3 out of 5

I toyed with giving this a lower rating because it read like way too many hats on hats, and kind of exactly besides the point of Ice Cream Man, but then I calmed down and accepted that it’s more exactly the point of ICM, just removed of all pretense, and Prince essentially calls that out from the start. So… I don’t know that I liked reading it, but it didn’t lie to me, or pretend otherwise, about what it was doing.

The issue starts with a trigger warning about the contents, as Prince ropes in several real-world newspaper articles on what we might call “hot button” issues, that are unfortunately ever-present in the US and abroad. There’s probably something to unpack about this, right away: a trigger warning in a horror comic book. This ends up being the issue’s eventual refrain – that the book is meant to be entertainment, and its been lumped in with the horror genre, and… So Prince toys with this by having a typical ICM family (crumbling with day-to-day drudgeries) moving in to an old, haunted home that was doors to horrors in the basement (literally labeled with the word “horror”) that unveil the above-mentioned articles.

What isn’t caught in that trigger warning is that there’s definitely a left political slant to the POV expressed in response to those articles (even though the issues are not partisan, there does seem to be some very partisan ways of handling them), and while this POV does not offend me, there’s something else to be unpacked there about Prince’s assumptions of his audience – or perhaps his preparation to lose readers who might be offended by some of his thoughts.

Stepping back from this, my favorite comic book writer is Steve Gerber, who was certainly not above inserting himself and his thoughts via text dumps into his books. I was toying with thoughts as to whether or not his method of doing so was more effective than Prince’s version in this issue, and I’m not sure I came to a conclusion; it was, I think, less precious, and I guess that’s where I’m netting out with “horror house:” it feels a little precious. Prince is maybe growing weary of writing to a genre, and repeating the spin of everyday-life-is-horror, especially when everyday life is horror in a somewhat different way than is often expressed in ICM (or rather, in addition to it), and this book attempts to put a very self aware frame on that, inclusive of a trigger warning up front. You might be nodding vigorously as you read, and thankful for the recognition; you might be like me, and feel like this is all kind of obvious and not helpful – it’s all around us – and prefer your books to spin some contemplative wheels rather than just tell you what’s happening.

It is a purposefully structured issue, and never lied to me.