a glimpse of hope in Ice Cream Man (and hoopla still sucks)

In the beginning of the year, I wrote a post about noticing that hoopla had stopped allowing screenshots in its app, which is super dumb. While my chief regret in starting to read the surreal horror comic series Ice Cream Man on hoopla instead of with the physical TPBs available at my local library is because it’s a raw deal for the library, I remembered this morning another reason: That I couldn’t take pictures of panels that impressed me in the same way that I could with a TPB. This is dumb, and I regret the use I’ve been making of hoopla over the summer. I’ve also taken a break from writing this post to reserve the next several TPBs at a library, so I won’t be tempted to go back to hoopla when my borrows reset on September 1st.

Anyway, this isn’t just griping about Ice Cream Man, I want to stick it to hoopla by posting the passage that I’d wanted to take a picture of. This is the sort of thing that hooked me on the series even though existential horror really shouldn’t be my thing. In fact, I’m feeling existentially adrift this afternoon, and part of the reason I’m writing this is to give myself a little bit of hope. Here’s the passage:

I guess the truth is hard and sad sometimes.
But that’s why we have stories…
To help us forget the truth for a little while.
Stories make the world a beautiful place.
Even when they end…

• Ice Cream Man
• hoopla
• libraries
• public libraries
• hope
• existential
• existential dread