Dan Clowes bends time like a cracked vinyl record in Patience, a paranoid, neon-streaked thriller about grief, obsession, and the terrible urge to rewrite the past. When Jack Barlow’s pregnant wife, Patience, is murdered, his world collapses into static. Years later, he stumbles onto a shadowy time-travel experiment and does what any love-struck, half-unraveled man might do: he dives headfirst into yesterday to stop the crime before it happens.
What follows is less a clean sci-fi adventure and more a psychological spiral through memory, jealousy, and the slippery nature of truth. Clowes paints the book in lurid pinks and sickly blues, giving the panels a dreamlike pulse that feels both retro and uncanny. The story hops across decades, revealing that the past is not a fixed photograph but a hall of mirrors, each reflection bending Jack’s motives further out of shape.
At its core, Patience is about love under pressure, the kind that mutates when mixed with regret and hindsight. It is sharp, unsettling, and darkly funny, another reminder that Clowes thrives where romance curdles into something strange and human.
