In "Reason to be Excited," I spotlight things from modern comics that I think are worth getting excited about. I mean stuff more specific than "this comic is good," ya know? More like a specific bit from a writer or artist that impressed me.

Today, we look at a particularly impressive recent issue of Ice Cream Man. Last month, as part of my 31 Days of Horror Comics feature, I had some of my favorite horror comic book creators recommend other horror comic books that they enjoyed a lot. The great Andrea Sorrentino recommended Ice Cream Man, by W. Maxwell Prince, Martín Morazzo and Chris O'Halloran.

The basic concept of Ice Cream Man (from Image Comics, by the way) is that the titular character makes an appearance in each issue, but otherwise, each issue is a standalone story, almost always "traditional" horror style, but sometimes science fiction or fantasy. Since each issue is its own deal, the creative team has tremendous freedom with the content, but that same freedom can almost be a curse, as you're constantly challenging yourself to come up with new, innovative ideas. So far, though, the Ice Cream Man team has come through with flying colors.

In that write-up, though, I mentioned the thirteenth issue of the series briefly, only to note that I didn't think it would be effective demonstrating the concept in an online post, but after thinking about it, I realized that I was mistaken and it actually translates pretty darn well to this format.

Andrea actually had that issue specifically in mind when he recommended the book, so let's take a quick look at Ice Cream Man #13, "Palindromes" (lettering by Good Old Neon).

The concept of the issue is that a man has recently lost his partner to cancer and he questions life and DEATH and decides to go to the underworld to see what's the purpose of it all.

The hook in the issue is that the book can be read forwards and backwards. If you read it forwards, you read it in the traditional panel order, which is top to bottom and then left to right. If you read it backwards, start on the bottom of the pages (and the bottom of each page) and read the panels from right to left.

Got it?

So here is a sample of the story...

That's some impressive stuff, isn't it? What a delicately balanced script with outstanding visuals.

Ice Cream Man is the sort of comic book where every issue is that sort of treat.

Okay, this feature is a bit less of a reader-interactive one, as I'm just spotlight stuff in modern comics that specifically impressed ME, but heck, if you'd like to send in some suggestions anyways, maybe you and I have the same taste! It's certainly not improbably that something you found cool would be something that I found cool, too, so feel free to send ideas to me at brianc@cbr.com!