Blacksad
by Juan Díaz Canales, Juanjo Guarnido (Illustrator)
Blacksad (Collections and Selections — Omnibus 1-3)
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Description
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, show more 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. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
wandering_star Both these are comic books of hardboiled detective stories, with a distinctive and interesting drawing style, and a bleakly noir story.
Member Reviews
A very cool graphic novel! Sort of like if Philip Marlowe was snooping around the back streets of "Zootopia"! I love this kind of noir, and the three stories in here do it justice! The artwork is crisp and engaging and the characters own their roles! The white vs. black "animals" is pretty deep, especially when a young zebra is shown in one of the panels. And any graphic novel that includes an excerpt from "Howl" has got my vote! This is one beautiful collection!
A collection of three trope-filled mysteries with the gritty and grizzled PI, John Blacksad, a black cat with a grim outlook. Go with John as he hunts thugs, solves murders, seeks revenge, saves children, and eventually the free world.
The main conceit of a world inhabited by talking animals is interesting and the artwork is beautiful. However, the way the artists design all the women in the novel is frankly gross and sexist. While the men have most of the facial features of animals, the women are essentially playboy bunnies. The end result lends every sex scene a flavor of bestiality. It's also just plain confusing design because often the animal features of the women is so indistinct that you can't even tell what they are supposed to show more be.
Overall I enjoyed the book and the stories. The animal artwork lent itself well to character building. show less
The main conceit of a world inhabited by talking animals is interesting and the artwork is beautiful. However, the way the artists design all the women in the novel is frankly gross and sexist. While the men have most of the facial features of animals, the women are essentially playboy bunnies. The end result lends every sex scene a flavor of bestiality. It's also just plain confusing design because often the animal features of the women is so indistinct that you can't even tell what they are supposed to show more be.
Overall I enjoyed the book and the stories. The animal artwork lent itself well to character building. show less
A terrific read. I'd procrastinated on checking out "Blacksad" for nearly a decade -- really, there are so many highly recommended comics out there, you can't get to it all -- but man, was it worth the wait. The first story in this three-story colelction is at the face of it very basic noir fare -- an old girlfriend turns up dead and the sullen private investigator can't help but get to the bottom of it -- but it still gripped me due to the fantastic artwork and great execution. The other two stories -- a child kidnapping in the middle of a small town race conflict, and a conspiracy amid Cold War paranoia and prosecution -- are much more inventive and complex, and in particular the middle story makes use of the anthropomorphic animal show more world in surprising ways. I've been trained to expect fiction that uses animal people like this to rarely if ever really reference that the characters are all (different) animals, but "Blacksad" does so frequently and with impressive effect. I will definitely be buying the fourth and fifth volume as well, and no doubt join the eager wait for the long-delayed sixth and seventh, the first of which is currently rumoured to finally be due in October 2021. Fingers crossed. This is great stuff. show less
A kind of bonkers premise but kind of great - an anthropomorphic black cat PI investigates murders and kidnappings in a funny-animal 1950s America. Raymond Chandler's Zootopia. But! It's actually a lot of fun and beautifully illustrated. I docked this a star for the second story, a weird racism-focused story whose reach far exceeds its grasp, but this is a refreshing change of pace from normal comics fare.
This review has been edited for Goodreads, but you an find the full review here.
I picked this comic up after seeing a sample of some of it's art floating around Tumblr (link NSFW). The artist previously worked for Disney and has some amazing skills, which show in his ridiculously detailed backgrounds and the way he humanises his characters while keeping their animal designs.
Art where illustrated animals act like humans has kind of a bad rap around the internet. It gets given the 'furry' label a lot, referring to a subculture who like humanised/anthromorphized animal art, and since a lot of furry art is smut the comics get dismissed as smut too.
That's no use at all, because while some comics with humanised animals unfortunately go this show more route the best ones don't. To name a few: Lackadaisy (a gorgeous free-to-read online comic dealing with the dangerous life of rumrunners in Prohibition-era America, using anthro cats), Maus (the story of a Holocaust survivor, using mice) and of course Blacksad.
This collection contains three volumes of the comic, making three separate stories. It starts out with that old noir cliche 'the beautiful woman I loved is mysteriously dead' which felt like I was re-reading Sin City, but it was a great opportunity to see hardboiled detective John Blacksad' struggling to deal with loss. From there the writer/illustrator team take on bolder, braver territory, and it works fantastically. Second volume Arctic Nation takes on racism and inter-racial violence, and seeing animals act like racist dirtbags to other animals somehow reinforces how horrible this is when done by humans. Third volume Red Soul takes things an even further step up, bringing in communism and nuclear power struggles.
With flawless, amazingly detailed and expressive art and tactful, powerful storytelling, this collection is a gem amongst European comics. Highly recommended to all fans of comics like Sin City, Lackadaisy or Maus, or people who just want to look at some brilliant art. show less
I picked this comic up after seeing a sample of some of it's art floating around Tumblr (link NSFW). The artist previously worked for Disney and has some amazing skills, which show in his ridiculously detailed backgrounds and the way he humanises his characters while keeping their animal designs.
Art where illustrated animals act like humans has kind of a bad rap around the internet. It gets given the 'furry' label a lot, referring to a subculture who like humanised/anthromorphized animal art, and since a lot of furry art is smut the comics get dismissed as smut too.
That's no use at all, because while some comics with humanised animals unfortunately go this show more route the best ones don't. To name a few: Lackadaisy (a gorgeous free-to-read online comic dealing with the dangerous life of rumrunners in Prohibition-era America, using anthro cats), Maus (the story of a Holocaust survivor, using mice) and of course Blacksad.
This collection contains three volumes of the comic, making three separate stories. It starts out with that old noir cliche 'the beautiful woman I loved is mysteriously dead' which felt like I was re-reading Sin City, but it was a great opportunity to see hardboiled detective John Blacksad' struggling to deal with loss. From there the writer/illustrator team take on bolder, braver territory, and it works fantastically. Second volume Arctic Nation takes on racism and inter-racial violence, and seeing animals act like racist dirtbags to other animals somehow reinforces how horrible this is when done by humans. Third volume Red Soul takes things an even further step up, bringing in communism and nuclear power struggles.
With flawless, amazingly detailed and expressive art and tactful, powerful storytelling, this collection is a gem amongst European comics. Highly recommended to all fans of comics like Sin City, Lackadaisy or Maus, or people who just want to look at some brilliant art. show less
Series Info/Source: This is the first of three volumes in the Blacksad series. I got a copy of this as a Christmas gift from my husband.
Thoughts: I enjoyed this quite a bit. The drawing is amazing, using mainly muted tones and is amazingly detailed. I loved the variety of facial expressions all these different anthropomorphic characters have. The stories are engaging, very well done and easy to follow.
This volume includes three separate stories featuring Blacksad. Blacksad is a cat/man that is a private investigator in America during the 1950’s “red scare” era. All of the characters are done as animals but are very human in their actions. The type of animal chosen to represent a character is mainly based on the primary show more characteristic of that character. For example; bouncer is a gorilla, sneaky snitch is a rat…etc.
In general it was really well done but also very adult (there are numerous sex scenes). My one complaint is how the female characters are portrayed. While there is great variety in both animal type and visual appearance to the male characters in this book, all the females look very much the same. In fact every single female character is incredibly slender in a deer-like way, has huge prey-like eyes, a pert nose, and gigantic human breasts. The human breasts were a little weird for me since they are featured prominently in full glory but on women who are supposed to be deer, dogs, or other slender animals. This aspect left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. You don’t see any male nudity really.
Despite the above, this was incredibly well done and a fascinating look at both history and an interesting way to handle an anthropomorphic graphic novel for adults.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this. I really loved the artwork color and detail. The stories are engaging and well done. The graphic novel has the perfect noir type of atmosphere and Blacksad is exactly the kickbutt PI you would expect from this era. The odd portrayal of the female characters throughout left me with a bad taste in my mouth though. I would definitely recommend checking this out but didn’t enjoy it enough to get the next couple books in the series. show less
Thoughts: I enjoyed this quite a bit. The drawing is amazing, using mainly muted tones and is amazingly detailed. I loved the variety of facial expressions all these different anthropomorphic characters have. The stories are engaging, very well done and easy to follow.
This volume includes three separate stories featuring Blacksad. Blacksad is a cat/man that is a private investigator in America during the 1950’s “red scare” era. All of the characters are done as animals but are very human in their actions. The type of animal chosen to represent a character is mainly based on the primary show more characteristic of that character. For example; bouncer is a gorilla, sneaky snitch is a rat…etc.
In general it was really well done but also very adult (there are numerous sex scenes). My one complaint is how the female characters are portrayed. While there is great variety in both animal type and visual appearance to the male characters in this book, all the females look very much the same. In fact every single female character is incredibly slender in a deer-like way, has huge prey-like eyes, a pert nose, and gigantic human breasts. The human breasts were a little weird for me since they are featured prominently in full glory but on women who are supposed to be deer, dogs, or other slender animals. This aspect left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. You don’t see any male nudity really.
Despite the above, this was incredibly well done and a fascinating look at both history and an interesting way to handle an anthropomorphic graphic novel for adults.
My Summary (4/5): Overall I enjoyed this. I really loved the artwork color and detail. The stories are engaging and well done. The graphic novel has the perfect noir type of atmosphere and Blacksad is exactly the kickbutt PI you would expect from this era. The odd portrayal of the female characters throughout left me with a bad taste in my mouth though. I would definitely recommend checking this out but didn’t enjoy it enough to get the next couple books in the series. show less
When purchasing for our library's GN collection a few months ago, I passed on "Blacksad" largely because of the cost--I could buy two TPB's that produce twice the circulation statistics of one artsy GN. Blacksad put that kind of thinking to shame and I promise I'll never fall prey to any kind of jackass cost-benefit analysis ever again. Juan Diaz Canales' story of a hard-boiled cat detective named Blacksad is some of the finest crime noir out there, and Juanjo Guarnido's art is absolutely jaw-dropping (is it wrong to get turned on by a nude, buxom anthropomorphic cat?). To make the review short, don't be a jackass like me and pass by this the first time, because you might not get a second chance.
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Author Information
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Awards and Honors
Series
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- Blacksad
- Original publication date
- 2010-06-22 [US]; 2014-11; 2000-2013
- People/Characters
- John Blacksad; Weekly; Samuel Gotfield; Laszlo Herzl; Hans Karup; Jezabel Karup (show all 34); Leon Kronski; Otto Lieber; Sergei Litvak; Jess Logan; Hewitt Mandeline; Alma Mayer; Jake Ostiombe; Bill Ratcliff; Dorothy Smirnov; Dinah Smith; Kaylie Smith; Ivo Statoc; Natalia Wilford; Cotten; Dora; Fritz; Gallo; Greenberg; Miss Grey; Huk; Jorgen; Klein; Oldsmill; Otero; Paulie; Ribs; Smirnov; Zenuck
- Important places
- New York, New York, USA; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Niagara Falls; New York, USA; Nevada, USA
- Dedication
- To Byron Preiss, who believed in Blacksad
- First words
- There are mornings when you have trouble digesting your breakfast... especially when you find yourself in front of the dead body of an old flame...
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Don't call it superstition... say instead "that Old Black Magic called Love..." Alma
- Blurbers
- Lee, Stan; Adams, Neal
- Original language
- Spanish; French
- Disambiguation notice
- This "Blacksad" is the 3-volume Dark Horse US edition (ISBN 159582393X / 9781595823939), distinct from the first volume of the series (which has a ton of ISBNs in different languages, including the US iBooks edition). Also di... (show all)stinct from the "Blacksad: Integral" or Dark Horse "Blacksad: The Collected Stories" (ISBN 1506716180 / 9781506716183) which collect all five volumes of the original series and/or all three volumes of the Dark Horse series.
Classifications
- Genre
- Graphic Novels & Comics
- DDC/MDS
- 741.5944 — Arts & recreation Drawing & decorative arts Drawing Comic books, graphic novels, fotonovelas, cartoons, caricatures, comic strips History, geographic treatment, biography European France & Monaco
- LCC
- PN6777 .D53 .B5313 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Collections of general literature Comic books, strips, etc.
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 782
- Popularity
- 35,706
- Reviews
- 36
- Rating
- (4.14)
- Languages
- 5 — Catalan, English, French, German, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 4
