Better late than never. That’s how I feel after discovering Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. In 2010, yup some time ago, Dark Horse comics collected the first three volumes into a gorgeous collection. If you have read this book go back to the Comics Bulletins homepage and read one of our many articles or interviews. If you have heard of this book but never read it or never heard of it at all let me convince you why you should pick it up.
I admit I picked it up for the art. Juanjo Guarnido is incredible. We have seen anthropomorphized animals in comics, particularly in independents, like Usagi Yojimbo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Omaha the Cat Dancer, and even Cerebus. But not since Disney’s Robin Hood has human characteristics been captured and put into animal skins so well. A smut rag journalist is a weasel; a German Shepard is naturally a police office, lizards are sketchy and a bear or rhino moves and acts with the girth that make up they physicality. What captivated me was how he captured the clothing, their styles, automobiles, buildings and backgrounds. You can spend minutes on each panel soaking up the details Guarnido carefully put down. Back this all up with fantastic coloring and you get environments from wintry chills to enchanting evenings to smoke filled seedy bars and glamor of the rich and famous that breathes life in the book.
Blacksad creators, Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, have taken these anthropomorphized animals and planted them into a Raymond Chandler novel. Their hardboiled detective is a panther named John Blacksad, a younger Philip Marlowe, who served in the World War II, and is skilled with a gun and his fists. He dresses in the standard suit and trench coats that are the stock-in-trade for the P.I. and like most Noir tales, Blacksad is our narrator. Like Blacksad himself, the plots are staple 50’s Noir: standard revenge, pursuit, damsel in distress, a kidnapping, racial tension, with some immigrants, McCarthyism, and mad bombers thrown into the mix.
Juan Diaz Canales doesn’t provide us the verbal gymnastics that I enjoy with P.I. Noir but does a fair job with dialogue and pacing. We’re not asked to figure out the mysteries but enjoy the ride and visuals as we watch over the shoulder of Blacksad.
I am glad Dark Horse kept the collection hardbound and oversized. It keeps the integrity of the book intact and what we get for the price is beyond reasonable. Blacksad is a book for the comic enthusiast.
See larger image
Blacksad (Hardcover)
By (author): Juan Diaz Canales
Private investigator John Blacksad is up to his feline ears in mystery, digging into the backstories behind murders, child abductions, and nuclear secrets. Guarnido's sumptuously painted pages and rich cinematic style bring the world of 1950s America to vibrant life, with Canales weaving in fascinating tales of conspiracy, racial tension, and the "red scare" Communist witch hunts of the time. Guarnido reinvents anthropomorphism in these pages, and industry colleagues no less than Will Eisner, Jim Steranko, and Tim Sale are fans!
Whether John Blacksad is falling for dangerous women or getting beaten to within an inch of his life, his stories are, simply put, unforgettable.
* Dark Horse is very proud to present the first three Blacksad stories in a beautiful hardcover collection, completely relettered to the artist's specifications and with the latest album, Red Soul, in English for the very first time.
* This internationally acclaimed series has won nearly a dozen prestigious awards — including the Angoulême Comics Festival prizes for Best Series and Best Artwork-and is a three-time Eisner Award nominee.
List Price:
$29.99 USD
New From:
$15.04 USD In Stock
Used from:
$12.75 USD In Stock
The post Review: ‘Blacksad’ appeared first on Comics Bulletin.