The other day I picked up a couple books from Peow Studios, a great comic publisher that looks like it is shutting down for good this year. One of the ones I made sure to grab was Ice Cream & Beast by Iggy Craig, which I had read a preview of on Twitter years ago and have been wanting to fully read through it for some time. But if not now, then when?
Ice Cream & Beast is set in a fantasy world that seems to be running on a mix of Neopets and Digimon. Our hero is Ice Cream, also known as Icey, an energetic elf creature whose made it her job to take care of the Neomons (you see what I'm saying?), a race of quasimagical imps, with the help of her partner, the muscle bound bunny eared Alex. But there is much more around the margins. Following Ice Cream around everywhere is the mysterious looming Beast, and to further complicate things Ice Cream seems to be stalked by monkey mage Pound Cake. Who are these mysterious forces surrounding this happy go lucky elf?
As is the case with a lot of comics born from the web, part of the fun is that they are basically Saturday morning cartoons that say "fuck," and Ice Cream & Beast is a grand continuation of this. The comic takes a moment here and there to go over things like evolution and how some of the more video gamey elements work, but for the most part O.K. K.O. rules are in effect here. Power rankings are in effect, but more importantly is how everyone functions as a member of their disorganized ""helping"" operation.
[Spoilers if that's your thing but honestly it's not that type of comic] And as we learn a little more about everyone it of course gets more complicated! Turns out that Pound Cake is some kind of assassin, hired to take down Ice Cream for reasons the comic has yet to unveil. Furthermore, Beast is herself a powerful magic being who has only one goal in mind: protecting her lovely girlfriend Ice Cream. (Finally, accurate queer representation!) Pound Cake unfortunately finds this out only after attempting to take out Ice Cream, and as a result a powerful curse is placed on her. And to make matters worse, she is now hired as the newest member of Team Ice Cream's Care Assistance.
The comic is very striking in terms of it's art. As is somewhat popular now it's lettering is very casual, with lowercase punctuation and lots of punctuation marks more indicative of something you'd find on a Tumblr post rather then a sentence. But the contrast between the overly familiar tone everybody is taking and the powerful magic being utilized by these characters is the point, and makes for a very funny comic with teasing depth, like the scene where Pound Cake meets the mother of kindergartner/Ice Cream's intern Turnip.
I really enjoyed Ice Cream & Beast and it's such a good start into what could potentially be a much bigger world. With Peow on the way out I hope the comic continues in some form or another, be it as a webcomic/zine or with another publisher, cause I'm really interested in seeing how these characters grow and play off each other. It's good comics!!
