"The Sea, secretly more complex than anyone imagined, revolts one day" in the new graphic novel Anzuelo, leading to a apocalypse that's beautiful, deadly, and altogether organic. Brought to life with gorgeous watercolors and powerful prose by Emma Ríos, the stunning eco-horror epic is coming to comic book shops on November 6th and online outlets on November 19th via Image Comics, and Daily Dead had the pleasure of catching up with Emma in a new Q&A feature to discuss her unsettling and gorgeous dystopian tale.
Below, you can read our full Q&A with Emma Ríos as well as preview pages from Anzuelo, and be sure to visit Image Comics to learn more about Emma's new graphic novel!
Thanks for taking the time to answer questions for us, Emma, and congratulations on the upcoming release of Anzuelo! How and when did you initially come up with the idea for this graphic novel?
Emma Ríos: Thank you! It's difficult to know when it all started, but I'd wanted to write about the sea for a long while. The first ideas probably came up when I was writing Mirror with Hwei, as we both talk about the sea a lot. However, originally it was a different book, flirting with a more classic idea of sea-horror on a boat.
I absolutely love your artwork for Anzuelo. Each panel brims with an otherworldly beauty worthy of being framed for further appreciation. How important was it for you to instill this story with a visual style that was both dreamlike and foreboding?
Emma Ríos: It can be challenging to go with Anzuelo’s seemingly innocent abstractions if you don’t willingly disconnect from the daily doses of cynicism we encounter in our everyday lives. So, it was crucial for me to try to create a world, and a tone, to encourage similar thinking, moreover, if I wanted the story to unfold in a limbo where reality and introverted thoughts would eventually merge.
I believe you can trigger some playfulness by carefully working a more visual pacing, and use the environment as a narrative tool to unfold the story—one that keeps little secrets and leaves room to imagine parts of the world, the story, or the emotions of the people it follows.
An epic dystopian story, Anzuelo spans more than 300 pages. How long did it take to complete Anzuelo from its initial inception to its final draft?
Emma Ríos: After Mirror, I did Pretty Deadly: The Rat with Kelly Sue, so it wasn't until 2020 when I started writing and drawing it properly. The process of literally drawing and writing the book once the ideas were set took me basically four years, a few of them, literally while living in a dystopia with the whole world on hiatus.
Anzuelo takes an intriguing look at humankind’s relationship with nature—in particular the sea—through an organic lens. How important was it for you to highlight that palpable relationship between humans and nature through this dystopian story that emphasizes hope over violence and despair?
Emma Ríos: Years ago, while flirting with some pessimistic reads, I found an essay called The Last Messiah by Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe. In it, he reflects on how empathy and awareness leads us to panic, making our human condition vulnerable against nature. I found it beautiful, and poetic, and I went back to it looking for some refinement to write Anzuelo. I think it shows how the text affected me, even if I eventually adopted a more humanist stance eager to believe a little and to find some respite.
But if I’m totally honest I wasn’t conscious of this at all. I remember sending my editor and good friend David Brothers the draft of the first half of the book to read, which I thought had turned too dark. I told him about Zapffe’s essay and how, perhaps, it was prying too much. His feedback was that I was probably reacting against it, because what he was getting from the read was very hopeful. I didn’t expect it, and thanks to how he received it I found myself thinking that perhaps it was the way to go.
I don’t know if this is something that happens to others, but I never have a clue about how people will be reading anything I do. So, I can’t express how much having David helped me dealing with the whole process, and how necessary and overlooked the role of a good editor is. Facing a project growing to this scale is terrifying, he kept my head above water and helped me believe that what I was doing mattered and could resonate with some people.
What was your favorite or most rewarding part of working on Anzuelo?
Emma Ríos: My favorite part is always the inception, when the ideas are already comfortable in your head and you start shaping them, in my case, through layouts and dialogues, mainly how I write when I work alone. When things come to life and the characters start acting freely, leading your hand, it can get quite magical—like seeing it unfold in front of your eyes as a total stranger.
However, the most rewarding aspect is the fact that I was able to complete the entire thing. It turned into a very long and challenging book for me, so I am really glad I was able to finish it.
Were you influenced or inspired by any other eco-horror stories while working on Anzuelo?
Emma Ríos: There are quite a few things, but to mention a couple I could start with Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind, the manga not the film. The book dives into how humans became contaminated to adapt, and are now unable to survive in a land that's regenerating itself. I also love Octavia Butler’s approach to body horror and extinction in Xenogenesis. When I first read it, the idea of humans being kept alive by other sentient beings, mirroring the way we keep our pets from harm, or other animals from disappearing from the Earth at all, blew me away.
What has it been like to work with the team at Image Comics to bring Anzuelo to life?
Emma Ríos: For the past ten years, I’ve been working with Image on my own books. I’m fond of Image policies in regards to creator's rights and creative freedom, and feel at ease working with them.
On a personal level, all the people I worked with deeply cared for the books every time. For Anzuelo in particular, I’m very grateful to Heather Doornink and Wesley Griffith, who have been closely helping me and putting up with my anxiety preparing everything for the book’s release. Also, to Margot Wood, who I keep bothering asking for advice every time something comes up.
Of course, neither this book nor my current career would exist without Eric Stephenson, who has always been there every time I chose to take a chance.
In addition, I would like to mention the printer responsible for Anzuelo, Shanghai Offset Printing, who did an outstanding job reproducing the watercolor and providing amazing materials for the actual book, including a sewn binding strangely comfortable to open and to read. I never imagined such a beautiful result.
Ultimately, what do you hope readers take away from Anzuelo?
Emma Ríos: Thinking of how the book can be received so close to its release is always scary. I’m trying to keep my expectations tempered, and a cool head. It was a very long project that I did while going through some events in my life, that eventually made me hide in it. But obviously none of this has to matter to people.
It would be nice if Anzuelo felt unsettling but also warm. The book is a love letter to the Sea, written in fascination of its beauty and mystery, given my ignorance of all that’s underneath or anticipation of its actions. It’s also a statement of how I don’t believe in violence as a catalyst for change, and find sympathy a better tool to confront extreme situations.
What advice would you give to writers or artists who are just getting started?
Emma Ríos: I think something important to keep in mind is trying not to forget that the reason you do comics is because it’s fun. I could talk for hours about how free comics still are, and how unsurpassable it is as a medium of expression. Still, the amount of work it takes is unbalanced in correlation with the economic profit you get from it. And the struggle is real.
A good tip could be to keep yourself safe, not hesitating on finding less interesting stuff that financially helps in order to attempt riskier, personal stories, more freely.
If you choose a partner to work with, keep in mind that it’ll be a deep longterm relationship, so choose someone you can really trust. And if you go for a creator-owned book, avoid people who won't be willing to share the work on equal terms. I’d also recommend asking for contracts and, if possible, hiring an attorney to help.
With Anzuelo coming to comic book shops on November 6th and bookstores and online outlets on November 19th, do you have any other projects coming up that you can tease?
Emma Ríos: I’m back to working with Kelly Sue again on Pretty Deadly. We have two arcs left, the first one set in the moment the Vikings reach the American coast. It’s focused on Alice alone with no other main characters from the series at play. And the last one goes back to our regular timeline and will be set in the Great Depression. It’s exciting stuff.
Thank you very much for your time, Emma!
Emma Ríos: Thanks so much for having me and for reading the book!
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Press Release: Eisner Award winning cartoonist Emma Ríos (Pretty Deadly, Mirror, I.D.) will both write and draw the upcoming, original graphic novel, ANZUELO. A gorgeous and brutal story that revolts against the notion of violence as the only response to a life without hope, this beautiful, feast-for-the-eyes standalone story is set to hit shelves this Fall from Image Comics.
In ANZUELO, the Sea, secretly more complex than anyone imagined, revolts one day. The horizon folds as the Sea absorbs the world and transforms everything that's been pulled inside it. Three kids find themselves unmoored and lost, but brought together by the physical and mental changes wrought by the tides and a desire to avoid harming any living creature.
"l wanted to write the Sea under my skin and I'm fortunate to become someone else in the process,” said cartoonist Emma Ríos.
ANZUELO is a breathtaking, Dystopian story with an expansive scope and style perfect for fans of organic universes like Darcy Van Poelgeest and Ian Bertram Little Bird and Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon’s Daytripper.
Here’s what people are saying about ANZUELO…
"Emma is a master of her craft, an absolute beast of an artist with the delicate touch of a poet."—E.M. Carroll, Through the Woods, A Guest in the House
"Echoing the transformative odysseys of Octavia Butler and the speculative resilience of Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, Emma Ríos’s Anzuelo is a story of survival, connection, and evolution that resonates with the depth and mystery of the ocean." —Kelly Sue DeConnick, Bitch Planet
"Anzuelo beckons us on a walkabout and asks us to listen to the sea and know Earth’s creatures as our collaborators in what is to come. You are in good hands with master storyteller Emma Ríos. It’s a beautiful ride. A must-have graphic novel." —Ann Nocenti, Daredevil, The Seeds
The ANZUELO original graphic novel hardcover (ISBN: 979-8368809267, Lunar Code 0924IM243) will be available at local comic book shops on Wednesday, November 6 and independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Indigo, and Waterstones on Tuesday, November 19.
ANZUELO will also be available across many digital platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Play.
About the creator
Emma Ríos is an Eisner Award winner, Spanish cartoonist and editor known for her bestselling work and breakout hit Pretty Deadly (co-created with the New York Times bestselling writer Kelly Sue DeConnick) and other critically acclaimed books like her graphic novel I.D. and her other series Mirror (co created with Malaysian artist Hwei Lim) that put her on the map as one to watch. All of them published by Image Comics. She has also collaborated with other publishers Marvel, DC and Boom! in several titles, and as illustrator for clients such as Sony Interactive Entertainment, PRADA, Ardbeg and Wizard of the Coast.
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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