The Furnace: A Graphic Novel

by Prentis Rollins

Timely and heartfelt, Rollins’ graphic novel debut The Furnace is a literary science fiction glimpse into our future, in the vein of mainstream successes for fans of Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone

One decision. Thousands of lives ruined. Can someone ever repent for the sins of their past?

When Professor Walton Honderich was a young grad student, he participated in a government prison program and committed an act that led to the death of his friend, the brilliant physicist Marc Lepore, and resulted in unimaginable torment for an entire class of people across the United States.

Twenty years later, now an insecure father slipping into alcoholism, Walton struggles against the ghosts that haunt him in a futuristic New York City.

With full-color art and a dark, compelling work of psychological suspense and a cutting-edge critique of our increasingly technological world, The Furnace speaks fluently to the terrifying scope of the surveillance state, the dangerous allure of legacy, and the hope of redemption despite our flaws.

“Surreal and evocative, The Furnace is a great critique of technology and the human condition.” —John Jennings, illustrator for the New York Times #1 bestseller Octavia Butler’s Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Comics, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction

192 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Prentis Rollins was born in North Carolina, grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C., and studied philosophy at the University of Southern California and Rutgers in New Jersey. Since 1993 he has worked for: DC Comics (on such titles as 'Green Lantern: Rebirth', 'DC: One Million', 'Impulse', and 'Batman: The Ultimate Evil'), Marvel Comics ('New X-men'), Milestone Media ('Hardware', 'Static'), Disney Television Animation ('PB and J Otter', 'Doug's First Movie', '101 Dalmations'), and many others. His graphic novel 'The Furnace' will be published by Tor Books in July of 2018. His lifelong obsessions are philosophy, science-fiction, and the strange territory in which these two things meet. He lives in London with his wife and three children.

Reviews

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rollins errs in telling this story about the future of incarceration from the perspective of the least interesting person in the book. Walton Honderich is a jackass loser when we meet him and subsequent flashbacks show he has always been a jackass loser.

After a lifetime of regret, Honderich reflects back on how he was supposed to help a tiny Tony Stark clone make a new system of individualized imprisonment hacker proof. Unintended consequences follow. The scenes with tiny Tony Stark almost push this book into the realm of interesting, but then the focus turns back to Honderich, and I found myself grinding through to the end purely out of a compulsion to finish, not out of any desire to see how it ends.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sci-Fi story about the implications of a high-tech prisoner management technique. Instead of keeping them in expensive prisons where they can sometimes cause riots, etc., they are put under the charge of a floating metal sphere which creates an invisibility shield around them. The prisoner can then walk about freely in the world, but nobody can see or hear him. Any attempt he makes to escape or touch another person results in painful punishment. So while he is able to experience the world, he is still in solitary confinement. Forever. What would that do to a person? What would the guilt do to the people who created it?

The graphics are lovely and detailed, with subdued colors. An excerpt is available on the Tor.com website.


Oh how I love little free libraries! There are many, many of them in my town and I often stop to check to see what's inside. I love the randomness of finding books this way. I'd never heard of Prentis Rollins or this book, but it looked interesting, and it is! And I got it a month before it will even be put on sale. Now I'll spread the love by offering it to members of my comics reading group or putting it into another little free box.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The more I think about this book, the more annoyed I get. The premise is interesting- small probes are assigned to maximum security prisoners to eliminate the need for the prison, with the catch being that they render the prisoner invisible and mute all sound from them. But the ethical implications are muddled by the intrusion of the ridiculously boring woe-is-me crappy father plotline, in which the protagonist moans about being a shithead to his wife. I guess it's supposed to inject humanity into him, but all it does is create a weak framing story and detract from the actual plot. Also the ending is a big load of nothing.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was able to read an excerpt of a section of background narrative detailing a piece of technology that would create mobile prisons. A device that would hover over a the convict and make him/her invisible to people. Speculative fiction and technology at it’s best. Art work was dark and created great atmosphere for the science.
I would love to get my hands on the full novel. Looks very good. I give this title a three only because it is a ‘Maybe’ until I could see the whole thing.

[Romany · Rating 5 out of 5]

HOLY SHIT. This was terrifying and absolutely brilliant. The story. The art. A true thriller.

[Matt Graupman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Furnace,” the debut graphic novel by comics veteran Prentis Rollins, is as unsettling as it is plausible, which is to say very. In the not-too-distant future, the government enacts a cost-saving program to replace traditional prisons: convicts are allowed in public but only when accompanied by GARDs, spherical drones that hover behind their target (thus preventing them from ever seeing it) which constantly monitor the prisoner while rendering them invisible to the general public. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine such a program actually existing in real life so it’s incredibly unnerving when the drones begin to behave in unexpected ways, bringing up issues of privacy and technological ethics that, in the present digital landscape of Cambridge Analytica and data-mining and whatnot, are more important than ever. Don’t get me wrong, “The Furnace” is a gripping, entertaining comic, but it definitely hits way too close to home.

The protagonist - if you can call him that - of “The Furnace” is Walton Honderich, a idealistic physicist who, as a young man, helped his mentor, Marc Lepore, beta test the GARD software and, in the process, unwittingly certified the whole program for implementation. Decades later, guilt-ridden and frequently drunk, Honderich recounts his misdeeds to his young daughter, revealing just how complicit he was in the ill-fated program. It’s part “Black Mirror”-style techno-cautionary tale, part Jeff Lemire-y confessional drama, and part sci-fi thriller. Now that I think about it a bit more, in tone, style, and presentation, “The Furnace” is quite similar to “Watchmen,” Alan Moore’s classic redefinition of superhero comics; Rollins’ art is hyper-detailed in an Art Adams-y kind of way, but otherwise it has the same nihilistic charm, subdued coloring, and moralistic dilemmas. It’s not a perfect graphic novel by any means - sometimes it can be a little heavy-handed and the pacing is a bit wonky at times - but I thought it was an excellent slice of near-future science fiction.

Like I said, “The Furnace” feels like a lost “Black Mirror” episode but it also has a really nice throwback quality to it; the story feels simultaneously topical and timeless. And who knows? With the speed of technology nowadays, its central predicament may someday soon feel quaintly naive. Awesome graphic novel today, real life nightmare tomorrow?

[Zedsdead · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Furnace describes a near-future in which prisons are replaced by GARDs, small drones that forever float above their charges, rendering them invisible, inaudible, and harmless to everyone else. The intent being to humanely give prisoners greater freedom, at less cost and with no danger to the public. (Yes, this idea was explored a bit in the "White Christmas" episode of Black Mirror .) The ethics of such an endeavor are complex, the project is rammed through by a profit-motivated corporation, and the personal cost to the GARD's developers is tragic.

It makes for a peculiar little horror story. The GARD company creates a situation in which its product's effects can't be studied (possibly a shot at the NRA-sponsored Dickey Amendment but that may be a stretch), and it takes a bit before the potential awfulness of its program becomes apparent. By then it's too late.

I loved both the writing and illustration. There's a BEAUTIFUL depiction of what happens when the light goes out and night vision slowly comes in, culminating in a dark charcoal-on-black room with a tiny green light from a smoke detector. Great series of panels. And I had no trouble buying into the honest, well-written portrayals of (1) a crumbling relationship between a depressed, self-loathing alcoholic and a loving wife who's out of patience, and (2) an abusive relationship between a remote, alcoholic, genius who feels like a failure and the prodigy son onto whom he has shifted his hopes.

After all that goodness, The Furnace simply stumbles to a halt. There's no climax, no challenge to be overcome (or not). It was a simple recounting of a terrible thing, from the point of view of a man broken by the fact that he could have stopped it.

Still...for the interesting ethical questions it poses, for its excellent use of visual perspective, for the realism of its characters, and for declining to tack on a happy, redemptive, cop-out ending, The Furnace was a top-notch read.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought the description of this graphic novel sounded very intriguing, so I was at first confused and then disappointed to realize that the download from NetGalley was only a sample of the book. Oddly it began on page 34 and ended on page 53, on what I believe will be a 192 page book, so I'm not even sure how the story began. The darkly hued illustrations had a gritty vibe and hinted at a grim morally ambiguous future, on the 20 pages I was able to read. While I am curious as to how the story begins and then concludes, only giving a sample advance copy has actually hurt the chances of me looking for a complete edition.

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read a 16 page excerpt of this comic and have to say that it didn‘t do anything for me. Based on the excerpt I have no interest in reading the full story. The art was ok, but didn‘t grab me.

And there was too little of the story to make an impact. Something about mobile prisons? Vaguely SF. Something horrible happens and bad choices are made?

Sorry, too short to form a decent opinion.

I received this free e-copy from the publisher/author via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disquieting and disturbing. A study of technology and a police state gone wrong. With current trends, it’s all too possible an outcome.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quiet and contemplative story, The Furnace doesn’t really exude any intensity of feelings at first.

The longer I sit with it though, the longer I find it as a whole very disturbing. Where it lacks is in its narrator and the lack of an ending.

It reads like an old man’s ramblings about his regrets in life, which is essentially what it is. Walton is a man who was the final roadblock to life-altering legislation for maximum security prisoners, and he crumbled like a tissue.

In short: his friend creates a little floating robot that renders a prisoner invisible and mute, but the prisoner can move about the world freely. It’s total isolation, but at least they can go places, right?

Well, we don’t really know how the prisoners feel. A lot start to just randomly die but there’s no explanation for that. Or an end to the story, really. It’s one man trying to assuage his guilt by justifying it to his daughter who may or may not understand the implications, and then it just ends. It’s an incomplete study of the human condition.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

A perplexing graphic novel. The concept is interesting with the idea of the gard but the point of view character is a poor choice.
I will say I was impressed with the art and how the characters were aged in a logical fashion.

[Kelsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The Furnace’ by Prentiss Rollins opens with learned physicist Doctor Walton Honderich on a plane to New York with his wife, Piper, and his daughter, Clara. He’s depressed and drinking too much because to have a child in this world is to live in constant fear. Along with that, he has guilt.

Soon after arrival, he sees a Gravitationally Autonomous Restriction Drone, a GARD hovering over a crowd in Manhattan. Walton flees. It doesn’t bother anyone else in the crowd but he knows more than them.

A GARD is a sphere covered in spiky protrusions, mostly cameras and projectors, that make the subject under it invisible to all around, though they know he’s there because they can see the GARD. The subject rendered invisible and separate by the guard is a criminal, a former prisoner in a maximum security jail now released into the world under its strict regime. The prisoner can’t interact with other people in any way at all but can move about freely in a state of solitary confinement. A great idea, albeit opposed by some of those damn, soft-hearted liberals when it was implemented. Later, it doesn’t look like such a great idea but I won’t give away the plot.

Doctor Honderich was a key man in the development of the GARD, along with his colleague, Marc Lepore. After his encounter in New York, the story continues to show us more of Walter’s tortured existence. Financially, he’s cosy middle-class but his mind is messed up. One morning in the hotel, when his wife is off sightseeing, he sits down with his daughter and tells her the whole story. She gets it dressed up as a fable about cookies sealed in an oven but we get the facts. There’s a lot about Walton’s own difficult childhood and plenty about that of his colleague and mentor, Marc Lepore. In fact, the theme of the book is partly that of Phillip Larkin’s famous poem ‘This Be The Verse’.

The other theme, obviously, is clever scientists showing off their brain power without any consideration of what the ultimate effects might be for real people, an issue as old as Oppenheimer. It’s all handled subtly. There’s a huge Federal Department in charge of GARDs and, in different hands, this might have turned into a dramatic and violent thriller with secret agents hunting them down. Prentiss Rollins keeps the story in a low-key, intimate and personal, more concerned with the effects on people than slam-bang action. It works.

Tucked into the narrative are various nuggets of wisdom about honesty, sexuality, ambition and other flaws of human nature. There’s an interesting story about a famous scientist who vanished one day and I liked Hofstadter’s law of complex tasks: It always takes longer than you think it will, even if you take into account Hofstadter’s law.

This is a rich and rewarding book, the best graphic novel I’ve read in a while. I consumed it in one sitting on a sunny Saturday afternoon when I should have been doing something more useful instead. The story takes 192 pages and every one of them is worth it. The art isn’t spectacular but it’s competent and realistic, suited to the subject matter. Prentis Rollins appears to have done all his own work and God alone knows how long that took (longer than he thought it would, even taking into account Hofstadter’s law) but it was certainly worth it in the end.

Eamonn Murphy

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the near future, prisons are no longer a preferable option to incarcerating criminals, so the American government looks to the latest advances in technology for a solution. Walton Honderich and Marc LePore contribute to a new program, which sees the creation of balloon-like machines that render the occupant invisible, and caged while walking free. The gards are supposed to be a more fiscally and morally responsible solution, when in fact they are just the newest way for society to avoid the real issues. By making prisoners invisible, humanity can literally forget them and the root causes of crime. However, things don't go this way, as a flaw in the system is discovered fairly early on. As for the moral implications, this is something which Wal and Marc themselves mention. What would total isolation, even when one is surrounded by people, do to the human mind? What would the constant fear of death from external tampering do? Neither has the answer, but just bringing it up is enough to leave it in our minds. The Furnace expertly flips back and forth in time, from the present in which the elderly Wal narrates the whole story while talking to his daughter, to the past when he and Marc were colleagues, to the even more distant memories of the childhoods that defined them. Regret permeates the narrative, and that is because, while the author wants us to mull over the big questions, he humanizes it by focusing on the effect such inventions have on their creators. Both Marc and Wal are a wreck, and the art shows their mental decline starkly. Rollins' highly detailed, sharp line work, textures, and desaturated colours have a gravity to them to match the serious nature of the thoughtfully written text. The author leaves it up to the readers to decide whether the cost was worth it or not, however, it also ends by saying that when we do err, redemption stems not necessarily from the person responsible, but lies in our future...children.

[Jessica Strider · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros: decent artwork, interesting story, thought provoking



Cons: left with questions

In the future US Department of Gard Administration and affairs needed a new way to deal with the prison population. It created GARD, a ball that hovers 1 meter behind and 1.5 meters above the prisoner, creating a field that renders the prisoner unseen and unheard.

This is the story of Walton Honderich, who must come to terms with how his brief contact with the unfinished GARD program in university affected the rest of his life.

The story starts a bit slow and gains momentum through flashbacks. There’s a fair bit of philosophical dialogue which makes it surprising that so little time is spent debating the ethics of what the GARD program will do. The graphic novel does make you think about it though, the ethics and about how many people along the way could have stopped the program and didn’t.

The artwork is done in a realistic style with subdued colours. It’s not my favourite style, but it’s well done.

The art style and philosophy reminded me of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and Watchmen, though maybe a ‘light’ version, as the story isn’t as deep or heavy handed here.

It’s an interesting story and worth a read or two.

[Joshua Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prentis Rollins brings us into a darker future with the visually stunning dystopian graphic novel The Furnace! Walton Honderich assists in a government experiment on prisoners that leads to the death of his friend Marc Lepore and the increased power of an oppressive regime. Now, years later, we hear the truth of Walton’s past and what really happened to Marc. Rollins is a master story teller both in his dialogue and the use of stark imagery to build this claustrophobic surveillance state world. It was beautiful to look at, but also sad and deep as I read the terrible fate of both Honderich and Lepore. This was a deep exploration of what humanity can become if we allow technology without ethical considerations become irrevocably intwined with our government and day to day lives. I loved the depth, the feel of classics like 1984, and the incredible art! If you love sci fi that challenges you to think and leaves your brain chewing on morality long after putting it down, and especially if you love comics, definitely come say hi to Big Brother with The Furnace!

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

'The Furnace' by Prentis Rollins is a furturistic story told in flashback. My review copy was only 16 pages of the 208 page story, so this isn't going to be much of a review.

Based on what I got from the preview and the description, this is the story of a man who uses technology to hopefully further society. Along the way, there is loss. He creates a sort of hovering ball. While it is over your head, you are invisible. If you try to escape fom it, it is painful. In my excerpt he is testing it with a friend.

What I got of the story was interesting, and I wouldn't mind reading more. The art was quite good. It's hard to recommend based on 16 pages, but I'm intrigued enough to read more, if that's any help.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

[Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because it was positively reviewed somewhere and it was aimed at young adults. It's an interesting story told in flashbacks by Wal (Walton), who is a physicist, who was part of the GARD program that created self contained prisoner devices that floated above the prisoners and kept them invisible to the public. Wal is sharing this story with his daughter about how he was approached by another young physicist Marc who wants Wal to develop a system so the GARDs don't get hacked. As you can guess something horribly goes wrong and prisoners start dying and no one knows why. This story is more of a morality play than a true suspense/sci-fi story. It maybe too cerebral for most teens who might want something more action packed. I would recommend for older teens due to language and adult angst.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Furnace by Prentis Rollins
“We tend to inhabut the North Korea of the soul. Tin-pot disctators, one and all, fretting over this tiny protectorate called the SELF.
And so we have these images, these idealised images.
The loving mother, the guardian father, the wise techer, the bad teacher.
We wrap them around ourselves like blankets, because they make it possible to believe that, confronted by chaos, we can still make things right.
But we can’t make things right. Not really.
There’s no control, no stability.” (p184)

[Amy Giles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rollins plays devil’s advocate by poking at our flawed penal system, and the moral and ethical complications of a futuristic world where prisoners are reduced to the status of living ghosts. Haunting and deeply provocative, The Furnace is both a stunning and elegantly told story of one man’s struggle with his conscience and how to live with the repercussions of what he has wrought as well as the power of forgiveness.
(I received an ARC of this book)

[Jessica Haider · Rating 3 out of 5]

A moody, dark graphic novel set in the not so distant future...

The Story: A middle-aged physics professor recounts his involvement in the creation of a mobile solitary confinement device meant to enclose prisoners in a field of invisibility from which they cannot be seen or heard by anyone on the outside.

This had some interesting concepts and ideas and makes you think about the ethics of technology.

[Michael D · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Furnace is both beautifully drawn and thought provoking. With the advent of for-profit, privatized prisons, it is not hard to make the leap and consider a future filled with technology that replaces or supplements criminal punishment. The Furnace provides a lot of food for thought and does so in an aesthetically beautiful way. I look forward to the next Rollins joint!

[Stacey Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

My copy was not 192 pages. I only had 16 pages, from the center of the book. It's an interesting concept, one I'd maybe read the rest of, if I could start from the beginning. People "disappearing" from society, able to see others but unable to be seen or heard. Perhaps as prisoners, or as punishment for wrong doing? Or used as a weapon by terrorists.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Too rarely do you get an ethical examination of penal theory. Here is a dystopia where they literally made the problem go away, told from the perspective of a man whose role in making it happen may have destroyed him. Smartly told in flashbacks, setting up intrigue and paranoia and gently deflating all of it again and again. Highly recommended.

[Kelly K · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believe this is the first book I've read that the tense was what made this book boring. If this were happening in present tense with the reader learning information the same time the characters do instead of past tense I may have been interested in this a bit more. Being told what already happened irked me and didn't drive the story along.

[Kattie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never heard of this before purchasing, but the read was worth it

I really got onto this book and enjoyed the part of the graphic novel where the ethics of the GARD were brought into question. I did find the beginning a bit bland, but would have probably given this 5 stars if I had enjoyed the end as much. The ending underwhelmed me. Overall I enjoyed this a lot.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well illustrated, and a very interesting story about a horrible idea for incarcerating humans without putting them in a prison cell, an idea that I hope never comes into existence. The most frightening aspect of this story is the lack of moral compass from the creator of this invention, or the supporting characters, and their willingness to create something miserable just because they can.

[Jeremy Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

Interesting concept, but the execution leaves something to be desired. Except in rare circumstances where it enhances the overall point of the comic, I am not a big fan of books that go nowhere.

[Laurian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really dislike books where I loathe the protagonist. I know that was the goal, but it didn't work for me. And even if I don't like the protagonist I need a rich supporting character that I do like. All of the supporting characters were either worse or too thin.