Vultures feast on corporate executives’ innards, knife-wielding psychos in bird masks torture random strangers, a cowboy battles a demon, paramedics get high and drive around ignoring injured peeps, a clown commits suicide, and everything’s on fire - it’s the 2018 state of mind Ice Cream Man is back with a second volume: Strange Neapolitan!
Annnnnd the series is still just ok. Like most anthologies, the quality varies. The opening story of nihilistic office chaos is entertaining for its unpredictability and goriness, but feels gratuitous. We are introduced to the cowboy character though who’s on a mission, so there’s a hint of an overarching storyline finally emerging as opposed to just aimless tales of horror.
One story riffs on the ice cream theme where a man eats some Neapolitan and then lives three different lives. Another features a girl with an imaginary friend – or is she? And the final story is like the first in being unbridled, disconnected madness.
I wouldn’t say any of the stories were brilliant though none of them were boring or unimaginative either. I liked the office chaos story the best followed by the paramedics’ tale, both for their over-the-top craziness. The Neapolitan story was clever but meh and the imaginary friend story was kinda dull, though we find out more about the Ice Cream Man and the cowboy so it was worth it for that.
W. Maxwell Prince is slowly building his world with characters from the first book reappearing in the background here: the junkie on the park bench, the cops from the first issue, the music guy in the diner, and of course the Ice Cream Man himself. Martin Morazzo’s art remains decent and the swatch designs are amazing.
On the one hand I’d like more of a cohesive narrative tying all these stories together but I also like the grab-bag approach as, if I’m not enjoying one story then I might prefer the next, and the content always remains unpredictable. Maybe the creative team will manage to find a better balance in the next one? At any rate, Ice Cream Man continues to be a decent horror anthology series with this ok second book.
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