You may know Emma Rios best for projects like Pretty Deadly and The Mirror. But next month, Rios will unveil perhaps her most personal and potent work to date, the original graphic novel Anzuelo.
Published by Image Comics, Anzuelo is described as being about “revolting against the notion of violence as the only response to a life without hope.” More specifically, after “the Sea absorbs the world,” three kids are “brought together by the physical and mental changes wrought by the tides and a desire to avoid harming any living creature.”
What follows, then, is this mighty mediation on growing up/maturity, our place in the natural world, and what happens when one day everything changes completely. It’s a side or version of Rios we haven’t seen thus far, and yet a powerful continuation of her raw, expressive stories about people trapped in circumstances beyond their control.
Anzuelo officially hits shelves on November 6. To better understand both the story and where Rios is at personally around the project, we recently fielded her some questions via email. That includes working as both writer and artist, the “transformative” experience Rios underwent, the book’s inspirations/influences, and how she connects with her characters.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
AIPT: How would you describe Anzuelo? What’s the elevator pitch?
Emma Rios: The Sea rises in what it looks like a deliberate attempt to regenerate the entire planet. Three kids wake up at the shore disturbingly touched by it. They hide their panic to help each other and stand their ground of not hurting any living being.
AIPT: Is this the first thing you’ve done as both artist and writer? What was the whole process like — was it hard to balance everything?
ER: I used to do this before starting to work in comics full time. When I did, first I had to learn and adapt to the American market, and then to find a place where I could feel comfortable writing. Image’s stance of freedom in creation helped a lot. I first published I.D. with them in 2016, a short graphic novel where three people consider changing to a different body for several reasons.
The process when working alone is different for me. I plan the story carefully, but nothing’s carved in stone in the hope for the characters to take the lead for a more natural flow. Technically, instead of writing a full script my tools are mostly dialogue and layouts. I focus on the visual narrative all I can, through acting, atmosphere and pacing. This allows me to have images and dialogue deliberately tell different things sometimes, which is fun.
The book was really hard because it took up a big chunk of my life. If anything, I’m really happy to have been able to finish it.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
AIPT: You’d mentioned a kind of transformation you experienced during the creation process for Anzuelo. Can you talk a bit more about that change or shift?
ER: Originally, Anzuelo was going to be a more traditional sea-horror adventure on a boat, but before I could even notice, it had turned into an environmental horror story casually overlapping with another knocking at the door in 2020. Suddenly, the fun of cosmic horror and my long time pessimistic haven felt absurd, as all I could do was look desperately for straws to grasp at, to help both the characters and myself keep going.
I did some life-changing research too. Went sailing several times and got very close to a local NGO dedicated to the study and divulgation of marine mammals and sea turtles in Galicia: CEMMA. I’ve also collaborated with GT Atlantic Orca, who work for the conservation and management of an endangered subpopulation in the Iberian Peninsula, including the delightfully infamous Gladys.
Stylistically, I chose watercolors to make a contrast with the darker themes, and to add a more oneiric feeling that could blur the boundary between the characters’ thoughts and reality. Which is very difficult to control. I experimented a lot, trying different paper and techniques through trial and error. To the point of calling the wasted pages “Living Failures,” mocking the Bloodborne game. By the time I made it to the end I inevitably went into a crisis, unable to look at the first half of the book. You know, everyone enjoys noticing the evolution of an artist, except the artist themselves. I panicked and tried to keep fixing things until my friends, Luis Yang especially, who assisted me side by side cleaning most of the pages, helped me surrender.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
AIPT: How do you feel about Anzuelo in comparison to your other works? I think it’s certainly among one of the most deliberate and powerful things I’ve seen from you.
ER: Thanks, I appreciate that it can be perceived that way. I think the freedom I indulged myself with in Anzuelo, regarding story, style, format and time, was somehow cathartic. So, for better or worse it shows all I’m capable of as a cartoonist at this very moment in my career.
I focused on this story for almost four years, and in addition to requiring a great level of confidence and stamina, it also took a significant amount of savings, even with Image’s generous help financing the project. I really hope Anzuelo can resonate with some people, but the way we’ve trained the market has made it merciless. I can’t help wondering if I would be able to do something like this again.
AIPT: Is there a book, film, comic etc.that specifically influenced Anzuelo?
ER: A lot of stuff. There’s a list at the end of the book and it doesn’t include the half of it. I’m a fan myself and the more I like things the more motivated I am to try to improve.
Actually, there’s a Japanese film I forgot to mention that came out in a conversation I recently had with an old friend about the book — Eureka, directed by Shinji Aoyama. I remember picking that up for the cool cover alone in the early 2000s, and it ended up being a sepia colored three hour film about the three survivors of a brutal hijack of a bus: the driver and two kids. The film focuses on their isolation from the world, and on how the profound relationship that grows from the tragedy moves further than the more traditional bonds we’re told to aim for. It moved me deeply.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
AIPT: This book focuses heavily on the Sea, and how it “reabsorbs” the land. Why the interest in aquatic life, and did you intend to directly reference climate change issues?
ER: I live in a place where the Sea is continuously present, with it being the protagonist of our culture and a way of life. We stare at it, mesmerized yet fearful of its unpredictable behavior, which impacts so many people in so many ways. Anzuelo is a fantasy of submission imagining the Sea screaming back at us in ultrasounds. An answer to seeing it as the pristine surface of a mirror, unaware of how the harm we cause to what lies underneath will eventually make its way across.
The book is a love letter.
AIPT: Do you have a favorite moment, page, and/or panel that you think speaks to the larger story or message in Anzuelo?
ER: Hmm, despite its length, it’s difficult for me not to see it as a whole. Trying not to spoil anything, there’s a conversation between Izma and Amil where they discuss how to address the scarcity of food. Of proteins. In this scene, Izma tells him that putting others before yourself is dangerous, because you become able to do anything.
These two characters are rivals in reliability, if that makes any sense. And both end up hurting themselves.
AIPT: Do you think that Anzuelo is ultimately hopeful or optimistic — can you be when dealing with a dystopia?
ER: I think this is what I wanted to ask myself, and what surprisingly got me to take a fairly humanist stance. I remember when I first sent my editor and dear friend, David Brothers, the draft of the first half, The Sea Adrift. I was so worried about the balance, because the book was feeling so dark to me, but his feedback was something like “WIth the things you like, how can you write something this hopeful?” Maybe I was trying to look for a way out for the kids, or maybe I was just trying to help myself feel more at ease.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
I can’t answer this question. We’ve gone through a pandemic that put the world at stake, and now we’re witnessing the deaths of thousands of children. It’s unbearable. Maybe being hopeful is just our mechanism to disconnect and breathe.
AIPT: Of the three kids featured in the story, is there one you connect or resonate with more? Do you reference real friends/family in making these characters?
ER: I address stories in a very open and playful way, to have all the fun. I roleplay every character I write, even the most heinous ones, and shape them by isolating concepts and questions I’m concerned about. I feel closer to Izma and Nubero because I like how flawed they came to be. Good people obsessing over finding the courage to move on, in an inevitably selfish way.
AIPT: Is there anything else you’d like to say about Anzuelo, your work, comics and art, life in general, etc.?
ER: I think this book tackles themes like compassion and violence from a particular scope that hopefully can trick some people into reflecting on them in an abstract and more candid way. Every time I get overburdened, this is an exercise that helps me put things that are taken for granted, yet feel impossible to swallow, into perspective.
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