Our hero, John Blacksad, a black cat with a human body, is a freelance detective in a trench coat, and there are also representatives of the Beat Generation in the comic book, the new volumes of which have been published. As animals, of course.
John Blacksad is like a charismatic old friend, it's always a pleasure to see him again and hear about his adventures.
A summary for those who haven't met him yet: Our hero, John Blacksad, a white-nosed black cat with a human body, is a freelance detective and likes to wear a trench coat, like almost every fictional hero detective. The world of Blacksad consists of anthropomorphic creatures like him. His best friends are a police commissioner (Smirnov) a German shepherd and a ferret (Weekly) who works as an investigative journalist. John Blacksad, who was expelled from school while studying history at the university, is a stylishly dressed, curious cat, a playful and friendly person next to his friends, but in the face of injustice and injustice, he turns into a panther and can be predatory and cruel. But sometimes he gets beaten while trying to do good.
Blacksad is a noir comic series created by Spanish authors Juan Díaz Canales (writer) and Juanjo Guarnido (artist), and published by French publisher Dargaud in album format. Though both authors are Spanish, their main target audience for Blacksad is the French market and thus they publish all Blacksad volumes in French first; the Spanish edition usually follows about one month later.
BLACKSAD, THE WORK OF SPANISH AUTHOR JUAN DIAZ CANALES AND illustrator JUANJO GUARNIDO, takes place in a world very similar to ours in the 1950s. John Blacksad is a figure inspired partly by the detective named Philip Marlowe, who appears in many of Raymond Chandler's novels, and partly by the character Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon.
The writer and illustrator are Spanish, but they work for the French market. Blacksad was published first in French by the legendary Dargaud Publishing, which is also the publisher of Tintin and Asterix, and then translated into 27 languages.
Blacksad is a comic book compatible with its name (black sadness), and it also carries the characteristics of the film noir movement (pessimism, corrupt characters, intrigues, disappointment), as it is called in cinema art.
The first volume, Quelque part entre les ombres (literally Somewhere between the Shadows, but simply called Blacksad in the US), was published in November 2000. The second volume, Arctic-Nation, was published in 2003 and the third, Âme Rouge (Red Soul), was published in 2005. An English translation of the third volume was delayed due to the bankruptcy of its North American publisher, iBooks. In 2010, Dark Horse Comics published all three translated volumes as one volume. The publication of this 184-page collection also coincided with the European release of the series' fourth installment, L'Enfer, le silence (literally The Hell, the silence), in September 2010. In 2014, a fifth installment of the series, Amarillo, was released in various translations.
We are familiar with almost everything because of La Fontaine's tales and movies. But this world is not for children. A world where adults barely survive. In this world where arrogant and ambitious "creatures", anger, selfishness, and darkness rule, there are also those who believe that there is justice, goodness, and courage, and at least there are those who find it honorable to fight for this cause, even if their numbers are small.
John Blacksad is a conscientious detective. At one point in the first adventure, Somewhere Among the Shadows, after the death of his ex-lover, he goes after the incident even though it was not his duty and says: "The culprit of two murders was hiding outside. He killed both a woman and my memories."
There are references to the cultural life of the 50s, jazz music, painting, cinema, and theater in the stories. Amarillo, the name of a city in Texas where part of the adventure takes place, also means "yellow" in Spanish. The shots of John Blacksad riding a motorcycle were inspired by the movie The Wild One (1953), starring Marlon Brando.
The lines are so strong, that Blacksad is taken just to see these extraordinary personalities; Looking at character drawings is an interesting experience in itself. What is most surprising to me is that nothing seems foreign to me while reading, I am still aware that I am in a strange world somewhere, but the drawings are so convincing that I don't find it strange at all, as if I had seen these characters all my life. The reason is simple: Good or bad, all heroes are just people walking around with animal masks on their faces. In the second volume, the issue of racial discrimination is dealt with in a very harsh manner. We encounter a jokey and racist parrot in Amarillo, but we never laugh.
Each story is written like a movie script. We may be reading about familiar topics such as love, murder, revenge, and racism (is there anything new under the sun anyway?) but the stories and lines are so integrated that we get confused and watch what is happening with amazement, getting angry and admiring at the same time.