Shit happens when you party naked

Last week picked up Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, not sure what to expect. Surface level it looked non-sensical and twisted, but it was hard to guess what it was about, even flipping through it. I knew Clowes from his comic Eightball, an incredibly jaded, often hilarious, often cruel look at modern day life. He is also the author of Ghost World, which I haven't read, but seems to be a toned down version of Eightball; a more acceptable kind of jaded disallusionment, bored rather than hate-filled. This seemed like a far different project than the Clowes I was familiar with.
Velvet Glove goes something like this: a guy goes to see a porn, one of the movies they show is "Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron", which is a bizarre movie of masks, bondage gear, a grown man in a crib, possible decapitation. No sex, no nudity. He's intrigued, think he might have dated the girl(?), asks the all-knowing shiek in the bathroom about it, he tells them where the production company is run out of, dude borrows his friend with Asiatic sea crustaceans in his eyes' car and takes off to find the filmmakers. Here's where the story gets weird...(of course I'm joking, the whole thing is really weird). Cops beat him up, leave him in a ditch, he gets picked up by a cult led by God, who is a guy named Godfrey who has prophecised an imminent sex war where women win and he becomes the only man left, the "kind and loving father of the new world". God's walking around naked leading this cult of women to enact this prophecy. The dude escapes, meets a potato girl in a diner, stays with her and her mom, potato girl falls in love with him while the mom seduces him. Comes across the logo on his foot in various locations, buys a souvenir one at an antique store. A guy tells him the story of the character, some kind of mason-like secret organization that no one can fuck with. He accidentally steals the guy's dog with no orifices, finds the address of the production company, spys on them from a motel across the street, but it just seems to be a little girl that sits at a desk smoking a pipe and drawing horses all day everyday. More craziness, a shirtless agro guy gets hired to find him, snuff porn, I can't spoil too much.
The book is great, some of the characters are completely repulsive, but other then that, it was all good. It was like Hitchcock and David Lynch teaming up to make a maybe-it-makes-sense mysteryhorrorcomedy. The characters alone are worth the time. Highly recommended.