Ryan Browne Launches Kickstarter For 'Blast Furnace'

If you're familiar with Ryan Browne's work from God Hates Astronauts, his ongoing series from Image, then you already know that he makes some weird comics. I mean, honestly, weirdness is kind of GHA's defining characteristic, right down to the first volume's focus on a superhero whose giant head explodes and is then replaced with a spectral cow. Now imagine what you'd get if there was absolutely no filter on Browne's creative process and a time restraint that meant he had to go with anything that popped into his head.

That's how we ended up with Blast Furnace: Recreational Thief, an "improv comic" project that Browne first put together in 2012, where he had to write, draw and letter a comics page in a single hour every day. Needless to say, the 130-page original makes for an interesting read, but now, Browne's bringing it back for a Kickstarter campaign set to double the length and add full-color pages.

As the title indicates, the book is nominally about Blast Furnace, a thief with a domino mask and a pair of glasses, who sets his necktie on fire before going about his hobby of stealing things, but given the improvisational nature of the process, it's definitely a book that wanders around a lot. Then again, that's part of the fun, assuming that you think gun-toting owls shooting dragons in the face is "fun."

There's a lot more information at the Kickstarter page, but be careful, there's some NSFW language included in the pages Browne has up to show his coloring process. But, you know, if your boss is cool with you backing weird comics Kickstarters at work, they probably won't mind a couple of s-bombs either.

The Blast Furnace Kickstarter runs until Wednesday 23 September, and has passed its initial target of $15,000.