3 out of 5

Emblazoned on the back of the book – clear, but embossed so as to catch the light – is the all-caps command: Buy This Book.  I can’t disagree.  (On the front, the collage of the impressive amount of characters found within have emblazoned-on mustaches.)

Blast Furnace, like Cerberus, like the Bible, was a project started with a specific purpose in mind: A page a day, one hour per page, for a year.  This included everything but colors, and specifically did not include any planning (or as far as that is possible).  So maybe that’s not a purpose so much as a method, but the end result of a project that had no choice but to be completed – pending Ryan’s dedication, which he’s certainly since proven – was set, and after web publication and then a partial black and white edition, we get a 12-issue, color omnibus of the masterpiece.

A three star masterpiece.  Cuz, ya’ll, this was improvised for 365 hours, and like a lot of longer-term improv projects, it wanders.  It’s unwieldy.  It’s punctuated with great bits but mostly exists to get to the next page.  And yet: Buy This Book.

The sole caveat being a predilection for Ryan’s sense of humor, of course.  If crab mafia, a thief with a (-n unexplained) flaming tie, frequent references to “hard sex” between ghosts, character names like 70s turtle, and sound effects such as “defenestrate!” are enough to make you chuckle, then by all means, follow the aforementioned command.  The artistry might not be up to Browne’s detailed norms, but given the time limitation, what he manages to clearly lay down per page is not only impressive, elementally it’s still better – more aware of its medium – than what many can muster with a regular schedule.

What you’ll get is maybe the story of the titular thief, but more so, for its many pages, so many asides into flashbacks and meanwhile that Ryan has to humorously recap his status via character dialogue to make sure he’s still where he thinks he is.

Naturally, this lacks focus.  Every good idea can’t be massaged too much because that equals planning, so you can see Browne fretfully changing topics to prevent this, and thus we never quite get the truly bonkers story we could.   (You should read God Hates Astronauts for that.)

So I found myself mostly smiling through Blast Furnace, not explicitly lol’ing, but sincerely appreciating the spirit of it, which is what brings me back to: Buy This Book.  You won’t learn anything, and there’s more “successful” nonsense out there – some of it committed by Browne – but Blast Furnace taps into something oddly pure, and that’s something we should definitely support.