A preview of Dry Spell's front cover.

Writer and artist Ken Krekeler’s second graphic novel (read our interview about his first) begins by reaching a seemingly friendly hand to the reader. It’s easy to identify with protagonist Tom Ferris when we first meet him. We recognize the resigned look in his eyes, his middle class ennui. We care because this specimen of haunted mundanity could so easily be us.

We even laugh a little bit when he says that squeaky clean good guy Apollo “bugs” him. In Tom’s world, superheroes are part of everyday life. Like his namesake, Apollo perches atop this particular pantheon and is worshipped as a god.

So we take the hand offered us, perhaps expecting an uplifting story about a man overcoming the personal and creative dry spell implied in the title. But we don’t see the darkness ahead. We don’t expect the landmines hidden along the road.

“Once I was an artist,” Tom narrates. “I had talent. … But no one understood me. No one understood, and so I was asked to stop.” Dry Spell is the story of a man who has forgotten himself, who has willfully repressed what he is by imprisoning it in some cobwebbed corner of his mind.

We want Tom to unchain himself, or so we think. It’s only when the shackles begin to loosen that we realize, to our horror, that a monster is being unleashed.

Tom is indeed an artist, but his medium is death. We discover that he was once the Black Baron, one of the most sadistic villains in recent memory.

Krekeler paces the story so that the monster inside seems seep out slowly, at first. There’s a creepy encounter with a girl in an alleyway, then a sex scene tinged with sadomasochism. But it’s not until the initial murder of an innocent that the Black Baron seems to truly awaken. After this point, Krekeler no longer waits for us to settle into one level of discomfort before introducing a new one.

Preview of one of the inside pages.

It’s during this fever pitch that the scales between liking and loathing this story may tip for some readers. It’s where it tipped for me. Full disclosure: I am an editor of Dry Spelland I disliked it at first. I knew it wasn’t because of the writing, which was sharp, but because I had let it push the exact buttons Ken Krekeler had intended to push.

This is not a story that cares if you like it. It’s a story that wants to make you recoil inside, and, in so doing, examine the very things that repel you.

Dry Spell is, above all, a tale of discomfort. There is no moral center to hold on to, besides the somewhat wan mantra, “Be yourself.” In the last scene, even good and evil are revealed to be empty concepts.

Those looking for easy resolutions will not find it in Dry Spell. There is no punishment for the bad guy or ultimate triumphs for the good. We’re only left with a squirming feeling in our belly at the end of this journey, doubting if good and evil even exist, and wondering at the savage potential within.

Learn more about Dry Spell at its website or Facebook page.

Indie goes mainstream?

Underground culture stalwart Broken Pencil just released its 49th issue. Highlights include a well-researched article by Ryan Bigge on the mainstreaming of the indie aesthetic.

In the conclusion to Slanted and Enchanted, author Kaya Oakes writes that “indie is simultaneously reaching a stage of oversaturation and corporatization, and it’s debatable whether we should just stop using the term ‘indie’ altogether.”

If you sub “indie” for “alternative” and ironic mustaches for grunge, I’m pretty sure we’ve heard this argument before. Recognizing this, Bigge goes on to explore the current obsession with so-called “authenticity.” (“Imperfect is the new desirable!”)

The Bizarro literary subculture–what 3AM Magazine calls “the ultimate in outsider lit”–recognized the best of their genre at the Third Annual Wonderland Book Awards Dinner. The winner of the Best Bizarro Collection for 2009 was Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars by Cody Goodfellow. Former Xenith contributor Carlton Mellick III won Best Bizarro Novel for Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland. See the full list of nominees at Eraserhead Press.

Bizarro Starter Kit from Eraserhead Press

For those unfamiliar with Bizarro, the self-proclaimed “genre of the weird,” Eraserhead has compiled a third Bizarro Starter Kit. Featuring novellas and short stories from ten top Bizarro authors, the Kit is a great introduction to an intriguing branch of cult literature.

If you’re looking to explore other corners of underground lit, Dustbooks recently published The International Directory of Little Magazines & Small Presses 2010-11. This 46th (!) annual edition “lists almost 4,000 book and magazine publishers of literary, avant garde, cutting-edge contemporary, left wing, right wing” fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art and more.

We conclude our underground news round-up with a couple of events. Portlanders without a place to go today are welcome at Microcosm Publishing’s “Pol Pot Luck” genocide-themed Thanksgiving Party. Attendees are encouraged to “bring a pot luck dish and your appetite (for destruction).”

If you’re in the Toronto area on Saturday, November 27, humor/video collective Family Contact will be screening the season one finale of their webseries Living with Friends at Cinecycle. The event also includes live music, stand-up comedy and book readings. View the trailer for Living With Friends below.

This week, a single piece. One that can stand alone in the spotlight:

Snow by Kjralon

Your voice is a warm blanket.
It slips over arms, toes, my turnings,
its red delicate sound smoothing my hair,
soothing this white noise

Let’s get right down to it. Here are the selected pieces from our community for the week ending May 1, 2010:

WRITING SPOTLIGHT

POETRY
Two poems: “Meat” and “Yes” by Woetra
“I saw a human life fill a bag, it splashed
upturned in the dirt, concentric ripples of ash
like an ocean dropped in a puddle,
and even the earth was repulsed.”

PROSE
The Produce Aisle by wickedwitch
This witty piece is one of those rare things on Xenith–a play. “There’s such a huge sea of people, and sometimes I get scared, like I’m going to be the only one left unpaired, the only person without a bridge partner, that I’m going to get lost, just one card in an identical pack that goes on and on and on. Sometimes I get so lonely I could gnaw my arm off…”

BLOGS
your arm! your arm, your arm: your arm. by wickedwitch
“at the same time almost, like some freakish overlapping backwards proof of the inexistence of your ruin, something good happens. what the fuck, universe, you wonder, as you watch sexy othello stab himself in the belly and you solidly, obviously rub elbows with the only other person in the room, someone who inexplicably wants to be there with you (you! you? you.)”

Xenith has a dual nature: the literary magazine is our public persona, while the community is our more introverted heart. All week long, you read the magazine’s latest content, but what of our community? The forums, the blogs, the conversation, the writing workshop? If you’re missing that, you’re missing fully half of what we’re about. These new weekly notes are a glimpse into the best of our community. Every week, we’ll spotlight the strongest poetry and prose, the best blog posts and our most stimulating conversations. Consider it a newsletter, of sorts.

Better yet, consider it an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world…

CONVERSATION SPOTLIGHT
What’s the message behind your writing?
Entertainment? Moral message? Encapsulating the contemporary Zeitgeist? In this roundtable, Xenith members talk about what drives their writing. From member Tantra Bensko: “I feel people are waking up as a whole to a lot of illusions they’ve been under before, so writing fiction that mimics that in form, and promotes it to go further, is good. And fiction that tackles the topics that haven’t been allowed to be written about seriously before, other than in Sci Fi, pretending it’s the future, help that along. So, there is a purpose to it, both social and spiritual, for me.”

WRITING SPOTLIGHT

POETRY
One Night Stood by Owen
“And now, we fall like dandelion
clocks in summer, reversed and out of form -
caught by winds of image, hoping
to indulge in one more touch
of collision’s sweetened kiss.”

I believe in Jesus and Love by wickedwitch
“Told you not to believe in art or socrates,
Told you to pull the blinds and hold hands with me,
No love, no jesus, just flesh and neurons firing,
Wrote down the artsiest, nothingest things you told me,
Because all you told me was nothing”

Sex So Cheap It’s Worth It by SparkInTheDark7
“Fuckpoemcheck–
the way he dismissed his women.
Bukowski might’ve jerked off for life,
if he hadn’t needed muses;
and the muse’s role is masturbation.”

PROSE
lessons from history by hevc
This experimental piece, from an Oxford University Classics undergraduate, imagines ancient historical figures doing mundane things in the modern world while reminiscing about times past. Here, the author and Cicero are baking brownies. “We, the figures of history, have forgotten our motivations and intentions after thousands of years of silent death. You’ve kept us alive and waiting, debating and impotently immortal.”

lessons from history ii by hevc
“Augustus and I sat together and watched the evening news. The flat was hot and sticky. They had a fan going in the background, whirling and clicking as it moved from side to side, perpetually saying, ‘no’, ‘no’, ‘no’. Cicero didn’t care for the political commentary much. “‘It’s just not as much fun when you’re left outside.’”

Welcome Atomic Soldiers by system_effect
“They talk about the bomb. Big, they say. Bigger than the ones that ended the war. They squirm in anticipation. The guests are given instructions on the proper procedure. In just a minute now, they will be instructed to look away. It is very important they do not look directly at the blast. Not initially.”

BLOGS
Our Modern Lives, I by hevc
“Sometimes while I am thinking about the future and how good it will be I wonder whether I spend my time like a man waiting for a bus – always peering down the road in attentive expectation for the vehicle with his number on it, creating a vacuum of experience that extends only from himself to the invisible bus in question; in short, inattentive to all else.”

how to focus by hevc
“Some days you can’t be productive. I’m telling you this now in case you think it’s just an excuse that you personally tell yourself, one which isn’t really valid. It is valid. There are days when focus can’t be manufactured, days when tasks are not completed, and therefore days where a sense of satisfaction may be lacking.”

dealing with disarray (or, meditations on mayhem) by hevc
Oxford student Hannah is stranded in California thanks to the volcano that recently erupted in Iceland, closing down Europe’s air space. Here, she muses on dealing with unpredictable events and their fallout. “Things really aren’t concrete at all, but given the appearance of being so simply because statistically they have been a certain way during my experience of them.”

Most Xenith readers have at least a passing familiarity with artist and writer Ken Krekeler through his webcomic My Nemesis. My Nemesis has been on hiatus for more than a year, however, and during that time Mr. Krekeler has been working a massive undertaking–the creation of a graphic novel called The Colodin Project tentatively scheduled to be published later this summer.

In this interview, Ken talks with us about the creative evolution of The Colodin Project, writing and his artistic inspirations.

The Colodin Project has existed in some form or another since you were a teenager. You’ve referred to it as your “magnum opus” in the past. Talk a little about its background and evolution. What was the original spark that seeded this idea in your mind and how has it changed over the years? I am especially interested on how this latest incarnation came to be. After ten years, what finally brought you to the point where the story just began to flow?

I’ve been into comics and sci-fi stuff since I was a kid. There was no single origin point for The Colodin Project; the story and characters evolved over time as I got older. But the first time I started writing notes for the plot was on a cruise ship. I was fourteen, stuck alone in my cabin for some reason, watching terrible movies on television, when I suddenly decided I was tired of following other people’s stories, and that I would invent my own. So I drew some designs, some of which made it, some that did not; and that was how it began.

The story has never “flowed.” It has undergone too many overhauls to recount. But there is a difference between a single story, with a beginning, middle and end… and an epic, which is made up of smaller, shorter stories. Over time, I’d gone over the plot, breaking it down, breaking it down, until I felt like things were right. Until the events made sense, the characters made sense, their choices made sense. But even after I’d gotten to that point, even after I liked what I had, it still felt contrived somehow. So I got the idea to create an objective character, a kind of third party, which evolved into Steven Richards, private investigator.

You are that rare breed of comic creator that is both writer and artist. Do you consider yourself more a writer or an artist or some indivisible fusion of the two? How does one skill set influence the other?

I consider myself a hybrid of the two, although it’s less common to be recognized for my writing, so I tend to value that side a little more. With comics, almost everybody sees the art first. Because if it LOOKS professional, it probably is. You flip through the pages, you skim, and if it seems up to par, you’ll give the first few lines a once-over to make sure there aren’t any typos. And then you buy it. Maybe.

But the writing always comes first. There’s a script. There are revisions. There’s editing. There’s logistical thinking. It’s only after I’m happy with a script that I move onto the thumbnail stage.

I try not to let my art be determined by my writing. That is to say, if I have an idea for a script in which a giant fish monster with robot legs attacks a fairy princess in an underwater battle, I won’t worry about how difficult that battle will be to illustrate. If the story works, then I move on to the next phase, crossing any future bridges when I come to them.

Let’s talk about your artistic process. You use photographs of live models and locations as the basis for your characters and scenery. How is this advantageous to your work and what happens next? You take it to Illustrator? Paint it in Photoshop?

I use Photoshop. Models are a vital part of my process now. With live models, I don’t have to worry about consistency, proportion, or extreme angles; all the information is already there. In addition, my photo shoots are usually pretty fun to do. My models are all friends and family, and working together on a project like this is very enlightening to the relationship.

Speaking of the artistic side of Colodin, your visual style is very cinematic. What media–movies, comic books, whatever–have particularly influenced that style and why? Returning to your writerly side, what authors, if any, have influenced your narrative style?

I think of comics as a written form of film. I choose my shots the same way a director would choose his angles with a camera. This isn’t as common as you might think. Many artists, especially up-and-comers, try and add as much drama to every panel as possible. You’ll have a scene where two people are drinking a cup of coffee, chatting about the weather, and you’ll have these extreme bird’s eye view of a character, or they’ll be popping out of the panels. This doesn’t make sense to me. It comes off corny and over-the-top. Save dramatic shots for dramatic scenes; use simple shots for simple ones.

Alan Moore is a big influence. If you look at his work (From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), you’ll notice his illustrators keep the panel layouts static, the shots straight-on, like storyboards rather than comic books. For dialogue, I draw a lot from Brian Michael Bendis (Ultimate Spider-Man, Powers), who uses very realistic characters saying very realistic things. They don’t react with blatant exposition; they react the way a person would.

You began releasing The Colodin Project as 21(?) individual issues, but now you are, instead, releasing the first five chapters as a trade paperback. Why the change?

Single issues of independent books like mine are on their way out. Graphic novels are on the rise. You see, pretty much all comic books are distributed through Diamond Distribution. Everything from Superman to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is listed in a catalog called Diamond Previews. If you don’t meet their minimum order requirements, you get cut from the catalog, and that’s it for your book.

Comic book readers know this. Even if they like your first couple of issues, even if it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever read, they’re well aware it’s very likely they’ll never get to read the end of your story. So now, with the decline of the economy, with the slow death of print coming to an end, it’s easier for people to get on board with completed stories like Watchmen. Even the big time guys, Marvel and DC, have begun periodically taking each story arc from their mainstream books and re-publishing them as graphic novels. And sales on the novels are good.

Learn more and read The Colodin Project‘s entire first volume for free at its website.

I have decided that it is time for me to move on from Xenith, in a lot of ways, by making a change in my relationship to it.

Patrick will be taking on my most visible tasks–including running the forums and assuming the role of Editor of Xenith’s ‘zine issues. All submissions to the magazine will now go to him, at a brand-new e-mail address: submissions@xenith.net. The 200 or so submissions I’ve received since the debut of Issue #43 will be whittled into one final issue that I’ll release in December. Patrick’s first issue – #45 – will be in 2009.

Scott will be transitioning into my behind-the-scenes technical role with the upcoming release of Invision 3.0.

In Xenith’s imaginary masthead, my new title would perhaps be “Publisher.” I’m relinquishing my traditional powers here at Xenith in order to turn my attention to new things–some personal projects, some Xenith related.

Xenith has been a lot of work for a lot of years, and I have come to see that change and expansion is the only way to keep it alive. I hope this move will benefit us all.

Xenith’s first issue in over four years serves as both a return to form and the harbinger of a new era. Accordingly, several pieces in this issue deal with loss, transformation and new beginnings. We’ve collected writing from some of our finest authors and present them here, to you, as an introduction to that inimitable Xenith style.

Four years will change a place, obviously, and it has certainly changed us. While we may not have been putting out issues, we have managed to start a few interesting ventures.

Last summer handful of us went on an adventure across the American southwest and to Burning Man, earning us the title of Dustiest Literary Magazine Ever. We’re heading back to Black Rock City this summer to debut a print anthology of our best writing.

The anthology is not our only collaborative venture, though. A lone and humble notebook has been criss-crossing the continent (and the Atlantic) since early this year. Participants in this experiment in mail art have been writing, drawing, adding photos and other objects into the notebook before shipping it off to the next person on the list.

So we’ve been busy, but we’ve also been insular and quiet and now we’re reaching out to the rest of the world.

Hello, our name is Xenith and we’re very pleased to meet you.
Welcome (back).

Issue #43