Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron

AUTHOR: Clowes, Daniel

ARTIST: Daniel Clowes (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Fantagraphics Books

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1989-1993

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1993

Publication History

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron was featured in the first ten issues of Daniel Clowes’s long-running comic book series Eightball, from 1989 until 1993, when it was collected in a trade paperback and published by Fantagraphics Books at the behest of Fantagraphics editor and founder Gary Groth. Written, drawn, and lettered exclusively by Clowes, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron was the first extended story to be serialized in Eightball. Though the opening panels of the story were originally printed in color, the trade paperback is exclusively black and white. Each of the ten sections of the story has a chapter title in the trade paperback, while an added table of contents provides narrative continuity and cohesion. Before publishing this work, Clowes had been primarily known for his Lloyd Llewellyn (1986-1987) comics series, also published by Fantagraphics. Eightball remains one of the best-selling independent comics series.

Plot

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron intentionally lacks a cohesive or tight-knit narrative structure. In a general sense, the comic tells the story of Clay Loudermilk’s nightmarish expedition as he attempts to track down his estranged wife, chronicling his interactions with a bizarre cast of characters who actively work to either assist or discourage his efforts to find her.

The story begins when Clay, during a visit to an adult theater, witnesses his wife in a sadomasochistic bondage film entitled Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. After consulting with a swami who holds court in the theater’s bathroom, Clay learns that the film’s director, Dr. Wilde, and his production company, Interesting Productions, are both located in the nearby town of Gooseneck Hollow. Immediately after setting out to contact the film’s makers, he is stopped and arrested by two policemen, who viciously beat him. Afterward, one of the officers carves into Clay’s foot the image of a man wearing a top hat, a novelty icon named Mister Jones.

After regaining consciousness some days later, Clay discovers that he has been rescued by a compulsively naked cult leader named Godfrey who hopes to obliterate the American government and bring about “Harum Scarum,” a worldwide war between men and women in which women will be the victors. When Clay is told he must assassinate the columnist Ann Landers, he escapes in Godfrey’s car and travels to Gooseneck Hollow.

Once there, he meets the hideously deformed Tina Muskegon and her nymphomaniacal mother. Though he intends to rent their spare room, he flees upon discovering that Tina, in an effort to seduce him, has laid eggs on his bed. The next day, Clay is invited to the home of a man named Billings, a conspiracist who is convinced that the world’s superpowers revolve around appearances of Mister Jones. Clay is struck by Billings’s orifice-less male dog, Laura, who survives on a single syringe of fresh water per day.

Later than evening, Clay believes he spots his wife in the window of a home, so he rents a room in a motel across the street to spy on her. A few days later, however, he is no closer to finding his wife, and Laura the dog dies of malnutrition. Clay shaves Laura, after finding a note instructing him to do so, and finds a map to the residence of Mr. One Thousand, not only the supposed creator of Mister Jones but also Laura’s breeder. Though Mr. One Thousand denies any knowledge of Billings’s conspiracy theory, it is apparent that he is, indeed, complicit.

Meanwhile, after discovering Laura’s corpse, Billings hires a crazed, violent maniac named Geat to track down and kill Clay in retribution for the dog’s death. Completely unaware that he is being followed, Clay locates Interesting Productions, where he watches a new film entitled Barbara Allen. In it, he witnesses his wife having sex with another man, only to be shot in the head and buried.

Devastated, Clay wanders into the street to discover that “Harum Scarum” is well on its way; women are openly accosting men in the streets, and Godfrey has successfully managed to infiltrate the White House. Clay travels to the gravestone marking the body of his estranged wife, where Geat attacks him, cuts off his arms and legs, and buries them, leaving Clay alive but immobile. Unbeknownst to Clay, Interesting Productions filmed his dismemberment, which, with Dr. Wilde at the helm, will become the company’s new movie. In order to generate new ideas for his pornographic snuff films, Wilde employs the services of a pipe-smoking girl referred to only as Precious, whose obscene fantasies Wilde realizes on film. In a final ironic twist, Clay survives, only to be returned to the care of Tina for the remainder of his days.

Characters

•Clay Loudermilk, the protagonist, is searching for his estranged wife after unexpectedly seeing her in a pornographic film. After concluding his search at her gravestone, he is dismembered, though he does survive.

•Madame Van Damme is the screen name of Clay’s wife. Clay first sees her in the pornographic bondage film Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and later in the film Barbara Allen, in which she is shot in the back of the head and buried in the wilderness.

•Godfrey is a cult leader who hopes to bring about “Harum Scarum,” a global battle between men and women in which women will be victorious. He is naked throughout the entire comic. Ultimately, his mission is a success.

•Tina Muskegon is a horribly disfigured young woman who falls in love with Clay. Though he initially spurns her advances, she serves as his caretaker after his mutilation.

•Billings is a conspiracist who believes that the world’s superpowers are intricately bound up with Mister Jones, a novelty icon whose presence he has researched throughout time. He orchestrates the dismemberment of Clay after his pet, Laura, dies in the latter’s care.

•Laura is Billings’s pet dog. Bred by Mr. One Thousand, he is orifice-less and survives on one syringe of fresh water per day. He dies while living with Clay and is subsequently shaved, revealing a map on his back that leads Clay to Mr. One Thousand’s domicile.

•Geat is a violent, woman-abusing maniac who dismembers Clay at the behest of Billings.

•Mr. One Thousand is Laura’s breeder, the inventor of Mister Jones, and, according to Billings, the person who controls all of the world’s major superpowers.

•Dr. Wilde is the director of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and Barbara Allen and the head of Interesting Productions. He gets his ideas for his snuff films from a young woman named Precious, whom he keeps under his surveillance.

•Precious is a young pipe-smoking woman whose violent and disturbing fantasies are turned into films by Dr. Wilde and his company, Interesting Productions.

Artistic Style

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron was serialized in ten issues of Eightball, which required Clowes to break up the story into distinct sections that would nevertheless feel connected. He accomplished this by formatting each new section of the comic in an identical fashion, featuring on the first page a large, detailed close-up of a character who plays a central function in that particular section, with the first two panels of the chapter underneath it. Each of the close-ups is finely, though grotesquely, rendered, presenting each character in far greater detail than they appear in the actual narrative. This attention to order and sameness is indicative of Clowes’s general style, which is exacting and technically exemplary.

Clowes is known for a realistic style defined by clean lines, faithful renderings of both everyday objects and human beings (particularly faces), careful attention to background detail, and contrasting uses of black and white. Heavily influenced by 1950’s kitsch, Clowes’s work is at times reminiscent of mid-twentieth-century advertising design and typography, particularly his rendering of the novelty icon Mister Jones. In keeping with the comic’s surrealistic and disorienting narrative, Clowes allows the detail to clutter individual panels, often overwhelming the reader in much the same way that Clay is overwhelmed by the particularities of his environment.

In an interesting stylistic gesture, Clowes destabilizes the lines of some of the panels, rendering them uneven and sketchy, to indicate when one of Clay’s fantasies, remembrances, or dream sequences is taking place. Because of the sameness of the comic, this detail enables the reader to make distinctions between so-called reality and unreality. Even so, the narrative is tangential, uneven, and chaotic. There is no clear plot, and in that regard, the text functions not unlike a dream or a nightmare, introducing characters quickly before dropping them without a moment’s notice and changing scenes without clarifying space or place. Clowes employs this technique purposefully, and it represents a significant departure from his other work, which is not only realistically rendered but also more or less straightforwardly narrated.

Themes

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron is notable for its surrealism, absurdity, and egregious use of extreme sex and violence as a means of exploring themes of loss and abandonment. From the very beginning of the comic, Clay routinely encounters flagrant expressions of grotesque sexualities from all angles: He witnesses his wife perform unusual sex acts with men; he is arrested by two policemen who are clearly having a sexual affair; he has sex with Tina Muskegon’s mother and is subsequently seduced by Tina in a profoundly disturbing and graphic way; and, after he has been confronted by the reality of his wife’s death, he fondly recalls a quiet postcoital moment between them.

Violence is often attached to sex: Geat has rough sex with a woman whom he also physically abuses; immediately after seeing his wife appear in a second pornographic film, Clay witnesses her execution; and after his dismemberment, he is powerless and cared for by Tina, who has powerful sexual feelings for him. In a similar way, sex is often mingled with loss and abandonment. After Clay witnesses his wife’s violent death, he is prompted to remember a tender moment between them. Tina’s mother mourns the loss of Tina’s father, a beautiful man she had sexual intercourse with only one night and never saw again. After Tina attempts to seduce Clay, prompting him to leave, she falls into a deep depression.

Impact

Though Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron has been translated into multiple languages, it has been overshadowed by Ghost World, Clowes’s subsequent and perhaps most popular extended comics narrative series, although its popularity is partly the result of Clowes’s and Terry Zwigoff’s film adaptation. Because the comic is not entirely in keeping with Clowes’s typical narrative style, being completely absurdist, aggressively violent, more sexually charged, and lacking in any organized narrative structure, the trade paperback is not particularly well known or well read. However, its status as the first extended narrative to appear in Eightball is significant, particularly given that the series remains one of the most read and most popular independent comics series in print.

Further Reading

Burns, Charles. Black Hole (1995-2004).

Clowes, Daniel. Ghost World (1993-1997).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Ice Haven (2005).

Bibliography

Clowes, Daniel. “Conversation Four: Daniel Clowes.” Interview by Mike Sacks. McSweeney’s, 2009. http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/sacks/clowes.html.

Clowes, Daniel, Ken Parille, and Isaac Cates. Daniel Clowes: Conversations. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2010.

Hignite, Todd. “Daniel Clowes.” In In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006.