Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron

Daniel Clowes' Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron is a surreal and unsettling serialized novel originally published in his Eightball comic, collected here by Fantagraphics in a single 2017 edition. Following a man's obsessive search for a woman he glimpsed in a pornographic film, the story spirals into a nightmarish labyrinth of cults, conspiracy, and body horror. Clowes' stark, precise linework and deadpan storytelling create a world that feels both deeply familiar and profoundly wrong, marking a pivotal early work in his career that helped define the alternative comics landscape of the 1990s.