Blacksad: Amarillo

Written by Juan Díaz Canales
Art by Juanjo Guarnido

The Spanish Blacksadcomics are a real visual treat.  Artist Juanjo Guarnido is absolutely incredible, in the way that he combines a nostalgic eye for mid-twentieth century architecture with incredibly realistic anthropomorphized people.  Each page is a wonder to behold.

In this third Blacksad story, our hero finds himself broke in New Orleans, without enough money to get home.  He refuses a loan from Weekly, who is flying back to New York, and instead lucks into a job driving a car to Texas for a wealthy man.

As Blacksad's story begins to unfold, it crosses paths with that of two beatnik writers, stand-ins for Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who steal the car, setting John on their path.

This story is highly dependent on coincidence, as the FBI agents from the first Blacksad story get in on the chase after Lowell (the Kerouac stand-in) busts up a mailbox, a federal crime.  This tale involves a game of William Tell that leads to actual murder (I love seeing William Burroughs portrayed as a genteel flamingo), another murder at a circus, a laughing hyena lawyer, hidden identities, car chases, and a train scene.

This is a very entertaining read, which is elevated by the power of its art.  I'm not sure if any other Blacksad books have been published in Spain, but if there are more, I hope Dark Horse translates them soon.

Odd note:  I was surprised to see that legendary comics artist Neal Adams is one of the translators for this book.

Blacksad: A Silent Hell

Written by Juan Díaz Canales
Art by Juanjo Guarnido

I read and loved the first Dark Horse Blacksad graphic novel quite a while ago, and for some reason I've really taken my time in getting around to the second one, A Silent Hell (although the third is already in my to-read pile, so that will come a lot quicker).

Blacksad is a private investigator in a world of anthropomorphic animal people.  In this issue, he's come to 1950s New Orleans with his reporter friend Weekly, and has been hired by a dying jazz label impresario to track down a missing junkie piano player, who the old man loves as a son (and more than his own son).  Very quickly, as this is a fast-moving story, writer Juan Díaz Canales has us immersed in the underbelly of the jazz scene, as the old man's son tries to stop Blacksad, and some very questionable things start happening.

This book is absolutely gorgeous.  Artist Juanjo Guarnido employs a watercolour technique that leads to some truly stunning pages.  He also takes many, many pages to explain his process and show us a variety of sketches and colour treatments he executed to get the book to look this good.  This section would be a real boon to artists just starting out, or ones who are established and want to learn to use watercolours for comics.

I really enjoyed this book, which I devoured in one setting.  It gives us an interesting look at New Orleans and its black and creole cultures, and is a master class in pacing and using flashbacks to structure a story.  The two short stories added on the end are excellent as well.

I know that there are more Blacksad albums in Europe than there have been published in English, and I'm hoping that more of them will be made available to us.

Blacksad

Written by Juan Díaz Canales
Art by Juanjo Guarnido

 I kind of expected Blacksad, published here in English by the fine people at Dark Horse, to be a pretty standard noirish private eye comic, featuring talking animals acting as people.  That's basically what this book is, but it is just about the best possible form of that.

There are three stories in this European-sized hardcover, each a self-contained tale although they are told sequentially.  John Blacksad is a private eye who investigates stuff, like so many of his literary, pulp, and comic book forebears.  In the first story, he gets involved when an old girlfriend, an actress, turns up dead.  In the second, he searches for a missing girl, and in the third, he tries to help an old mentor who has been marked for death.  All standard stuff, except for the quality in which the stories are told.

These are some very well-written stories.  Writer Díaz Canales sets these stories in post-war America, and makes very good use of the talking animal element to flesh out his tales.  In the second story, Arctic Nation, the young girl's disappearance is connected to racial tensions, caused by white supremacist animals who make up the upper class and the police department, and directed towards black animals, especially the Black Claws gang, an analog of the Black Panthers.  One would assume that the easiest way to portray racial difference would be to have different species of animal stand in for races, much like Art Spiegelman did with Maus, but instead, Díaz Canales sticks with colour as the dividing line, and so a white cat is treated as different than a black cat, at least in that city.  It adds some texture to things, as we have a hero with a white muzzle, who has an established aversion to rats.  So this is a society where intolerance is even more ingrained and complex than in ours.

Juanjo Guarnido's art is wonderful, in that European way, and displays great detail, especially in terms of the time period shown.  I was very impressed with this book, and am happy to know that Dark Horse is publishing more of these.