His line is seductive - both sharp and smooth - making it impossible not to linger on the curves of wood, the folds in bunched drapes, the intricately patterned rugs or even the general desk clutter which you'd normally not even register. When it comes to architecture, both exterior and interior, Guarnido is on a par with animator Hayao Miyazaki for detail. The level of craft on Disney-trained Guarnido's part is mesmerising. One glance at the glorious, dark grey spread preceding the story itself instantly reminds one of Will Eisner works like A CONTRACT WITH GOD set fairly and squarely in a bustling, fully functioning, very specific environment. What I inferred from that is here - for the first time, I think - expressly explored when a hitch-hiking John is forced to endure the charmless verbal diarrhoea of a truck-driving macaw.īLACKSAD books are all period pieces: the Cadillac on the cover isn't a classic yet, it's current. John Blacksad, is a big black cat with a patch of white on his chin.

BLACKSAD VOL 1 contained one particularly powerful story involving racism, segregation and lynching using each creature's colour to clever effect, while its star, P.I.

But don't be deceived: like so much anthropomorphism in comics (MAUS!), BLACKSAD is decidedly adult in nature.Īll the characters are bipedal animals working, living and loving like we do and they can be equally vicious and flawed. I mention this because we have a long love of anthropomorphism and most unused to comics usually associate the genre with childhood pleasures like Alice Through The Looking Glass or Winnie The Pooh. 'I'll just try to find a nice, quiet job here, where I don't have to dodge bullets and nobody winds up dead for a change.ĭid you know that Walt Disney's Bambi was originally a flop? It's hard to believe these days, but the only thing that saved the studio was the Pentagon hiring it for propaganda purposes during WWII.

Blacksad by Juan Díaz Canales