Something about the art and overall delivery of Heavy, Trevor Fernandes-Lewkowicz‘s brand-new horror comic, is very alluring; characters go through emotional turmoil, but you can’t look away. It turns anxiety and grief into a supernatural twist, but never shies away from those emotions.
Heavy #2 ends <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thehelix/heavy/description” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>on Kickstarter November 19th, and The Beat spoke with Fernandes-Lenkiewicz about the work that went into visually capturing the intense emotional struggles of this new story and how it differs from his previous title, Rise.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Perez: What is that like as an independent creator? I guess the best comparison I can think of is being on tour with a band.
Trevor Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: It can be hectic. It’s also one of the coolest parts about this job when I think back to what I was doing before comics. I was studying for a molecular biology degree and interning in labs, and that lifestyle isn’t very conducive to seeing the world; and, very fortunately, as chaotic and nuts and insecure as it is, it’s a real privilege.
I get to meet a lot of different types of people. I get to experience a lot of different cultures, whether that’s international or subcultures across our own country. It can be intense, but it really is something that I view as a privilege.
Perez: Is it difficult to juggle that with all your creative work, like, getting that work done also on the road?Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: I felt like for a time I had really become good about getting work done during the commute. Like I figured out how to flip the switch at airports and on the plane to get stuff done, but between working a full-time job and being not only the creative engine behind my work, but also the entire business side of things, it can get a bit overwhelming.
Perez: I wanted to ask you about Heavy. I would say it has to do with a supernatural approach to emotional breaking points or crisis. Is that how you would explain it?Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: Horror always felt like a really poignant way to attack the mental and emotional contents of the story and bring into the visual department a deeper metaphor for the internal struggle going on inside of the cast of characters, and just to represent that sort of emotional pain, either sort of physically or, again, strictly visually,
I think that’s super fascinating to me, and that’s what drew me to Heavy and what it is today.
Perez: How did the story come about?Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: Genre, to me, has always been a tool to tell a specific kind of story, and Rise, at its core, was me wanting to explore the male ego, and I felt the idea of being a Superman and being pedestalized and being constantly asked that just felt like it needed to be a superhero story.
It felt like that was the space where I could really poke and prod at some of the core elements of that concept. I wanted to tell a story about guilt. I wanted to tell a story about the shame that follows us around our entire lives and slowly decomposes us in one way or another.
Heavy just needed to be horror. I don’t see another way to tell this story because it’s so emotionally raw. As much as every piece in my catalog is personal, because I don’t really get out of bed for an impersonal story, I feel like I’m exposing myself the most as a person in this one. As for the characters and the struggles they’re going through, even some of the qualities I’ve attributed to several cast members feel very in keeping with my own tendencies, and they’re not always pretty qualities.
And that was one of the things that I wanted to lead with going into the book, especially discussing it with my collaborator Ryan Best, and how we were visually going to display this because this book isn’t beautiful in the way that Rise is beautiful.
Rise is beautiful because it brings beauty to the personal element.Heavy is beautiful because of its texture and the honesty behind personhood, and some of the struggles I think a lot of people will relate to. Horror, to me, is the friction between two or more really deep textures of a story, and it’s a raw exposure of what lies underneath or what causes that texture.
Perez: How is the process of working with your collaborator with that?
Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: It’s been different, but the creative team on Heavy is the same creative team on Rise, and the books look nothing alike, and that was very much by intention. We spent a lot of time trying to break certain habits, especially because we’re publishing Rise and Heavy at the same time. It’s been a lot of conscious effort and a lot of retooling. A lot of really locking in on what is going to separate the two books and how those convey the different emotional linchpins that separate these two stories.
Rise is about touch, and it’s about the line and what that does to the form. Still, Heavy is so much more about the silhouette and the fringes of the silhouette, and sort of that dynamisms in a totally different fashion. It’s beautiful because, in many ways, these characters are not the prettiest people aesthetically; they are meant to be real people in many ways, and they’re put in a horrific supernatural environment.
I saw every character in Rise, for the most part, as good-looking and traditionally attractive, and that isn’t necessarily the case in Heavy. Heavy peels away the polish of life, like with Atlas’ design.
It took some serious retooling because the first time Ryan drew him, he looked like a pretty man, but Atlas is beautiful because of the journey we’re going to take him on; on the outside, he’s fairly malnourished. He’s been in a couple of fights; he’s burnt himself working in kitchens.
He’s got scars, and I find something deeply beautiful about that, even if the aesthetic might say otherwise to the masses.
Perez: What can you tell me about working with that collaborator? How about the rest of the team?
Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: Yeah, so for both Rise and Heavy, I’m working with the incredibly talented Ryan Best. He’s doing pencils, inks, colors, just absolutely knocking them out of the park. It’s two very different art styles, and we didn’t want anyone to know it was the same team. For letters and design, we’ve got Matias Zanetti, an absolute gem, and I’m really hoping these books help more people know his name and what to look out for.
At the core, these stories are always very personal; I invest a lot of myself- just in terms of my time, my energy, my money- into making these things. Readers can look forward to something character-driven and emotionally charged. I think that there’s something for anybody, any discerning person who wants to feel seen in some way.
Perez: It’s almost like when the director doesn’t pan away from the scene and lets you simmer in it.
Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: Yeah, that was such a big consideration for this book, so much of the storytelling is what is behind what you would expect, not necessarily what is on the forefront, but in what we are forcing people to simmer on. I wanted this book to slow things down and focus more on these little moment-to-moment expressions, because I feel that’s where real human pain and expression live. We’re doing it in a heightened environment, but I felt like that was the truest way to tackle the themes of this story, which means so much to me.
Perez: Do you want to give me a little tease of what readers will be going through in issue #2 of Heavy?Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: This next one is very much pulling apart his past, a tender piece by tender piece. Issue one is really an open and environmental establishment and presentation of questions.
And here’s where we begin to kind of open up some of the core wounds of Atlas and expose why he is where he is, what his relationship was really like with the brother that he abandoned, and why this confrontation with the very idea of his little brother is so painful for him. We start hinting at more of the supernatural element behind the story and how it interacts with the emotional core of what will ultimately become Atlas’s journey.
Perez: Do you wanna talk about what’s going on in Rise as well?
Fernandes-Lenkiewicz:Rise‘s 5th issue is coming out in the next month. It explores performative masculinity and the perils of the male ego through a man who is supposed to be perfect. The thing I always say about this book is that what makes it special is that it’s not so much interested in saving the world as it is in surviving the performance of it all and sort of the corrosive burden of being prescribed a life, and how that misplaced identity is ultimately a detriment to your opportunity to be the best version of yourself.
We’re now on the back end of Rise; it’ll cap at 6 issues, but some of the mistakes our lead character has made stem from ego and the way his powers work, because they scale with spikes of dopamine.
So certain things that make him feel good and therefore make him powerful are not always good. That has created turmoil in his life and in his marriage, and it’s also put him in a position where he’s overextended and being weaponized politically. This person can’t really punch his way out of it. He can’t lift the problem. He’s got to kind of barrel into it emotionally.
Perez: Where can people find them, both Rise and Heavy?
Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: Yeah, always on my website, www.pocketwatchpress.net, but we’ve got a Kickstarter that’s gonna be ending November 19th for Heavy # 2, where you can very easily catch up and grab issue one with it.
You can even grab copies of Rise in the add-on menu or through a couple of different bundles. Flip through a bunch of variant covers; we do about 4 per book. You’ve got some to choose from, but I really try not to put too much weight into the variant cover game. I think it gets overbaked and dilutes the cover’s principle, which, for me, is the beginning of the storytelling.
Perez: Where else can people find you? Are you gonna be doing any more conventions?Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: My last convention of the year is gonna be Thought Bubble, out in Harrogate in the UK, and I’ve got a signing coming up on November 7th at Central Comics in Paris, which I’m super excited for, and then trying to work something out potentially in Scotland, but we’ll see where that goes.
I’m actually going to pump the brakes on travel next year, and I’m really scaling back because I want to spend more time writing and creating. Over the last year, it’s really taken a backseat, and it just doesn’t feel right. That’s why I got into this business, and next year I’ll be traveling a lot less.
Perez: Will you still be doing the social media stuff?Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: You can track me down on Instagram at Pocket Watch Press, and then I think my TikTok is tfl_writes. Pocket Watch Press is my independent publishing label for most things, and I don’t publish anybody else. It’s literally just a home for my comic book work, and you can also check me out on Substack, where I have a newsletter every two weeks or so.
I’ll highlight certain conversations in the industry, get into the weeds on something I’ve been thinking about as it relates to the career or the craft, or even recount an experience on tour. So you can see a peeled-back look at what life is like doing comics at a professional level, and we do giveaways. It’s pocketwatchpress.substack.com.
Perez: Is there anything else you wanted to add?
Fernandes-Lenkiewicz: I would definitely implore anybody who’s giving this a read to check out my stuff. I can always promise I’ve got great taste in artists and I’ve really surrounded myself with some of the best working talent in the industry. So, at bare minimum, it’s a visual feast, but also stuff that is cared for and is emotionally designed, and I think ultimately an expression of what it’s meant for me to be human.
And so whether or not somebody can really have a direct relationship with it in that way remains to be seen, but I feel there are little nuggets for everybody who is in a position and wants to be affected by something. So I hope y’all check it out.
