist)

The wheels on this sorry ice cream truck continue to spin round and round! Presented here: four more chilling chapters that chafe and chew at the human mind: a bifurcated tale of woe/whimsy; a small story about two unlucky tramps; a bestiary of some very necessary monsters; and a look into the big ol' belly of a whale. Please do enjoy your continued trip down this never-ending well! We'll hit the bottom eventually... Collects ICE CREAM MAN #33-36

Genres: Comics, Horror, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book, Anthologies

129 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 5, 2023

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What’s the craziest thing you ever heard?”--One old tramp to another.

I keep waiting for a volume of Ice Cream Man to suck. I mean, if I told you this is a horror comics series with each story highlighting a different approach to storytelling, you might fear as I did that the very focus on different styles might get boring. But it does not suck, never has! Volume 9 is a collection I loved:

***** The first story is a kind of meta-reflection on W. Maxwell Prince’s m.o..”The Kind of Story I Want to Tell” features a sweet, hopeful, colorful story, but the story that he ends up telling--because he has to--is grim, sad. The two stories work in parallel (one at the top of the page, in bright colors; the other muted and gray, at the bottom of the age, a kind of choose-your-own-adventure where you don’t actually get to choose) and I can’t forget to mention the artwork of Martin Morazzo, so ice-cream-sprinkles creepy.

****The second story, “Two Tramps,” is about a kid and an old man riding boxcars around the country. One day the old guy asks the kid, what’s the craziest thing you ever heard? The kid says he heard there was a vampire in urban areas; the old man says he heard you can bottle California sunshine as a hedge against the darkness. Both of those anecdotes get returned to. They meet Vicious Vin, who of course--this is horror--turns out to be vicious, and whoa, a vampire. Kid takes the (now dying) old man to California, gets that bottle of sunshine, and gets on a train. . . but with the Ice Cream Man as conductor. . . that can’t be good.

****”The Book of Necessary Monsters” appears to be a children’s picture book, but. . . finally isn’t. But hey, it’s a new form/fake audience for the team, and beautifully illustrated! It’s a bizarre bestiary. At one point we see that the author is actually our reincarnated demon. Some of his bestiary include earworms, shameful memories, working their way into your brain. Then King Spider, The Cabinet of Medications (addiction), The Yoga Instructor (cuckholding a guy with the guy’s wife); The Woman in the Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman ref), and yes, The Ice Cream Man. Real and imagined horrors. The man is working on this “necessary” important book, while his wife keeps calling him to dinner, but, you know, she isn’t really calling him. . . no. She can’t really call anymore, heh heh heh. The story is maybe ,ess than point here than the monster artwork.

*****The artwork of “Whale Song” is one of my favorite all time Martin Morazzo issues! Amazing. A guy loses his daughter at sea, consumed by a whale, so he decides to go back, go inside and get her. Echoes of Jonah, Moby Dick, and so on. Inside the whale is a whole huge world, where Ice Cream Man leads her to the Queen of the place. . . his daughter! The story here is pretty straightforward, okay, taking a back seat to Morazzo’s art, six stars for that.

How cool would it be for an artist to try all these different styles appropriate to all these different story styles!? Very cool stuff, team!

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent volume of short weird stories by Prince and Morazzo. This series could just go on forever and I wouldn't complain. One of the few monthly comics I get pretty excited about reading (the rest I usually just wait until a complete trade is out). This works perfect for serializing.

The collected editions are too short. Just 4 issues in this one.

Issue 33
An author laments that all the stories he tells are dark and twisted. We follow an account of a day, one written from a bright and cheery disposition, the other dark.
Issue 34 Two Tramps
Two twamps train hopping - one young, the other older chatting about the craziest thing they ever saw. Things go off the rails and get a bit surreal with a werewolf style creature.
Issue 35
A man is writing an encyclopedia of "necessary" monsters. Stuff like an Earworm who gets music stuck in your head and the Shameful Memory.
Issue 36 Whale Song
A man lost his daughter to a whale. He goes into the belly of the beast and meets Pinocchio and Geppetto and attempts to rescue his daughter. It's all surreal and implied that its imaginary... "but do you know how long and violent the digestive tract of a whale is?" Geppetto notes.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two hobos on a freight train encounter an ancient evil. A man obsessed with writing a book about monsters is unable to deal with the monster staring back at him from the mirror. A fisherman is overcome with regrets after the loss of his child who was swallowed by a whale.

These are the unbelievably weird but strangely poignant tales to be found in W. Maxwell Prince's graphic novel horror anthology series Ice Cream Man. Volume 9, "Heavy Narration", is, appropriately, heavy on narration. It is also dripping with relatable human misery, angst, grief, and compassion.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still a heady mixture of great art and trippy storytelling.

[Valéria. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best volumes of this series! All four stories were quite awesome. Prince is really a perfect writer when it comes to this genre.

[Ant Tellez · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.2/5.0

The depth of this series really began to take off in the last two volumes of this series, which ultimately made for such a pristine reading experience! Prince captures the essence of horror in a way that exemplifies the demise and shattered nature of humans in a clear manner, which makes this all that more terrifying.

[Robbie McPhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

A middling volume. My ratings tend to slide downward when I don't find Ice Cream Man as funny as usual. And this is another that did nothing for me in terms of dark humor. The art always brings everything up, though.

[Cyndi · Rating 4 out of 5]

These sickeningly sweet treats are always worth a visit.

[Chris Greensmith · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Yeah, man. We're inside a fucking whale."

[Jiro Dreams of Suchy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kind of story I want to write was a classic- one of my favorites

Two tramps - devil in a train. Meh

The book of necessary monsters- another screwy one that falls apart and gets messier and more frightening as it goes on

Whale song - beautiful one of the best looking comics but not my favorite story

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sprinkles of Terror.

[Matthew Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Kind Of Story I Want To Write” was probably the most enjoyable in this volume. “Two Tramps” was a really solid one. Both “The Book of Necessary Monsters” and “Whale Song” were just okay.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nine volumes in and Ice Cream Man is still able to put out a pretty decent collection - so it goes with Volume 9: Heavy Narration.

This is just me speculating but I wonder if the first story, The Kind of Story I Want to Write, is W. Maxwell Prince admitting he wants to be like Grant Morrison. The cover (both to the comic and this book) is an homage to Batman and Robin, Volume 1: Reborn and he and Martin Morazzo’s recent series, Art Brut, is similar in style and content to Morrison’s Doom Patrol, Volume 2: The Painting That Ate Paris. Maybe Prince is hinting that he wants to write for DC too or maybe I’m just reading too much into it and it’s all just stuff!

Anyway, it’s a fine story that showcases lighter, more positive fiction vs the kind of fiction that Prince writes in this series - a fantasy vs reality comparison that also speaks to the human condition where there are the types of people we wish we were and the people we actually are and how the two sometimes don’t marry up.

Two Tramps is my favourite story here, about two transients riding the rails who encounter a dangerous stranger. It’s a realistic and sad portrayal of that life rather than a romanticisation of it, and you can tell where it’s headed as soon as Mac mentions the craziest thing he’s ever heard, but it’s still entertaining and the ending is beautiful.

I also get the impression from this story that Prince has given up on explaining the Ice Cream Man and the dark world of this series - there’s just an Ice Cream Man and a Cowboy at odds with each other and that’s that. And I feel like that’s a good idea - not just because it doesn’t really need explaining to enjoy this horror anthology series, but it also means the series is that much more accessible to newer readers. You don’t need to have read the preceding eight books, you can just pick up any book in the series and start there, regardless of numbering.

The Book of Necessary Monsters is about a crazy writer working on his masterpiece. The framing of the story isn’t bad and I liked the increasing creepiness of hearing his family calling him to dinner, but it’s not the most fun to read. That’s due in large part to the abundance of pure prose pages that make up this comic, most of which were about dull half-baked horror concepts.

Whale Song closes out this book. It’s a surreal fantasy about a fisherman looking for his missing daughter who was swallowed by a whale, gets swallowed himself, and discovers an odd underworld of bizarre fairy tale and nursery rhyme figures living within the whale. I didn’t quite get the story but it gave Martin Morazzo a chance to shine drawing some really fantastic imagery.

Morazzo in general is wonderfully consistent with his art, producing issue after issue of top tier comics visuals. Along with the art in Whale Song, I loved the brooding atmosphere he gave Two Tramps, the spider woman in the wallpaper in The Book of Necessary Monsters is hella creepy and his comparisons really sells the story of The Kind of Story I Want to Write.

Two of the four stories in this book are good and the art throughout is great - Ice Cream Man, Volume 9: Heavy Narration is a solid addition to the series and a fine read for any comics horror fans.

[Corey Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ice Cream Man series is one I’ve been following since its inception. It’s a stark contrast to the feel-good superhero comics that fly off the shelves. It’s an anthology series that focuses on dark, bleak, depressing themes with tragic outcomes. The art is terrific. The writing is surreal. The coloring is always perfect for the mood. This is one comic I will continue to follow as long as it decides to run. It’s never boring and always refreshing. It’s certainly not a series for everyone. Some will find it triggering and anxiety-inducing.

This particular volume includes the tale of a writer explaining the difference between the happy-ending slice of life stories he’d like to write and the morose hopeless tales he’s compelled to write. The second story is about a group of traveling vagrants who encounter a supernatural cryptid beast. The third offering is about a man who is writing a book of monsters, but may of them are all true-to-life relatable vices and downfalls for the human condition. The final story of this volume focuses on a man searching for his lost daughter in the belly of a whale.

Like each volume there are some tales that shine and some that leave something to be desired. The first three of these was quite disturbing and enjoyable for fans of the macabre. The last was probably the weakest in the bunch but still included some breathtaking imagery and intellectual themes. Overall I adore this series and look forward to many more volumes.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another 4 short horror tales that continue to prove how much of a genius W. Maxwell Prince is.
1) "The Kind of Story I Want to Write" is a story where each page is divided in half, where the top is a positive and colorful and encouraging story, and the bottom is the type of story the author usually writes. It's this depressive, dark, and dreary horror that I love this title for.
2) "Two Tramps" tells the story of two guys that ride the rails, like hobos. In the process of talking about their most crazy experiences and rumor, they experience the chaos when a third guy joins them.
3) "The Book of Necessary Monsters" balances the graphic novel with the informational sheet as a writer deals with the chaos of printing his book. The info sheets cover not only the monsters he encounters in the story, but some from earlier issues. Really amazing!
4) "Whale Song" brings a vengeful fisherman to the forefront as he chases the whale that ate his daughter, and covers both the quest to find the whale and the quest INSIDE the whale.

Every Volume of Ice Cream Man seems original and yet interconnected. LOVE this title and recommend it to every horror reader I can.

[James De Leon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another eclectic, eerie, and oddly heartwarming entry in the Ice Cream Man saga

Evenly good volume. As usual, we get four standalone stories:

- The Kind of Story I Want to Write feels like Prince telling us he really would like to write more hopeful stories ;) But the meta commentary makes it pretty clear he knows those would not sell nearly as well. So here we are. (great)

- In Two Tramps, we follow two vagrants who find out the hard way that life can come at you fast. This one ends on a hopeful ending (for Ice Cream Man standards, at least). We also get a reference to this issue in the next story. (good)

- In The Book of Necessary Monsters, we meet a writer documenting lesser-known monsters. Of course, the writer has a twist saved up for the end of the issue. I don't usually love when Prince writes “too much” in certain issues, but this one had some funny (and of course messed up) moments that gave me a genuine chuckle. (good)

- In Whale Song, a regretful father searches for his lost daughter, who was swallowed by a giant whale (that hosts lots of references). (okay)

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ice Cream Man is one of my favorite comic series and I get so excited when I see a new volume available on hoopla. Heavy Narration was a great collection where I liked the majority of the stories. I always like when they tie together and reference the previous chapters in the volume. The diversity in narrative never fails to impress me, from the variety in art style to abrupt changes in tone. I highly recommend this series for anyone looking for short books to complete their Goodreads challenge or those looking to read more comics. They're not for the faint of heart, but at least you can count on original content in every volume.

[Justin Partridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Cancer, bad weather, mass shootings, privatization, malevolent behavior by those we trusted - there’s no avoiding any of it. The Ice Cream Man is just another in a long list of ills, doing his best to convince us there’s no hope. IS HE RIGHT?”

Incredibly excited now that I can start buying this issue by issue.

And once more, I’m so goddamn struck at how I can sit down and be like “well, I’ll just read one” and then it’s two hours later and I’ve read the whole thing and I’ve loved every issue and I still have no real idea where the ceiling could possibly be for this book.

Truly, I would be more shocked now if there was an issue or volume of this I DIDNT like. Even the “middling” issues of this are better than some of the “best” comics going right now. Nothing else is like this on shelves. It should be celebrated.

Lickety split.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ultimate of all wet blankets, the bleakest, most depressing graphic novel series out there, returns triumphantly with a series of four terrific stories very much in the same doom and gloom vein as the rest. Here, you have a very clever meta-apology of a dual narrative, a supernatural-tinged tale of tramping travails, a brand-new sort of bestiary, and a tale of regret and sorrow straight from the whale’s belly.
Top form for literary despair, and the meta thing is oh so cleverly done. narrated heavily but very nicely. Quick and dark read for those who dare.

[Kayla Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might be one of my favorite volumes of this series. It had a very interesting tone to it. The stories, especially the first two, had a more meta feel to them and I enjoyed that the lore of this world was getting more explanation. There was definitely a greater air of social commentary in these stories which is something I enjoy although they did have a very melancholic and kind of sad feel to them.

[Madi]

Excerpt From Ice Cream Man #35:

Social media; prestige TV; listening to the monologue inside your head as it tells you how fake and repulsive you are; arguing with your conservative family; cat video after cat video after goddamn cat
video. All these things will suck time right from your face, leaving nothing behind but a hollow, listless shell who is desperate to claw back just a few of those precious lost minutes.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

These volumes have been hit or miss for me. This one is more hits than misses. Some really good stories here, with the first one, that compares the story the author wishes he was writing (happy, colorful) with the actual story (grim, in black and white). I also enjoyed the stories about bums on a train and a man entering the belly of a whale to reclaim his lost daughter. As usual, these are strange stories from author Prince. The art is strong, also as per usual.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so fucking weird, and I hope it never changes.

These next four instalments of Ice Cream Man lore feature a vampire, a book of monsters, a giant whale, and a look at stories in general as Prince puts the spotlight on another ecclectic series of characters and situations that are all as sick and twisted as you'd expect.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still going strong, Prince and Morazzo fulfill this volume's title of heavy narration with a new series of dark and sometimes very meta stories examining grief and family decline through the weird, wild, and horrific style that only Ice Cream Man can provide. The series remains dark as ever, but still not without glimmers of light shining through.

[Susannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another enjoyably macabre volume (which does not feature an Ice Cream Man mini-me despite the cover image). This time we get a story about why Prince can inly write unhappy stories, urban legends that turn out to be true, a uniquely Ice Cream Man bestiary, and Prince's own take on Moby Dick. As always, the artwork is clear and nicely coloured.

[BookCupid · Rating 2 out of 5]

What happened!

I've been craving this volume since its announcement only to realize it was not like the others. Did the writer lose his macabre writing style? It felt more like he wrote this from King's Misery tormented bed, chained by a crazed fan who wanted something fast and choppy.

[Chr*s Browning]

diminishing returns at this point when Prince continues to do experimental/morose stories instead of coming to some climax with ICM and Caleb, but maybe I’m just too plot brained in the end to click with this kind of thing for an entire series

[Valita · Rating 4 out of 5]

"El heladero podría ser cualquier cosa Dios, el diablo o quizá no es nada"
Muy buena copilación de historias de horror.

[Bo Malpas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jolly good stuff.