I just read The Forever Home #1 from Oni Press, by Christian Ward and Sami Kivelä. The hook is simple and nasty: a family lives in a sealed smart home where time barely moves. One year outside is about 20 minutes inside. That single idea does most of the work in this first issue.
The Setup
The book opens with a glimpse of the future — the father is not in great shape — then drops back to show how they got there. Inside the house are Henry D’mour, his wife Elisabeth, older daughter Sarah, and younger son Tommy. Henry is the one holding the whole thing together, and he’s strict about it. They cannot go outside.
The house itself is part of the premise. It’s a smart home: temperature, exterior panels, zoomed-in views of the world beyond the walls. From inside, they can watch plants explode into growth. One of the best images in the issue is a full-page look at the landscape shifting from desert toward something like a rainforest in what is only six years from their point of view.
Ward and Kivelä also build in visual clocks and anchor points so you can feel time passing even when the family barely ages or ages a lot. The puppy gets older. Tommy has one blue eye and one dark eye.
Highlights
The family dynamic is clear fast. Elisabeth is quiet and passive. Sarah is headstrong. Tommy is just a kid who wants to run around and go outside. When he gets hurt playing inside, Henry’s response is basically: don’t run in here. They have nowhere else to go.
Outside the garden, something starts trying to get in. It looks like other people. Henry says they are not really people. That line hangs over the rest of the issue.
The kids have also been slipping into parts of the house they are not supposed to use. Tommy has been drawing a mural. Robots go out for supplies — one of them, Benny, has been gone so long that years have passed outside while only hours have passed inside. When Benny finally comes back, the door is open just long enough for the dog to bolt. Tommy follows.
The issue is structured around the strangeness of living at a different speed than the rest of the world. It is part family drama, part mystery. The time gap feels like the real danger.
Final Verdict
The Forever Home #1 is an interesting debut with a premise strong enough to carry a series. The opening spreads are excellent, the house is a good sci-fi object, and the last stretch makes the cost of that 20-minute/one-year math feel real. I don’t know yet if this turns into something that keeps compounding or if it thins out once the novelty of the concept wears off. First issues like this are hard to call.
I’m curious enough to come back. Issue #2 is due in October.
What did you think of the premise? Would you stay in a house like that? Tag me on X @NostalgicNestEg!
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