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'Fables of the Flying City' is on hiatus. Objectively, I know this is for a very good reason - like, say, Jared Axelrod writing all the episodes of the next season so that there's no delay in them being released. Subjectively, I want more podcast NOW PLEASE.

So it's a good thing that while the hiatus is going on, Axelrod is doing another sort of podcast, with the assistance of a graphic novel artist. They're calling it 'Jared and Steven Like Comics', and it's released two reviews of graphic novels to date. 'Blacksad' was the second one reviewed, so naturally when it caught my eye at the library today I simply could not pass it up.

I pretty much agree with everything those two said in their review, but since not everyone is going to go out and listen to it (even though they should, and then go on to Fables of the Flying City because it's awesomes) I guess I just have to write my own review. Damn.

Anyhow, first off: an objection. This is something that was mentioned in the podcast, and I'm not sure I would have noticed it if they hadn't made note of it - but then again, it's pretty annoying, so maybe I would have.
All the characters are anthropomorphic animals. This is fine - except that the main female characters are drawn more as humans with ears and maybe a tail than they are as actual animals, whereas all the males and lesser characters of any gender are very clearly animals first, human-like second. It's clear just from the first page, the cover of the story 'Somewhere within the Shadows', where the extremely feline Blacksad, our main character, is standing with a rather human - if cat-eared - woman. The biggest difference is in the eyes, I think, because his look like animal eyes (if not necessarily cat eyes, at least in that particular image) but hers look extremely human. She even has distinct eyelashes and eyebrows! And her mouth is a human mouth, not a cat's. This is annoying.

It's part of a pattern, too. Main female characters rarely appear in poses that aren't sexually suggestive and anatomically impossible - last time I checked, spines did not bend that way - and in the sex scenes, much is made of the female body. (I was particularly annoyed with one in which the woman was completely naked and Blacksad was almost fully clothed - wtf?) It's a very European book, by the way, so if you're a sensitive American reader offended by nipples and other such things, beware.

That being said, I can understand why it's drawn this way. Blacksad is very much a child of the old-school detective story, with the hard-bitten loner sleuth who sleeps his way through a city full of beautiful women and eventually loses all of them. He's the usual 'every girl wants to be with him, every guy wants to be him' sort, too - at one point this is shown, in a scene where he walks down a hallway in a university. Only his torso is visible in the panel, so the reader's eyes are drawn to the people around him - of which all the girls are staring with wide appreciative eyes and all the guys are glaring. Since this book is... well, not quite a satire, but not entirely played straight either... I'll let it slide. However, this kind of hero does generally annoy me. Blacksad himself is a cut above the usual stock in that he is a generally likeable guy, but that doesn't give him or his creators complete free liscense.

One of the interesting things about this book is that it's sort of historically based - names are changed, but it's hard to miss the Joe McCarthy character, or the Alan Ginsburg - and in some ways (the third story) this works out beautifully. In others (the second) it's not a very good canvas. Racial tension could work in a world of anthropomorphized animals, but making it straight 'whites versus blacks' doesn't really work given the variety of colors and markings displayed by different species. Also, the fact that race doesn't play into the first story makes the second feel really jarring. Blacksad is, as his name might suggest, a black panther - if racism was a part of this world, we should have seen something of it in the first part.


On the positive side, the art in this book is really quite lovely. All the characters are interestingly drawn, other objections aside, and the colors are gorgeous. Some scenes are extremely compelling - one, in particular, of a crowd in Las Vegas watching a mushroom cloud (presumably from White Sands, though there's no evidence that such a test would actually have been visible in Vegas). All the characters are expressive and show their emotions well, which makes some scenes compelling. There's one who goes pretty much crazy and his breakdown scene is difficult to read. Talk about epitomizing the atmosphere of the Red Scare.

There's also a nice clever dig at writing tropes - in the scene where a character is explaining his actions to Blacksad, our hero is visible in the background looking more and more confused as the other continues to speak. (Seriously, why is it hereos always understand the metaphorical musings of someone else without any effort?)


All in all - a decent comic. Very well-drawn, somewhat less well-plotted. The third story is the best, I think. This is not one to pick up if you're in the mood for comedy, but it's also not an extremely challenging read. Some mature content - brains get blown out and people have sex, and both things occur on the page. Like I said... European. Blacksad is an interesting character and while I'm not sure he could carry a longer story without some genuine development, he definitely manages this relatively short trio. The mysteries aren't the focus of each part, by the way - it's really more about characters, which is fine.

One last note: the second story features some KKK-related scenes. Vivid ones. There are hanging bodies. This is a particular kind of unpleasant for some people, so I might as well mention it. You can also probably skip the second story without missing anything relevant to the third, so don't let it stop you from reading the others.