"Anzuelo" is a love letter to the Sea.
A guest post by Emma Ríos
Hello, Emma here. Most of you know me from PRETTY DEADLY.
My new graphic novel, Anzuelo, is on sale from Image Comics next month and Kelly Sue has invited me here to tell you a little about it. I'll be heading to Thought Bubble after it's released.
Anzuelo is a love letter to the Sea. Toxic love born out of mesmerizing fear.
Originally, it was a classic sea-horror story on a boat, with a focus on the crew. While looking to understand how those tight spaces—12 people in a 29 meter long schooner—worked, I ended up sailing several times. The intimacy and deep sense of solitude in open waters were unexpected and fascinating.
I know a lot of people whose families were fishers or worked on boats. It wasn’t my case, but my grandad always dreamed of having a boat. He would take me fishing and had me hooking the bait every time. I was six and didn’t have deep thoughts about it, but the scene is a blurry reflection. I still remember the bait on my fingers and nails. He and his friend would leave me, and a child I vaguely remember, playing alone for hours on a batea, a traditional, mussel-farming, flat-bottomed floating craft here, so we wouldn’t scare the fish. We played on the wooden structure, totally unafraid. Returning home, they would pick small shrimps from the beach and eat them alive too.
Much like most places that depend on the Sea for a living, there’s a sense here of living in a constant, yet familiar, transgression.
A Galician writer I like called Álvaro Cunqueiro, in his book Fábulas y leyendas de la mar (Fables and legends from the Sea) tells stories of local beliefs and creatures. One of them focuses on Las Bestias Plañideras (professional crier beasts), creatures that actually inspired the Criers in the book. These beasts, though horned like mine, are small. The water flowing from their horns is said to be the sea’s own tears—since she cannot cry for the lives she takes in unintentional violent outbursts.
I started thinking in these terms of kindness and remorse to build the whole story. On how the Sea cannot choose to contain her spite, but how we humans actually do.
Anzuelo will be available at local comic shops on Wednesday, November 6 and independent stores etc.... on Tuesday, November 19. It will also be available on several digital platforms.
If you want to know more about it, here is a teaser I put together with Luis Yang and video-game composer Fingerspit, which works like an anime opening.
It's very analogic, hand-animated in watercolors. Crazy work if you ask me. Anime Magazine covered a bit of the BTS here:
Here's is also the info summary for the book:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Anzuelo/Emma-Rios/9798368809267
Thanks so much for reading, and infinite thanks to Kelly Sue and Matt for letting me take over this wonderful place, and for being my comics family for so long.
Kel and I are back to Pretty Deadly so we will eventually show you some interesting stuff.
Take care and may the wind always be at your back.
Emma Ríos
Hey! You read all the way to the bottom — you get a treat. Here’s an Emma Ríos sketch for the next volume of PRETTY DEADLY.
Your work looks dreamfully wonderful
This looks incredible. Wow. Just wow.