Melbourne comic creator Chris Gooch came leaping into the international comics scene back in 2017 with his debut graphic novel, “Bottled”, which combined tense storytelling with raw, emotional visuals. However, he’s had created plenty of shorter comics published by many different small press Australian publishers, all to their own small successes. Let’s see how these older works hold up, published in Gooch’s upcoming collection from Top Shelf, “Deep Breaths”.
Written, illustrated, colored and lettered by Chris Gooch
A space bounty hunter tracks down a frog princess, a woman finds a condom where it shouldn’t be, and a spoiled art student works his first freelance job. Deep Breaths is a collection of short comics about tension, violence, monsters, and moments… including the award-winning story “Mooreland Mates” and nine other tales rarely or never before seen.
As with any type of anthology, the stories contained here are all of varying quality, however, I’m happy to say a lot of these are consistent high points. Gooch peppers the book with some excellent short stories to keep the overall pacing nice. The opener comic “Buddy” is a delightfully weird and uneasy horror tale that takes the metaphor of children being monsters as literally as possible and sets the tone for the book well. Gooch then launches into one of my favorites of the book, “Wednesdays”. The sense of uneasiness from the first story carries over here, as we’re shown a group of dads getting together to break into the local pool after dark and sink a few beers whilst catching up. Gooch plays with tensions super well here, especially as one of the men, Dan, takes an extended dip underwater whilst the rest of the group call to find him. This story encapsulates what Gooch manages to nail in each story: transforming the mundane into the terrifying.
There are other short stories here that do work as decent downtime from the more intense chapters, however. “Mooreland Mates” is a genuinely heartwarming recount of a Melbourne male-support group where members have to be more emotionally available, but it doesn’t really have tension or narrative structure, it’s just a recount. “Karaoke” is a little better as it’s a subtle yet entirely human love story, and has razor-sharp dialogue that makes it feel incredibly relatable. “Emma” is the most interesting conceptually, being told from a seemingly sentient train’s perspective, yet feels rough in its character development and overall execution.
These longer stories are what makes the book really stand out, however. “One To Make Him Grow” follows on from the theme of children being terrifying from “Buddy” and viscerally expands upon it. Here we have a child who’s struggling with his parents’ divorce to the point that he makes himself the center of his friends’ attention by claiming to have opened his ‘third eye’. What we get is a haunting yet poignant tale about the influence that adults’ actions have on their children and the almost cult-like nature of these pre-teen social circles, and it’s one of the most chilling tales in the book. “The Effervescent Pill” worked well as an interesting relationship analysis between the struggling-artist character Dean and the corporate-businessman Lachlan. Gooch does well at showing them at their most extreme opposites as they disagree on the content of the book Dean is making a cover for and does a nice job at reconciling them in the middle. “Mother” is where Gooch excels at combining high-tension thriller with slice-of-life storytelling. The characterization of the psychologist in the story feels a little dated, but everyone else is rock solid: the mother, Julie, is conflicted wanting to maintain stability in her family, yet desperately needing to search for the truth about the used condom under her bed, with a realistic and modern conclusion. “Curse You, Skullface!” is a hilariously distorted Flash Gordon-style sci-fi that works as a nice palette cleanser before “Braces” wraps up the book nicely with a cathartic revenge story from a student’s mother to said student’s bully.
Gooch’s shaky, imperfect, but compellingly human art style is fantastic and fits each story here comfortably. I love how overall, Gooch sticks to a panel structure that is reasonably standard in terms of layout, yet the art inside is weird and occasionally contorted, much like the characters of the book itself. “Wednesdays” is a strong opening area story to showcase visuals. Gooch uses negative space in the opening scene superbly to both create tension and relieve it. The first few pages use dark shots and close-ups of hands awkwardly operating keys and devices to make readers nervous. Gooch immediately offsets this once the characters succeed in breaking in, however, with big, open panels of each one diving into the pool each with unique, eccentric mannerisms. “One to Make Him Grow” also showcases an ability to use recurring motifs in visual storytelling successfully, as we continue to see the idea of the voyeuristic third eye appear throughout the story: on creepy balloons and on Lucas’ hands, which is especially appropriate when he catches his mother later in the story.
One aspect that is characteristic of Gooch’s work is his solid use of screen tones and interesting textures. “Mother” is one of the best examples of this, since it combines excellent, scratchy shading with heavy screen tone usage to have an almost gothic and suspenseful tone to it. Shots like the visceral spread of Julie holding up the crinkled, highly detailed spent condom are deliberately uncomfortable in their detail. Like Julie, we’re forced to take it all in, examining the evidence for any potential hints as to what it could mean. “Curse You, Skullface” also works well as a showcase for Gooch’s versatility, as he uses uninked pencil texture to give the story an earthy yet alien feel. The scene of the Oc-Ras dancing in praise to the sacrifice of the princess is rendered as if we were right there with them: feverish, messy and passionate thanks to the rough-hewn pencil linework. I also want to touch on “Wednesdays” one more time because it’s Gooch with his best character work: each one of the men looks visually distinct, from pointy noses to sheepish, thin-set faces, and the emotions are super-strongly represented.
“Deep Breaths” isn’t just a good anthology, it’s a great encapsulation of Chris Gooch’s work as an artist. The book is well-structured, delivering stories that flow into each other with similar themes, and a constant sense of tension that keeps readers on edge and paging through for more. The art is also superbly on-point, with a huge span of visual techniques that handle storytelling in different ways. It might be jarring for those trained on clean-lined, big-bodied superheroes, but it’s perfect for the content Gooch brings to the table and feels wonderfully human at its core. Come for the lingering sense of unease, stay for your now-favorite space bounty hunter, Skullface.
