Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes

A mosaic of interlocking comic vignettes set in a small Midwestern town, following a cast of eccentric, lonely residents — children, parents, a poet, and various oddball townspeople — whose petty obsessions, anxieties, and secret longings are rendered with deadpan humor and spare visuals; as the community reacts to the unexplained disappearance of a local boy, the stories shift tone from satirical and whimsical to quietly unsettling, probing themes of isolation, empathy, and the failures of adult authority.