The Rezz was made for the True North Festival, which took place in the suburb of Reservoir, Vic, on March 1-3, 2013. It was part of a Chinese whispers-style project called 'Lost in Translation', in which a short story by Stella Glorie served as the inspiration for my comic, which was then reinterpreted by Icelandic musician Auður as a song, which in turn became the basis for a visual art piece by Laura Wood.  My comic was to be displayed in a large shop window, so I decided to make it in the form of a gigantic A0-sized broadsheet newspaper page.  Coincidentally, it was taken down from the window on the same day that Melbourne's The Age and Sydney's Sydney Morning Herald switched from broadsheet to tabloid format.



There are a few things about this comic that may not make sense to non-Melburnians. Reservoir (the Rezz/Rezza) is a suburb located 12 km north of the CBD. As I have shown in my silly weather maps down the bottom, Melbourne's more fashionable, arty (and expensive) suburbs (Northcote, Fitzroy etc) are all further south, concentrated around the city. In Stella Glorie's story, she writes about moving from Northcote to Reservoir, and feeling "stranded in some foreign outpost". She feels miserable there, but is the suburb really to blame?