The best cat in his world and a good enough cat for any world
Creative Staff:
Story: Juan Díaz Canales
Art and Colors: Juanjo Guarnido
Letters: Studio Cutie
What They Say:
Celebrate Blacksad’s twentieth year with this comprehensive volume featuring five of the biggest cases.
Blacksad is constantly up to his ears in trouble. Sticking his nose into mystery after mystery, often getting involved with women almost as dangerous as the criminals he thwarts. Be it solving the murder of a famous actress or keeping nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands, Blacksad’s grim work often provides a mirror for real world conflict and human issues, never turning a blind eye to racism, political tensions, or brutally sudden violence.
This volume collects the following Blacksad stories: Somewhere Within the Shadows, Arctic Nation, Red Soul, A Silent Hell, Amarillo; and the comic shorts “Spit at the Sky” and “Like Cats and Dogs”.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I suppose it’s poor form to begin a review with someone else’s words, but this quote by Raymond Chandler echoed through my mind while reading Blacksad:
“[D]own these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”
I think that perfectly sums up the character John Blacksad and the world he inhabits. A world of stark contrasts, of haves and have nots, of discrimination based on the color of one’s fur, of beautiful women, heroic men—all doomed. If there’s an unstated curse that hovers over the hardboiled private eye, it’s that the world keeps letting him down. He holds to a code of ethics and conduct that seem simple to him, but out of reach for—or, perhaps, unappealing to—so many around him. The best man in his world, indeed.
Or, in this case, the best cat.
Created by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, Blacksad is a study in disparate elements. This is probably a comic that shouldn’t work. Every character is an anthropomorphic animal. They live in a United States very much like our own, just after the end of the Second World War, and other than the characters being animals rather than people, there’s no real difference between Blacksad’s world and our own. The tune changes, but the song remains the same, or however that saying goes. Crime, corruption, cruelty, and greed rule the roost, doesn’t matter if you’re covered in hair, fur, or feathers. Blacksad knows this, but he walks around with an open heart, constantly getting it broken by former lovers, mentors, and people who could have been amazing had they not given into their baser instincts.
If you’re new to Blacksad, then this is the place to start. Collected Stories puts five classic stories (plus a few short works) in one handy volume. “Somewhere in the Shadows” follows Blacksad’s investigation in the murder of his former lover. “Artic Nation” is a kidnapping case set against a larger tale of white supremacy (white fur versus black fur), corruption, and mendacity. “Red Soul” offers a love letter to the Beats as well as a reminder of the atomic fears and Communist witch hunts from not very long ago. “A Silent Hell” provides you with jazz, murder, betrayal, and secrets long buried down south. And “Amarillo” takes Blacksad on a cross-country hunt through the south and west on the trail of a writer-car thief.
The stories owe a clear debt to Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross McDonald. They’re very American in their storytelling sensibilities and Blacksad could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Philip Marlowe and be right at home. These are hardboiled private eye stories at their best, focusing just as much—if not more—on the characters and the moral drama behind the crime as they do on solving the crime itself. For my money, “Artic Nation” had the tightest story out of the five. It twisted and turned nicely, and in the end, the real crime wasn’t what you thought it was.
While Blacksad does come from a long literary pedigree, its film predecessors shouldn’t be ignored. Even though these comics are done in full color (wonderful color, I might add), they still evoke the chiaroscuro feeling of the great Noirs where light is hard to come by and has to slice its way through the dark with razor sharpness. The colors in this comic aren’t monochrome, but they are beautiful and subtle. Take the warm beige and yellows of Natalia Wilford’s bedroom as she lays dead in her four-poster bed then transition over to Blacksad’s office, hued in cooler shades of browns and grays. The first is almost obscene. How could the sun shine so warmly on such a cold, sad moment? The second gives us a glimpse into Blacksad’s broken heart, and yours cools along with it. It’s brilliant work that subtly highlights the emotion of each scene, and there’s something rough to it, in an agreeable way. Like we’re seeing the work of colored pencils, chalk, and maybe watercolors. There’s a texture to the color that brings it to life in a wonderful way.
The line work is also amazing. The body language, the facial expressions, the background work is so full of life and detail without being cluttered. There’s a sense that no pencil stroke is wasted, even when going into George Perez-levels of detail, such as a chase during a Mardi Gras parade.
One might think that having animals in this type of story might cheapen it, deaden its effect, or make this more for kids, but nothing could be further from the truth. Blacksad owes as much to Aesop as it does Raymond Chandler. As Steranko points out in his introduction, these aren’t animals pretending to be humans. This is humans as animals, as if our base personalities had an analogous animal form whose body we inhabit. It ramps up the allegory, but in a way that feeds back into the human drama that lies at the core of hardboiled detective stories and Noir.
If I found a magic lamp and got three wishes, my first would be for world peace, my second would be good health until the day I died, and my third would be to be as talented in writing and drawing as Canales and Guarnido. Frankly, I think the first two have a far greater chance of happening than the third. Luckily, I can enjoy their work from afar and admire it.
In Summary:
Blacksad is the Disney-Noir hybrid you never knew you wanted. Expertly written and brilliantly drawn and colored, these stories are a joy to read, especially if you’re a fan of Noir and hardboiled crime fiction. If this is the first you’ve heard of the character, if you’ve heard of him but haven’t taken the Nestea Plunge yet, or if you’re a fan who would like some of his best stories collected in one volume, I highly recommend getting this collected edition. It won’t disappoint!
Dr. J gives this an…
Grade: A+
Age Rating: N/A
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: 14 July 2020
MSRP: $29.99
