Note: This essay was originally published in August 2020, in PanelxPanel #37, which was the Ice Cream Man special issue. I contributed a lot of articles to the early issues of PxP, partly because Hass is a friend, and partly because he would let me write whatever I wanted to.

This one came about because of another friend, Deniz Camp, who told me that I should read Ice Cream Man #18 because he thought I’d like it. So I read it, and it broke me. To say I “liked” it would be an understatement, because it was and remains the only comic that inspired me to write a fan letter to its creator to let them know how I felt about it.

I had meant to republish this one to my blog for a while, but my dad passed some months ago, in August 2024, so it feels like this is the time to place it in front of the public, in his memory. It remains the most personal non-fiction thing I’ve written.