This is a fluke that could win a world championship. We found out thanks to a report in the The Hollywood Reporter (which we’re seeing more and more of in our blog).
In this report, Graeme McMillan tells us about a new digital comic called Firebrand: The Initiation of Natali Presano. It’s a series we’ve started enjoying thanks to a collaboration between Legendary Entertainment in the US and LINE Webtoon in Korea.
An image from Firebrand, the comic series that talks about the adventures of a ‘sorgina’ raised in the Basque Country and living in Seattle
McMillan interviews the two writers, Jessica Chobot and Erika Lewis, in which they discuss their protagonist, Natali Presano, a young sorgin (basque wich) who lives in Seattle, but who was raised by an aunt in the Basque Country.
It was Erika Lewis, who was interested in Basque mythology, who introduced this relationship between a 21st century comic and the Basque legends that are lost in the mists of time.
To give their character life, they turned to a Mexican artist who specializes in comics, Claudia Aguirre. It’s interesting to us to see how she says she isn’t “Spanish” but that she “understands Spanish energy”. Thanks to her roots, she should understand the energy coming from Basque (not Spanish) myths better than anyone, given that, as her surname indicates, she’s of Basque lineage.
Basque mythology has nothing to do with “Spanish mythology” or “French mythology”, if such things even exist, as those would be the ones that would try to make us believe in the existence of these realities from times before the 19th century. But the simple fact is that Basque mythology (the way primitive Basques had of explaining the world around them) existed thousands of years before France or Spain were political realities.
We’ll leave you with the interview in The Hollywood Reporter, a link to the Korean website that’s offering the first three issues of this series that will officially debut on January 27, 2017, and a video presentation of the comic.
The Hollywood Reporter – 1/12/2016 – USA
Legendary, LINE Webtoon Partner For ‘Firebrand’ And More Digital Comics (Exclusive)
s of today, Seattle just became a little bit more magical. That’s because of the arrival in the city of Natali Presano, the lead character of Firebrand: The Initiation of Natali Presano, a new digital comic series centering on witchcraft both modern and ancient. Firebrand tells the story of the eponymous Natali Presano, a witch who was abandoned by her human father and raised by her aunt in the Basque region of Spain after the tragic death of her mother; returning to Seattle in her 20s, she finds herself caught between the world of modern society and an ancient magical world that includes a threat to humanity itself.
Natali Presano never fit into her father’s perfectly human world: politically ambitious, he turned his back on her just when she needed him most. Losing her mother to tragedy as a young child, Natali fled the safety of home into the arms of her aunt Selena, the mysterious guardian of a magical order waging a centuries-old war for survival in the mountains of Spain.
