All throughout July we’re crowdsourcing an Extra Eisners Reading List from comics journalists and critics. Most weekdays throughout the entire month, we’ll post a new pick we would have liked to have seen nominated for an Eisner. There are so many great comics right now, we’d love to see the Eisners expanded to honor that and diversify the pool of work honored by the industry. Also, as critics and journalists, we are not entirely sure we get a vote (the rules are unclear) — so this is the next best thing.

Today’s pick comes from Will Nevin of Xavier Files/WMQ Comics…enjoy!

I am not an Eisner judge, nor will I likely ever be. (If they ask, however, I am ready to serve.) I’m sure it’s a thankless job, the sort of thing that comes with a heap of responsibility, not a lick of praise and plenty of criticism after you “miss” a nomination or otherwise get a thing “wrong.”

Whelp, sorry/not sorry for slamming this year’s judges, but you all screwed this pooch big time — the dog in question being the Best Continuing Series category. While I cannot say that one amongst Bitter Root, Criminal, Crowded, Daredevil, The Dreaming, and Immortal Hulk doesn’t deserve its place (it’s not, after all, the Best New Series category where I have THOUGHTS), omitting Ice Cream Man, the ongoing series by writer W. Maxwell Prince, artist Martin Morazzo and colorist Chris O’Halloran, is an amazing failure of vision. Is the book too weird? Too different? Too good? I’m not here to make excuses for the Eisner judges — only to question their judgment and exactly what the hell they think they’re doing.

Consider that in 2019 (the year of award eligibility), Ice Cream Man did the following:

• Put out eight issues in two arcs, “Hopscotch Mélange” and “Tiny Lives.” The former told four stories involving the series’ antagonist and protagonist (Rick, the ice cream man, and Caleb, the cowboy in black, respectively) while the latter was a collection of stories that generally involved word play.

• Issue #9, the start of “Hopscotch Mélange,” was a sci-fi western. It was followed in #10 by “Border Story,” an issue set in Mexico in 1919 and told (in significant part) in Spanish. #11 is an autobiographical/satirical trip through reality television, while #12 is a “2001”-esque deep space saga at the end of time. Four consecutive issues featuring the same characters in four different genres. Who even tries that?

• From a design perspective, the gem of the whole bunch is the start of the “Tiny Lives” arc with #13’s “Palindromes,” an issue that is build to be read both forward and backward. Again, who in major comic book publishing has even attempted an issue that can be read — with different meanings to be discerned! — front to back and back to front? How is that even something you can plot out in a human brain?! If I had a second one of these categories to gripe about, “Ice Cream Man” #13 is a legitimate omission in the Best Single Issue/One-Shot list if there is one. The rest of the arc is just as good (if not as mind bending, as if anything could be): #14 riffs on crosswords and paranoia, #15 looks at aphasia and insanity and #16 is a good ol’ horror story about what happens when you read someone else’s diary.

If that doesn’t sound like one of the best, most imaginative, most creative, most outstanding series in comics, then I don’t know what I can do for you, bub. It is simply everything that makes this genre great, with grand ambition and the synthesis of writing, drawing and coloring coming together to make what may be one of the best Image books of all time.

And yet the Eisner judges say it wasn’t one of the best of 2019?

If indeed the Eisner Award is the comic book equivalent of the Oscar — and since we all know that the Academy is fallible given its lust for white savior period dreck — we have to admit the Eisners are not and never have been perfect.

But if “A Face in the Crowd,” “Heat” and “The Shining” can go a perfect 0-fer in receiving Academy nominations, maybe’s there hope that future fans and critics will recognize Ice Cream Man for what it is: One of the best series of this — or any other — era. -Will Nevin

Will Nevin writes for Xavier Files/WMQ Comics.

Ice Cream Man
Writer: W. Maxwell Prince
Artist: Martin Morazzo
Colorist: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Good Old Neon
Chocolate, vanilla, existential horror, drug addiction, musical fantasy...there's a flavor for everyone's misery. ICE CREAM MAN is a genre-defying comic book series featuring disparate "one-shot" tales of sorrow, wonder, and redemption. Each installment features its own cast of strange characters, dealing with their own special sundae of suffering. And on the periphery of all of them, like the twinkly music of his colorful truck, is the Ice Cream Man—a weaver of stories, a purveyor of sweet treats. Friend. Foe. God. Demon. The man who, with a snap of his fingers—lickety split!—can change the course of your life forever.
Buy It Digitally: Ice Cream Man

Visit the full Extra Eisners Reading List!

Check out the official Eisner Nominations for 2020.