3 out of 5

Intensely readable, utterly oddball intriguing, but… twelve issues in to W. Maxwell Prince’s exploration / exploitation / extrapolation of everyday horrors into some cosmic struggle between good and evil “ideas” (represented as men, juxtaposingly – to the norm – wearing black for good and white for evil) and we’re still getting very, very standalone concepts.  The concepts are strong, and fascinating, with killer art and colors by Martín Morazzo and Chris O’Halloran, respectively, I just can’t feel a little bummed out that these “arcs” aren’t really that; they’re just further snippets showing how tragedies are visited upon some unfortunates, with the briefest dash of lore added regarding from whence our Ice Cream Man (and his opposite) may have come.

To be fair, each issue in ‘Hopscotch Mélange’ openly goes for a genre – a ‘Western Story,’ a ‘Border Story,’ etc. – and the focus here seems to be on the end of things rather than turning a reliable familiarity into a creep fest, so perhaps whenever ICM concludes, looking back there will be a clearer reason for bundling issues together and for this long-winded approach; as-is, while I admittedly will keep reading this stuff because of how strong Prince’s sense of mood is, and how good the books look, I have been a little miffed that we’re playing this waiting game between lore and one-shots.  When the series started, and it seemed like the Ice Cream Man might just be a Cryptkeeper type cameo, that worked, but as a background story has sneaked in…

Anyhow, absolutely a standout book on the shelf, all the same.  And I’ll likely eat my words when rereading this years later, but the rating is only representative of feeling like we’re getting variations on a theme – super strong, worth-the-cover-price variations, but still – instead of evolving story concepts that have been hinted at.