Ice Cream Man Vol. 7: Certain Descents
W. Maxwell Prince, writer; Martín Morazzo, artist; Chris O'Halloran, colors
Image Comics, 2022
Might as well say up front that the seventh Ice Cream Man includes the title character only in the brief, mystical "Paralogue," so any reader looking for illumination or resolution of the central story in the series will be disappointed. I would place myself in that category. Volume 3 was the last collection to advance the core narrative, so yet another collection of standalone stories is frustrating, however good the individual tales might be. As usual there are a varied lot, each dealing with some sort of descent. The title story comes first, telling the story of an airliner suffering catastrophic failure and heading downward to a certain crash. We see the passengers responding with panic or resignation, and the cockpit calmly waiting for the end. As the plane falls it intersects with scenes from the other stories in the collection, the sort of clever plotting that has characterized the series. The final scenes show investigators hearing dialog from the black box recording that dramatically diverges from the fantasies of the co-pilot. None of the remaining stories are as effective. "Unfortunate Ancestry" depicts Michael descending his own family tree in an effort to understand himself; "The Morphometasis" shows a roach rapidly evolving into a man; "the etymologist rises" finds an etymologist ascending a mountain to meet a monk and learn the first word. We get a promise of a trial for Riccardus, "the demon-god with the ice-cream smile." So maybe a grand finale is coming?
Replies