Top Shelf Productions is taking a swing at the robot apocalypse this summer with its next young adult graphic novel, Undergrowth. Written by Ricky Lima, drawn by Daniele Aquilani, colored by Yuliia Shevtsova, and lettered by Andrew Thomas, the book follows a group of friends who gather to watch a meteor shower and end up facing destructive, frightening robot monsters. To defeat them, they’ll have to partner with forest entities that have to be piloted like mech suits from within.
But this isn’t just a story about man versus machine or even machine versus nature. It’s also a story that’s deeply rooted in trauma and the struggle to process your mortality as you’re actively fighting to stay alive and save the world.
“Every character in this book (even the robot!) is affected by trauma in some way and the way each one deals with it is different,” said Lima. “My goal was to have people read this book and enjoy the big action scenes, but also hopefully see a bit of themselves in one of the characters.
“I tried to present both good and bad ways of dealing with trauma. Not that the book gives anyone answers or tools to deal with their issues, but hopefully by having something outside of themselves a reader can start thinking about how they deal with trauma,” Lima continued.
Aquilani admitted to instantly falling in love with the story in Undergrowth. “As soon as Ricky told me about the story he wanted to tell, I fell in love with the concept and all the characters, so I had a lot of fun designing the world and then shaping it, page after page,” Aquilani explained.
“I really hope I was able to translate how everything felt alive to me; how there is this constant sense of clinging to life when the protagonists face an actual threat but also in quieter moments when they interact with each other. This is what I was thinking while I was drawing Undergrowth, and this is what I tried to communicate.”
Check out a preview from Undergrowth and the cover art below.
Undergrowth will be available everywhere books are sold on September 4. Pre-orders are available now through Top Shelf, Bookshop.org, and Indigo.
