Ice Cream Man, Vol. 1: Rainbow Sprinkles

if you're looking for a continous narrative where you'll discover the ice cream man's origins and backstory, expect only a few rainbow sprinkles of it.  this book is hardly about the ice cream man himself.  he's somewhere in the background of the stories, pulling strings and manipulatively arranging the puzzle pieces to ensure misery and horror follows all who inhabit this world.

this book hurts to read sometimes.  it hits home in ways i find incredibly uncomfortable but it has a therapeutic nature to it.  i've cried on more than one occasion finishing an issue of Ice Cream Man.  i've laughed many times as well, but there is an ongoing theme of existential dread to these stories that is incredibly sobering. 

i suffer from depression and sometimes these stories feel like they trigger it.  but it does so in a way i find healthy and necessary.  it helps me confront emotions i thought i was feeling all alone.  get out of my head already, rick.

i love this book.  if a book can make me feel something then i like it.  this book makes me want to fight even harder on dark days. 

a quote from the author in this sundae edition struck me in a most profound way and i'd like to share it here to elaborate my connection to this book and my battle with depression:

“All this negativistic thinking is, you might say, my want: to look at the world through the easy lenses of cynicism and despalr, to listen to that voice in my head that's doing its best to convince me that everything is, in fact, prety crappy, and will be for all eternity.  And that voice is what l've come to understand as the Ice Cream Man. Rick, Riccardus, Mr. Sweet, whalever you want to call him. He's the unconsciout mind, the knee-jerk, the first-blush response. The bleak outlook, the bad idea, the depressive tendency. All that awful shit floating around our domes-that's him.”

“don't listen to the ice cream man” has become my own personal mantra, meaning don't listen to that side of you that tells you all those negative things. 

to quote the author once more to conclude my obviously five-star review:

“i see it there, the light.  or at least, i can feel it underneath the rough shell of horror and madness and what-all that the book's come to be known for.  and i hope you feel it too.”

i do.  i feel it.  i've found something intangibly uplifting in these stories. even when they hurt the most.