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[9/10]

re-read to refresh my memory, in anticipation of volume 5



I am glad to report that the series has lost none of it’s initial appeal, six year after I first followed private investigator John Blacksad through the dark alleyways and rundown tenements of his antropomorphic version of “Sin City��. A black-furred brawling tomcat in a Humprey Bogart trenchcoat is pursuing the murderers of his former flame, a curvaceous feline movie star with a taste for the night life of the city. On one side of the law we have an Alsacian dog captain and a foxy faced lieutenant, on the other alligators, lizards, rats ans other cold blooded reptiles, with some support from hired muscles like rhinoceros and mountain gorillas. In the middle, the cat with the bad atitude and the hard-edged monologues.



For the plot alone, I don’t think I can justify the top rating. The series really stands out through its artwork. Guarnido knows how to work with light and shadow, and he has studied the unusual angles of the camera from the classic movies �� all reflected in his detailed environments, but his true specialty is faces. There is more diversity, expressivity, emotion and body language in the anthropomorphic characters of Guarnido than in any other comic album I have read lately, even compared with the classic penmanship of John Buscema (Conan) or the pastels of Gibrat. Maybe Alex Ross is better, but I know he works from photographs.



In this omnibus edition are included:

- Somewhere Between the Shadows : Blacksad investigates the murder of a famous actress and former love interest
- Arctic Nation : the cat tries to find a missing child, getting caught in a turf war between white supremacists (arctic bear, arctic fox, white bulldog, white ox, etc) and street gangs (black dog, black horse ... you get the picture)
- Red Soul Blacksad falls in love with a beautiful writer (some sort of feline), but she is part of a leftist group that is suspected of trying to steal nuclear secrets. References to McCarthysm are very thinly disguised.

Inspired by American classic noir movies and novels, produced by a couple of young and extremely talented Spanish artists, the albums first gained fame in France, with its own long history of noir films and novels (Jean Gabin for me is a forerunner of the genre, Truffaut and Goddard revigorated it in the sixties, etc). I have bought the fourth and fifth volumes on my last vacation in Paris, and I can’t wait to get started on them.



Recommended for fans of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and for lovers of finely drawn comic books.