Industrial Gothic is a five-issue comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 limited series

Limited series

A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....

 written and illustrated by Ted McKeever

Ted McKeever

-Career:McKeever first professional work appeared in 1987, when he published the first five parts of his unfinished series Transit , establishing his trademark style. This was followed in 1987-1988 by his 12-part series Eddy Current. This "12-hour book" centers on an escapee from an asylum...

. It was published in 1995 by Vertigo, edited by Lou Stathis

Lou Stathis

Lou Stathis was an American author, critic and editor, mainly in the areas of fantasy and science fiction. During the last three years of his life he was an editor for DC Comics' Vertigo line, including Preacher, Doom Patrol, Industrial Gothic, The System and Dhampire.Stathis was a columnist and...

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Story

Pencil and Nickel are two inmates of a prison in a dystopia

Dystopia

A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

n society in which ugliness is a crime. Pencil was born in the prison; Nickel is incarcerated there because she has no arms or legs. They decide to escape, in order to find a semi-mythical place called The Aluminium Tower, in which everyone is accepted no matter what they look like.