Back in time
On the cover of “Patience,” an attractive blond woman stares at the reader straight on, employing a familiar, unblinking gaze. There’s something robotic about her — her hair too perfect, her skin too shiny. Her head is surrounded by a psychedelic corona of multicolored rays.
Even without a peek at the author’s name, the artwork is instantly recognizable as that of Oakland cartoonist Daniel Clowes. It’s distinctive and controlled, engaging but also vaguely unsettling, old-fashioned in its vision of futurity, a mix of the abstract and the representational.
Clowes has long been noted for his versatility, his knack for switching
styles in the turn of a page, and this cover implies that he’s found another mode in which to drive his literary ambitions. And on its back cover, “Patience” announces itself as “A Cosmic Timewarp Deathtrip to the Primordial Infinite of Everlasting Love.”
That’s one long, groovy/ goofy subtitle. And it perfectly encapsulates what the creator of “Ghost World” and “David Boring” seems to be up to in his first all-new book since “Wilson,” published in 2010 (and now being adapted into a film starring Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern).
The narrative of “Patience” begins in 2012, literally at the moment of conception for Patience and Jack Barlow, struggling young newlyweds who aren’t at all sure they can afford a baby. Unemployed Patience believes her husband has secured a more lucrative job, when, in fact, he earns $7.25 an hour handing out adult entertainment flyers. Both wallow in doubt and self-pity, afraid their child will be a “loser” like them, but occasionally allowing themselves brief bursts of pride and hope.
Jack’s emotions spin wildly from caption to caption. “That girl’s an angel. She’s got a heart of pure gold and she’d absolutely stick by me no matter what happened. I have to always remember that” is immediately followed by “God damn it, I’m going crazy with jealousy over every jerk-off with a few bucks in his pocket.”
Something worse than poverty awaits the couple, though. Jack returns from work to find Patience’s dead body on the floor of their apartment. Detained for months as a suspect, he eventually gets out of jail and starts his own investigation of his wife’s murder.
This is no ordinary whodunit, however. What makes Jack’s quest unusual is that, thanks to some purloined tech, he’s able to travel from 2029 back to 2006, where he watches a young Patience spend time with the men who might go on to kill her. Older, stronger and far more ruthless, time-travelin’ Jack is determined to set things right by protecting her, even if he doesn’t know what paradoxes he might create in the meantime.
For a book titled “Patience,” there’s a lot of anger and hostility bubbling up from its emotional core. Not only is Jack perpetually pissed off, but so is nearly everyone else around him, from Patience’s newly paroled ex-boyfriend to the double-crossing scientific “genius” who invented the time travel device.
With its large format, “Patience” allows Clowes the room to give his illustrations their maximum impact. The heavy stock is perfect for splash pages that depict both the mundane — the darkened bedroom in which Patience assures herself everything is OK — to the hallucinatory — cosmic mindscapes filled with geometric and organic shapes, in which Jack floats in solitude after overdosing on the “juice” that allows time travel.
There’s a strong “Terminator” vibe in “Patience,” of course, not to mention tips of the hat to mainstream and underground superhero comics. In interviews, Clowes has pointed to European cinematic science fiction from the ’60s and ’70s as inspiration for the book, and there are definite head-trippy hints of “Barbarella,” “Zardoz,” “The 10th Victim” and “Solaris.”
As science fiction, “Patience” doesn’t break much new ground, but its retro feel is part of its point. Clowes’ vision of 2029, with its blueskinned hookers, self-driving cars, handheld phones/weapons, and dubious fashion choices isn’t a nuanced piece of world building. But it gets the job done, letting the reader know why Jack is so willing to give up on the future in an attempt to alter the past.
No matter where he goes up and down the timeline, Jack encounters more American grotesques sporting bad haircuts and spouting cliches. As he says to himself while contemplating homicide, “I’m so sick of all the goddamn science fiction mind-(expletive) bull (expletive), all the guessing games and impossible, unsolvable riddles.”
As for Patience herself, the reasons behind her self-doubt and emotional confusion are gradually revealed with clarity and compassion. Clowes can be harsh and sometimes downright cruel to his characters, but he treats her with a tenderness that may be unprecedented in his comics work.
Patience does not get the last word in the book. Nevertheless, her two final, simple sentences land with an affecting power and reveal her as the heroine of her and Jack’s story.
Last year saw the deluxe publication of “The Complete Eightball 1-18,” a retrospective of the comic Clowes began in the mid-’90s and which helped redefine American alternative comics. Its serialized contents served as a reminder of the cartoonist’s creative fecundity and superior draftsmanship.
“Patience” is something very different, a big, bold work taken to completion in one glorious shot. It finds Clowes at the height of his powers, employing all the mind-bending talent he can muster.