Image Comics have just announced a new ongoing anthology series from W. Maxwell Prince, the writer of acclaimed horror comic Ice Cream Man. The horror series - titled HAHA - will focus on professional clowns, sticking to the theme of these humorous performers while adopting a one-shot structure that sees each issue tell a complete story.
Of course, that's unlikely to be all that HAHA tries to do. Prince's Ice Cream Man - co-created with artists Chris O'Halloran and Martín Morazzo - follows a similar "one story per issue" format, bound together by the titular Ice Cream Man, a terrifying, reality-altering consciousness who has slowly gathered a horror cast of gremlins, vulture hatchlings, and straitjacket-clad dogs as the series has continued. Prince is likely to apply a similar through-line to HAHA, with satisfying (and horrifying) single stories that feed back into each other, and perhaps even a larger narrative, over time.
Launched by Image Comics, HAHA will feature a revolving team of artists, with Vanesa R. Del Rey (Redlands) taking the honors for the first issue, and Gabriel Walta (Vision) and Roger Langridge (Thor) also reported to have issues planned for the series. In discussion with Image Comics, Prince shared the reasoning behind the new series' specific (and incredibly creepy) area of focus:
I don’t like clowns, so I thought it’d be a good idea to write about them. What a gas, to get to partner with some of comics’ best to tell these ditties about a bunch of real jokers.
Additional to Prince's comments, Image Comics offered their own summary of the series as well as the cover for the first issue:
Haha peeks under the big top, over the rainbow, and even inside a balloon to tell a wide-ranging slew of stories about “funny” men and women, proving that some things are so sad you just have to laugh.
Rooted in horror - and likely featuring strong elements of black comedy - the series is certain to showcase Prince's characteristically ambitious storytelling, with Image announcing it will experiment with genre mash-ups in much the same way that Ice Cream Man has experimented with fantasy and sci-fi. The form of storytelling is also likely to vary dramatically from issue to issue - Ice Cream Man has included stories told in the style of instructional booklets and crosswords, with one issue entirely palindromic - able to be read from front to back or back to front, with all the dialogue spelling out the same words in either direction (hence the creation of the Ice Cream Man's helper "Mad Dog".) Originally about a scary ice cream man who seemed to curse people by giving them different flavors, the series has since revealed its titular villain to be an eons old, ultra-powerful creature who creates pocket realities for the sheer joy of torturing the people it can trap inside - as the entity itself says, it can better be understood as a "bad idea" than a physical being.
In this context, the degree to which HAHA will be about clowns is likely to vary as the series develops, along with the form, tone, and genre. Some Ice Cream Man stories are brutal tales of existential dread, while others adopt a more hopeful attitude, with rare rays of sunshine making the shadows even darker. If HAHA follows the same cues, it's almost impossible to say exactly what readers will find in any given issue of the new Image Comics series. But isn't that what makes it so fun? HAHA will be available at comic stores from January 13 and also available for digital purchase.
Source: Image Comics