Ice Cream Man #10 Hopscotch Mélange Part 2: Border Story

3/30/2019

Ice Cream Man #10 Cover B (see below for preview images and Cover A)

Written by W. Maxwell Prince
Artwork by Martín Morazzo
Colors by Chris O’Halloran
Letters by Good Old Neon
Cover A by Morazzo & O’Halloran
Cover B by Juan Ferreyra

As my faithful readers well know, I have been becoming more and more displeased with this series with every issue that comes out.  In a recent review, I posed the theory that the writer might be going through some personal issues.  I am now revising that theory on the basis that this issue has provided me more insight. I now have a suspicion this guy has got to be either on some heavy-duty serious pharmaceutical grade LSD type stuff OR he’s going way out of his way to tiptoe around making some sort of political statement and doesn’t want to be razzed for coming right out and saying it, so it does it in an abstract and roundabout way, so he can cover his ass.

So, this issue is a part two to the last issue.  To me that means that if you want part one to be completed or make sense you need to read part two.  However, part one was all in English.  Also, it was definitely NOT a stand-alone comic story.  THIS issue, the first seven pages are in Spanish.  I have nothing against Spanish or Spanish speaking people.  I love foreign languages, I love accents, I’m fascinated by other cultures and traditions.  (I’ve always wanted to be multi-lingual.  I took French in high school.  Little did I know Spanish would have been so much more beneficial, especially in a career.)  But, I don’t read or speak Spanish so I felt like I was watching a foreign film with no subtitles.

I bring that up as a complaint ONLY because if you are going to tie two issues together and make it apparent that they are story dependent on each other, you might want to make them both in the same language.  Honestly, I could have just as easily purchased a copy in German and been just as successful.  (However, had it been in French, I may have had better luck.)

The story…hmmm…did it tie into issue nine?  Loosely, I guess.  These stories are getting stranger and stranger.  This issue would have been okay as a stand-alone.  But, like I said, I think this writer is really starting to turn away from the horror aspect and fall into, well, I don’t know what.

This story was about a white guy and a Hispanic girl that fall in love.  Now this guy is arguing with another man who I believe to be his brother.  Apparently she is already promised to a General or something like that.  The brother is telling the guy in love that it’s not going to work out the way he wants it to or thinks it will.   Anyways, the two lovebirds make plans to run away to the United States together but, her Aunt rats them out to the General.  A fight ensues between the two men for the hand and fate of the girl. Unfortunately, her true love dies in the battle for her freedom.  And in all her love stricken grief, she turns to her lover’s brother for comfort, showing up unannounced at his home, saying she had nowhere else to go.

Nice girl, huh?  I always thought brothers of boyfriends and former boyfriends were off-limits.  Isn’t that like an unspoken rule or something?  Or am I being old fashioned here?

Still, I have NO IDEA what this has to do with the nonsense from issue nine and I don’t care enough to go back and try to figure it out.  These guys better get back to the Ice Cream Man tricking and killing people or they will have lost a reader for good.

RATINGS
Overall 2.5/5
Artwork 3/5
Story 2/5