By Bruno Savill De Jong — “This is what a home looks like Zoe,” Ele tells her partner-in-crime at their messy new hideout, “it has things in it.”

Such decorations include polaroid pictures, torn stuffed dolls, and broken original iPods. Junk, really. There isn’t much else in the underground prison complex of Under-Earth, where convicts are dumped into a crumbling city within an enormous underground cavern. Its citizens are the unwanted dregs of society, discarded in this place like the second-hand scraps some convicts scavenge in toxic muck for money (having to pay for the protective clothing themselves). The only “star” in this dystopian hellhole is a light in the “ceiling” 600 meters up. There is no escape. Yet somehow, even in this dirty and miserable place, Under-Earth offers excitement and hope. Not that its inhabitants can escape the underground, but that some of them can turn it into a home.

Under-Earth constructs a potent and oppressive environment, populated by people who even if they weren’t hardened beforehand have become so through their need to survive. “It’s easier down here if you don’t have to care for anyone else,” the gentle giant Malcom tells the newcomer Reece. It’s simpler to function alone without getting attached to other people, or even objects. But Under-Earth understands, without being overly sentimental, that such connections (even to junk) are at the core of humanity.

Under-Earth avoids many pitfalls of other prison stories. Nobody is wrongfully convicted here, exposing how dehumanizing prisons can be even for those proven guilty. Nor is there any appeal to the system. Instead, the rewards within Under-Earth come from the small human moments while stuck inside their cage. Malcom may not talk much, but it means his words carry more sincerity and resonance when he does.

Chris Gooch does an amazing job compacting Under-Earth, which sails by despite being 590 pages long. Its large panel arrangements convey the scale of the underground complex, alongside some clever infographic sequencing. The dialogue is lean and stripped-won, rendered in large clunky hand-drawn lettering, which only makes it more impactful. Often the word-balloons are cut-off by the panelling, demonstrating how shouts and commands become just another part of the landscape. On a smaller scale, Under-Earth also delivers.

One of Zoe and Ele’s is done with procedural silence that integrates real tension, while a later fight sequence goes second-by-second as they try to dodge bullets. The action in Under-Earth is violent and ugly, as Malcom discovers after he becomes an underworld gladiator. Gooch’s art-style is blocky and flat, making the characters appear almost chiseled out of their environment. This is exacerbated by the two-toned coloring (different sections having different color schemes) that renders Under-Earth in brick-like browns and yellows, alongside splashes of bright red blood for the all-too human vulnerabilities.

Under-Earth is grim, but it knows how to alleviate this claustrophobic oppression with both surprising humor and rewarding tenderness. It can be broadly classified as “hopepunk,” recognising the misery of the world but persevering with well-worn optimism, or at least contentment. Under-Earth’s couples are not explicitly queer, but their connections in a hostile world show the tragedy and hope of that experience. Malcom finds a diary hidden within the underground muck that recounts memories of the surface-world not shown in Under-Earth.

“I remember trees, I remember skies,” it reads, “I have to include more of the little things, they’re what goes first. You have to hold onto them the tightest.”

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Under-Earth

Under-Earth
Writer/Artist/Letterer: Chris Gooch
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
Price: $19.99
The inmates of an extensive underground prison struggle to build meaningful lives in a broken system, in the most ambitious graphic novel to date from rising indie star Chris Gooch (Bottled and Deep Breaths).
Under-Earth takes place in a subterranean landfill, hollowed out to serve as a massive improvised prison. Sunken into the trash and debris of the past—Gameboys, iPhones, coffee cups, old cars—we follow two parallel stories.
In the first, a new arrival struggles to adapt to the everyday violence, physical labor, and poverty of the prison city. Overwhelmed and alone, he finds a connection with a fellow inmate through an old, beat-up novel. While these two silent and uncommunicative men grow closer thanks to their book, the stress of their environment will test their new bond.
Meanwhile, a pair of thieves pull off a risky job in exchange for the prisons’ schematics and the promise of escape—only to be betrayed by their employer. On the run with their hope for escape now gone, the two women set their minds to revenge. Yet as they lay their plans, their focus shifts from an obsession with the outside world to the life they have with each other.
Equal parts sincerity and violence, Under-Earth explores humanity’s inextinguishable drive to find meaning, connection, and even family—and how fragile such constructions can be.
Release Date: November 11, 2020
Buy It Digitally: Under-Earth Graphic Novel

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Bruno Savill De Jong is a recent undergraduate of English and freelance writer on films and comics, living in London. His infrequent comics-blog is Panels are Windows and semi-frequent Twitter is BrunoSavillDeJo.