Clowes has delivered his long threatened science fiction graphic novel.  Within the 178 pages of Patience readers will encounter the arduous travails of a time-traveling drug abuser coming to terms with mortality and the meaning of life as only a time-traveling drug abuser can.  Clowes has, with Patience, taken an approach in crafting its narrative somewhat akin to that of Michael Chabon's in The Yiddish Policeman's Union -- although to entirely different ends -- by starting with the hook and basic plot structure of a whodunnit murder mystery, and then gradually incorporating layer upon layer of interlocking themes, spinning it out into something much more grandiose, until reaching its final epiphany.  Patience weaves a tangled (really tangled) tale of childhood traumas attached to family pathos that nimbly skirts the borders of bathos and tragedy, and that leads inevitably to an anger that is suppressed in masochistic resignation, grief and drug abuse until being released in violence, over and over until finally... finding love -- and then starting all over again, sort of; hey, we're talking time travel here.  Ultimately, Patience reads as a highly fraught coming to terms with regret that reaches the conclusion that the only path that leads to its resolution is that of letting go of the past -- even when that past happens to have occurred in the future.  Which, of course, is the nature of regret:  the loss of an imagined alternate future; thus the genius of employing time travel in this capacity.  And there is plenty of reading pleasure to be had along the way, as all is delineated through a deft amalgamation of tropes from old school comic books, science fiction and hardboiled crime fiction. And, amidst all this, Clowes still manages to inject his unique sense of humor; you will laugh.  This is one of those works that, once you've started reading, you really can't put down.  So, what are you waiting for?  This is the new Dan Clowes we're talking about here.  Your patience has been rewarded...