The movements and action feel fluid and dynamic, as if we are truly watching a film. On top of that, every single panel looks as if a lot of thought has been put into the composition and perspectives. Rats look like rats, if you know what I mean.

To murder someone in cold blood makes more sense for coldblooded animals. The animal aspects even heighten the expressions or fit closely to our impression of these animals. Guardino can show more emotions (and really nuanced emotions) in these animals than most artists can do with humans. Weasels and lizards are often the criminals, dogs and wolves the police officers, gorillas and pigs are boxers, there is a loud, argumentative director who is a walrus, and Blacksad is very much like a cat: a loner, grumpy, quiet, quick to show his claws. Like in Zootopia, the animals are type-cast insofar that they reflect human emotions. The connection with Disney runs deeper, as artist Guardino became a lead artist at Disney studios and worked for example on the Tarzan film.

As the film has been stuck in development hell for years, in 2016 we got the Disney animated film Zootopia (2016) which comes closest to the material but is a kiddie version of the far darker and mature Blacksad comics. Blacksad is a black cat, but there are also mice, rhinos, lizards, gorillas and all sorts of other animals inhabiting the comic, and this is totally normal in the story-world. So, as you can see on the cover and the pages, this is a series with anthropomorphic animals. Each new release has become a publishing event in the world of comics. Once every few years a new volume is released, for the writer and artist have to take their time to produce something special each time, with excitingly composed cinematic pages and painstakingly perfected art and colouring. The comics are produced for the French market first, although created by two Spaniards, and translated afterwards.

All the while giving his cynical internal narration, of course.īlacksad the comic became popular and highly regarded, receiving multiple awards, and a video game adaptation and a movie seems to be stuck in development for some years now. The comic drawings dive with relish into all the typical hardboiled noir tropes, as we see Blacksad navigate cluttered police desks – with the shadows of Venetian blinds on him – dirty back alleys of familiar cities in the 1950s, the lush homes of the rich, and his own past, full of regrets and old flames.

Blacksad is a series of noir hardboiled detective stories, very much in the style of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett, and stars a cynical private investigator named John Blacksad.

Blacksad canales