lines from the existential horror comic Ice Cream Man that I could work into sermons

For reasons I don’t have to get into here, summer is one of the hardest times of year in mental health terms, and over the course of the past few months, I’ve had my fair share of existential dread and feeling adrift. As I wrote last week, that meant that I was hesitant to start reading the comics series Ice Cream Man, because I was afraid that it would further fuel that dread.

As I’ve read the first nine volumes of the series over the past just-more-than-a-week, I’ve been surprised at how… healing a series that is intentionally horrific and depressing has been. It turns out that it has more to say about facing existential horror than about fueling it, and that may have been what I needed to recover from a tough summer. Volume Five in particular stood out to me, as I noted when I reviewed it, as a potential source of inspiration for sermons, which is definitely not what I would have expected from a series with this much blood and uncomfortable-to-me levels of violence.

I doubt I’ll ever follow through on that potential (it would take the right presentation and the right audience), but I did want to hold onto some of those lines so I can remember them.

from issue 17

“Salvation’s on all of us, Parker. We’re all connected. Everything… is one thing.”

This might be the best issue in the entire run up to this point? It’s a clever, twisted Superman parody that has the line above as one of its lessons: That we can’t afford to place our hopes for salvation on one person and that we all need to contribute. (In fact, there’s another variation on this line in another part of the issue that explicitly makes this point alongside what’s already above.) That might not go super well in most Christian congregations, who are pretty keen on one person providing salvation, but I think there are corners of Community of Christ (and other sometimes-open-minded denominations) that would be open to the idea that we all need to pitch in to realize a fuller salvation for everyone.

from issue 18

“Oh! Just realized I not— No longer can recall who I was. but do feel very certainly that, indeed, I was a Person! who lived a Life and perhaps once felt The sweet/light breath of the Sun. how lucky, me to have been

This issue tells the story of the final hours and disappearing memories of a kind-of-crappy person who has led a kind-of-crappy life. That crappiness isn’t clear at the beginning of the issue and is rolled out over time, which makes this last line all the more interesting. “how lucky, me to have been” is going to stick with me for a while. If this kind-of-crappy person feels he is lucky to have had his kind-of-crappy life, how much more can I focus on how lucky I am “to be”, despite all the complaints I have about this life.

from issue 19

“Your oldest daughter—a veterinarian—saving the lives of countless lesser creatures, No, not lesser. Nothing is lesser.

This is another weird-but-good story. This line doesn’t stand out to me as much as the last two, but I appreciate the way it fits in the “Everything… is one thing.” theme from issue 17 (and the whole series, actually). I’ve killed enough flies over the past few weeks to want to problematize the idea of nothing being lesser a bit (or at least ask what the right response to that is), but I think it’s an attitude worth aspiring to.

• Ice Cream Man
• sermons
• comics
• existential
• existential horror
• existential dread
• Community of Christ