Blacksad

Blacksad is a french comic book published by French publisher Dargaud and created by Spanish authors Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. It draws heavily on the film-noir environment, set in the USA of the late 1950s and comes in 3 seperate volumes.

The thing which sets this comic book apart from other comics is that all the characters are anthropomorphic animals, with each character represented by a specific species of animal reflecting their personality and their part in the story. Such as the black heavyweight boxer portrayed as a Gorilla and the American President represented as a Bald Eagle.

The strip is made with a rather dirty-realist outlook, a dark cinematic style and fairly clean, realistic lines. Coupled with the truly lavish and time-consuming drawing, done in watercolor, the strip appears very realistic indeed despite using animals. The quality of the drawing has improved noticeably throughout the series, with sharper, higher-quality colour and less grainy lines in later issues.

John Blacksad - The main character, is based on the stereotype of a hard-boiled detective / private investigator such as Elliot Gould in 'The Long Goodbye' and Jack Nicholson in 'Chinatown', apart from being portrayed as a strong and lean black cat. He is a WW2 veteran with part of his stories recounting flashbacks from his past. He usually wears a dark green suit, a red-and-gold striped tie and a trench coat.

Weekly - Blacksad's sort-of sidekick, aiding him on his investigations. Represented as a small brown Weasel. The comic constantly references his dislike of soap and water and has a bad odour problem, confessesing that his nickname comes from bathing only weekly. He has a near-constant optimistic attitude, even though he works as a dirt digger for a tabloid newspaper.

Smirnov - A German Shepherd police commissioner who becomes a fast friend of Blacksad. Smirnov sometimes helps Blacksad to reach the rich and powerful which he himself cannot touch due to 'pressure upstairs'.