Under-Earth comic set in subterranean Melbourne imagines post-capitalist dystopian Australia - ABC News

In July 2016, while waiting for a flight home at LAX airport, Chris Gooch started devising Delforge — part exile colony, part subterranean garbage dump, in near-future Melbourne.

It's a place where shoplifters and murderers journey deep below the earth's surface to toil in caves oozing with toxic bin juice, scavenging waste for money; street merchants peddle barely-charged vintage iPods and Nintendo 64 gaming consoles.

This fictional dystopia is at the centre of Gooch's second graphic novel, Under-Earth: a three-part prison heist thriller, which he describes as following "two stories of people struggling just to do the best they can and have the life and friendships that they can in a circumstance where every decision they make — good and bad — is morally compromised".

Gooch says the actions of the Under-Earth characters are always at somebody else's expense.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

There's deadly and skilled thieves Ele and Zoe, who execute dangerous jobs for criminal overlord The Map King — including infiltrating The Spire, a brutalist monolith, to extract the warden's prized Titan Arum plant. And then there is Malcolm, a hulking, stoic loner who takes fresh-faced prisoner Reece under his wing.

Gooch says the oppressive, post-capitalist sci-fi world of Under-Earth is "a loose metaphor for how we live our lives".

Under-Earth parts 1, 2 and 3 are available now as single-colour riso-printed editions and will be published collectively as a full-colour printed edition in October, by US indie publisher Top Shelf Productions.

Gooch cites the visuals of cyberpunk manga Akira as a major influence, particularly its depictions of action.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

Under Earth is the second of three Australian graphic novels to be released this year by Top Shelf, along with Pat Grant's climate crisis epic The Grot (out this month) and Campbell Whyte's follow-up to his Eisner-nominated coming-of-age fantasy Home Time (out in October).

Perth-born illustrator and comics maker Whyte says that through fantastical fictional worlds, he and his Australian contemporaries illustrate "what we see as being urgent and vital and important" as part of "our lived reality".

Under-Earth was supported by Creative Victoria, and features iconic Melbourne sites such as the Flinders St Station.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

"The three of us are all making these works that are sort of pulling apart and looking into the future, the past or side realities of the fabric of Australia."

An existential precipice

Gooch says because Under-Earth pairs sci-fi with prison genre fiction, it doesn't need to be read in a serious way or as if it's going to happen.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

Like the characters of Under-Earth, Gooch feels he is on "the edge of an existential precipice where everything is ****ed and irreversibly broken because of the way our lives are being lived and the systems that control us are set up to operate."

Chris Gooch is a graphic novelist, comics artist and former comic editor of The Suburban Review.(Supplied: Gabriel Clark)

Over-consumption was on the Melbourne cartoonist's mind during Under-Earth's three-and-a-half-year writing process. During this period, China announced it would ban the import of foreign waste from the US, Japan and Australia, and the Australian Government continues to grapple with solutions to its waste crisis.

It's very difficult, says Gooch, to walk around and not be surrounded by things that will end up in landfill. He cites the trash compactor scene in Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV) as Under-Earth's primary inspiration.

"I go to the supermarket and there's an ethical price tag on everything that I engage with, and it feels like an insurmountable task, [and] no one person can stop it or fix it or solve it," he says.

The actions, dialogue and lack of dialogue of Under-Earth's characters represent aspects of Gooch and his nearest and dearest. He says the fictional prisoners speak to "what we want from each other and how we don't often communicate it properly".

At 576 pages, Under-Earth is Gooch's longest work yet, and took him one-and-a-half years to draw.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

After finishing his slice-of-life graphic novel Bottled, Gooch was excited to work on a story with set pieces and action scenes.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

Gooch likens the interior world of Chinese-Australian hard-knock criminal Malcolm to Marvel superhero The Hulk, and describes him as "sad, lonely and intentionally self isolated — specifically in a way that lets you excuse yourself from the responsibility you have to engage with and help the people around you."

Ultimately, Malcolm is betrayed by Reece and sold to Delforge's criminal kingpin, and forced to fight fellow inmates to the death as part of an illegal gladiator-style fighting ring.

Gooch says, "If I'm any character, I'm Ele", who he describes as "lost and fixated on the past".

The Malaysian-Australian character holds onto her hope of escaping Delforge by listening to music — which is a relic of the outside world — and looking up at the only star in the cavernous black above Delforge (rumoured to be a distant cranny of sunlight from the above-ground free world).

Gooch says rather than write character biographies he prefers to let characters develop and find their voice as he draws them.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

Gooch says Ele's story arc is "about coming to terms with the limitations of the world and giving up on this fake utopia that she is attempting to return to in the outside world, and trying to make a life and be happy in the one that she has."

An Australian shame

Perth comics artist Campbell Whyte says the Australian works that excite him the most engage with issues of land and place.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

Under-Earth begins with scenes that show how new Delforge inmates are inducted into the hollowed-out landfill. After a roll call, they are violently hurled out of an airborne helicopter by assault-rifle-wielding guards wearing World War I gas masks. Below, a mountainous garbage heap is all that breaks their fall.

Gooch says his aim with Under-Earth was to create a cinematic comic.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

Gooch says that while he cannot do "justice to the suffering that people experience" in offshore detention, the violence and facelessness of the Delforge guards references "how awfully our country treats those that are kept in concentration camps".

"The only time I really feel Australian is when we do something horrible and I feel a sense of shame, like with the concentration camps."

Gooch started devising Under-Earth with thumbnails rather than a script because he wanted images to lead the story.(Supplied: Chris Gooch)

Sci-fi and fantastical fiction "hint at deeper truths about the human condition and experience," says Whyte.

"Gooch might not think it, but I think ultimately [Under-Earth] it is about human connection and hope in the face of adversity."

Under-Earth will be published by Penguin Random House on October 20.

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2020-10-03 19:23:00Z
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