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Blacksad is a comic book series created by Spanish authors Juan Díaz Canales (writer) and Juanjo Guarnido (artist), and published by French publisher Dargaud. A comic book (often shortened to simply comic and sometimes called a comic paper or comic magazine) is a Magazine or Book of narrative Juan Díaz Canales (born in 1972 in Madrid, Spain) is a Spanish Comics artist and an animated Film director, known as the co-creator Juanjo Guarnido is a Spanish illustrator and the co-author of the comic book series Blacksad. Les Éditions Dargaud is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics series Though both authors are Spanish, their main target audience for Blacksad is the French market[1] and thus they publish all Blacksad volumes in French first; the Spanish edition usually follows about one month later[2]. The first volume Quelque part entre les ombres (literally Somewhere in the Shadows, but simply called Blacksad in the US) was published in November 2000. The second volume, Arctic-Nation, was published in 2003 and the third, Âme Rouge (Red Soul), was published in 2005. (An English translation has been delayed as of May 2007 due to the bankruptcy of its North American publisher, iBooks).

Although it was the creators' first comics endeavour, the first volume was an immense success, selling more than 200,000 copies in France alone. The series has been translated from the original French and Spanish into Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Swedish and Taiwanese.

Guarnido and Diaz Canales have received several prizes for the impressive, lavish visualisation and the books as a whole, among these three nominations for the Eisner Awards, and an Angoulême Prize for Artwork. The Will Eisner Comic Industry Award is a prize given for creative achievement in American Comic books It is named in honor of the pioneering writer and artist Will Eisner Angoulême International Comics Festival ( French: Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d'Angoulême) is the main comics festival in Europe This Prize for Artwork is awarded to comics authors at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. [3][4][5]

Contents

Synopsis

The story is set in a film noir environment, in the USA of the late 1950s. Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation Year 1950 ( MCML) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. All the characters are anthropomorphic animals (female characters are often much more anthropomorphized), their specific species reflecting their personality and their part in the story. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely Human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings natural and supernatural phenomena material states and objects For example, nearly all the policemen are canid, usually German Shepherds, Bloodhounds, Foxes or Scottish Terriers. The Canidae (ˈkænədiː ′kanə′dē family is a part of the order Carnivora within the Mammals (Class Mammalia The German Shepherd Dog ( GSD) (Deutscher Schäferhund is a breed of large-sized dog that originates from Germany. A bloodhound (also known as the St Hubert hound) is a large breed of Dog bred for the specific purpose of tracking human beings A fox is an Animal belonging to any one of about 27 Species (of which only 12 actually belong to the Vulpes genus or 'true foxes' of small Scottie redirects here distinguish from Scotty.

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.

Cameos

The series occasionally features anthropomorphic versions of famous people (not always in a good light), most notably so far in Red Soul, where Adolf Hitler is seen in a photograph (though not named) as a cat. Hi and welcome to Wikipedia! Please understand that this article is frequently vandalized and vandalism is reverted immediately It also includes characters clearly based on real historical ones; such as Senator Joseph McCarthy, who appears as Senator Gallo (a cockerel); Allen Ginsberg, who appears as Greenberg (a bison); and Otto Liebber (the proverbial 'German scientist'), who bears occupational and character similarities to many scientists involved in the Manhattan Project of Los Alamos. Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14 1908 – May 2 1957 was an American politician who served as a Republican U A rooster (also called a cock or chanticleer) is a male Chicken ( Gallus gallus) the female being called a Hen. Irwin Allen Ginsberg (ˈgɪnzbɝg (June 3 1926 &ndash April 5 1997 was an American Poet. This is an article about an animal For other uses see Bison (disambiguation. A proverb (from the Latin proverbium) also called a byword or nayword, is a simple and concrete Saying popularly known and repeated The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first Nuclear weapon (atomic bomb

Main characters

Volumes

Somewhere Within the Shadows

Blacksad begins investigating the murder of the famous actress Nathalia Willford - a former girlfriend.

He investigates about Léon Kronski, a motion picture scenario writer and her last known lover who disappeared. He finds him to already dead, and buried under a pseudonym. After Blacksad is severely beaten by two hired thugs, the police arrests him. Smirnov, a police commissioner, explains to Blacksad that because of 'pressure upstairs' he himself cannot investigate the matter any further. Smirnov offers him a deal, mutually-advantageous to both sides.

As he returns home, a lizard hitman and a rat goon attempt to kill him and each other. Lizards are a large and widespread group of Reptiles of the order Squamata, with nearly 5000 species and ranging across all continents except For other uses of this term see Hitman (disambiguation A hitman usually is an Assassin who is hired to assassinate a target via Rats are various medium sized long-tailed Rodents of the superfamily Muroidea The rat quickly dies, and Blacksad interrogates the dying lizard and finally uncovers the culprit of the whole affair, Ivo Statoc, a frog, the richest and most powerful businessman of the city, who considers himself above any law. This article is about the block cipher algorithm For the ultrafast laser pulse measurement technique see Frequency-resolved optical gating. Statoc shot the actress himself because her infidelity. After brutally infiltrating the office suite at the top of his skyscraper Blacksad confronts the completely calm, cold-blooded Statoc - who first offers him a job, and later a bribe. A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable Building. There is no official definition or a precise cutoff height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper Bribery, a form of pecuniary corruption is an act usually implying money or gift given that alters the behaviour of the recipient in ways not consistent with the duties of that person Blacksad rejects both on a matter of principle and shoots Statoc in the head. The police arranges it so it appears to be a suicide.

Arctic Nation

This volume deals with inter-racial violence and racial segregation of the 1950s in a pseudo-American suburbia called the Line. The book also obliquely addresses issues of economic depression, sexual repression and perversion, all intended to expose the social malaise and prejudice that exist beneath the apparently harmonious surfaces of communities.

Beginning with a black vulture hanged in a street, Blacksad meets his future sidekick, Weekly. Blacksad rejects him at first due to his unpleasant smell, and because Weekly mistakes him for a fellow tabloid journalist.

Blacksad is working for an old elementary school teacher, Miss Grey (a gazelle), to find and rescue a young bear girl, Kyle (in some editions Kayleigh), who was kidnapped, quite possibly by "Arctic Nation", a racist political organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan. See also Primary education An elementary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of Compulsory education known as elementary A GAZelle (ГАЗе́ль is a series of mid-sized Trucks Vans and Buses made by Russian car manufacturer GAZ. List of racism-related topics|Racism by country Racism, by its simplest definition is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that A political party is any organization or group that is concerned with or involved in the political process Ku Klux Klan ( KKK) is the name of several past and present secret domestic terrorist organizations in the United States, generally in the southern states that are

After becoming friends with Weekly through the latter's persistence, Blacksad is harassed in a bar by three Arctic Nation goons (resulting in one of them being thrown into the bar counter). Their leader, a white Arctic fox called Huk, turns out to be a close friend of the local Chief of Police, Karup (a polar bear). The Arctic Fox ( Vulpes lagopus) also known as the White Fox or Snow Fox, is a small Fox native to cold Arctic regions of the The polar bear ( Ursus maritimus) is a Bear native to the Arctic Ocean and its surrounding seas The pair is taken to Karup and he is shown to have some racial prejudice himself. List of racism-related topics|Racism by country Racism, by its simplest definition is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that

Blacksad subsequently confronts Kayleigh's mother, Dinah, about her daughter's disappearance, which she has mysteriously failed to report to the police. He suggests an affair between herself and the son of Oldsmill, a rich white socialite. A socialite is a person who is known to be a part of fashionable Society because of his or her regular participation in social activities and fondness for spending a significant This line of inquiry was prompted initially by Miss Grey. Dinah takes great offense at the insinuation, casting doubt onto its validity as a lead. In the following scenes, he and Weekly clash with a black activist organisation - the "Black Claws"—themselves originally accused of Kyle's abduction, and similar in their tough reverse racism to Malcolm X's doctrines. Reverse Discrimination, is in its simplest form the practice of favouring a historically disadvantaged group at the expense of members of a historically advantaged group Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19 1925 February 21 1965 also known as El-Hajj Malik El- Shabazz, was an African American They force Weekly to publish a statement denying their involvement in the kidnapping. Blacksad then decides to follow the Oldsmill lead, but discovers that Oldsmill's son is mentally handicapped (the result, it is suggested, of the Oldsmill family's endogamy), and thus unlikely to have had an affair with Dinah. Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a social group. Cultures who practice endogamy require marriage between specified social groups classes or ethnicities

In the meantime, Weekly investigates the activities of Karup's wife, Jezabel (again, a 'white' bear), discovering her affair with Huk and her emotional meeting with Dinah, in which she appears to blackmail Jezabel by threatening to reveal 'what she knows'. This compounds suspicion on Karup, already rumoured to be a paedophile. The term pedophilia or paedophilia has a range of definitions as found in Psychology, law enforcement and the popular vernacular Blacksad then returns to Dinah's apartment to find her dead. At this point, suspecting Karup of the murder, he confronts him and his wife, whom he accuses of adultery. In consequence, Karup attacks Huk and argues violently with Jezabel: during their tête-à-tête, it comes to light that they have never had sex, and that Karup is, seemingly genuinely, not a paedophile. An organism's sex is defined by the gametes it produces males produce male gametes (spermatozoa or Sperm) while females produce female gametes (ova or Egg cells; individual

At the violent climax, a black magpie called Cotten (complicit in the abduction and threatened into co-operation) leads Blacksad to an Arctic Nation meeting in a derelict war factory where Kayleigh - and Weekly, also having been abducted - are hidden. Magpies are Passerine Birds of the Crow family, Corvidae. The names ' Jay ' and 'magpie' are to a certain extent interchangeable War is an international relations Dispute, characterized by organized Violence between National Military units Blacksad saves Weekly from a gibbet after Karup is betrayed and hanged himself by Huk, under the (false) pretence of kidnaping and child-abuse. As the factory burns and Cotten is shot dead by Huk, Blacksad rescues Kayleigh, along with Weekly. Later, he finds Huk dead in his garage - with a screwdriver through the brain.

The book's finale sees Blacksad cornering Jezabel after her husband's funeral, proving, through a matching birthmark, that she is Dinah's twin. Jezabel clears up the loose ends: her father was in fact Karup, who had abandoned her black, pregnant mother to die after being turned by the racist doctrines of the Oldsmill set. However, Jezabel's mother lived long enough to raise the twins, and, fueled by revenge, Jezabel ascended 'white society' under a false identity, eventually marrying Karup, but refusing him any intimacy (in a bizarrely platonic Electra complex). The Electra complex (colloquially Daddy issues or the Bernfeld factor) is a concept found in psychoanalytic theory regarding female psycho-sexual development With Dinah hired as their maid, Jezabel seduced and manipulated Huk, using him to carry out the fake kidnapping, thus capitalising on the rumours of Karup's pædophilia. Huk also spontaneously murdered Dinah 'to make sure she kept her mouth shut'; and so in the aftermath of Karup's hanging, Jezabel in turn killed Huk by way of vengeance. The book concludes by highlighting Kyle's innocence and her ultimate abandonment, but her fate is not made clear.

There are probably some discrepancies between publications. Cotten is also seen as Hewitt, Kayleigh as Kyle, and some versions of the book end with Blacksad scattering Cotten's (Hewitt's) ashes to the wind over Las Vegas, fulfilling his last wish. Las Vegas ( Spanish: "The Meadows" is the most populous City in the state of Nevada, the seat of Clark County, and an internationally

Red Soul

Is based firmly shortly before the Red Scare, Blacksad is employed as a bodyguard for a rich old tortoise called Hewitt Mandeline, who goes on a gambling trip to Las Vegas. McCarthyism is a term describing the intense anti-communist suspicion in the United States in a period that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s A bodyguard (or "close protection officer" is a type of Security guard or government agent who protects a person—usually a famous wealthy or politically Tortoises or land Turtles are land-dwelling Reptiles of the family of Testudinidae', order Testudines. After returning home, Blacksad's last assignment is to accompany him to an art gallery, where he meets his friend Smirnov with his family. He finds a leaflet for An Energy for Peace, a lecture given by his old school teacher, Otto Liebber (an owl) a nuclear physician and Nobel Prize candidate, supported by the rich, young, dynamic, idle communist Samuel Gotfield (a dalmatian) and his titular scientific research foundation. The Owls are an order of birds of prey. Most are Solitary, and nocturnal, with some exceptions (e Nuclear physics is the field of Physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of Atomic nuclei. The Nobel Prize (Nobelpriset (Nobelprisen is a Swedish prize established in the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel; it was first awarded in Peace, Literature Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based

However, all is not going well for Liebber and the Gotfield Foundation; the lecture hall is mobbed by anti-communist rioters and Blacksad takes an instant dislike for Gotfield, who makes a mockery of the lecture. Anti-communism refers to opposition to Communism. Historically the word "communism" has been used to refer to several types of communal social organization and He also meets Gotfield's fiancee, writer Alma Mayer, who reacts frostily to him. Gotfield invites him to a party at his luxurious coastal mansion where Blacksad meets the so-called 'Twelve Apostles' - twelve Leftist intellectuals who gather near Gotfield for protection from the Witch Hunt: Greenberg, a beat poet, photographer Dora, Klein the sculptor, actor Bill Ratcliff and scriptwriter Jess Logan, Russian painter Sergei Litvak, accomplished chemist Laszlo Herzl and Ms. "Witch trial" redirects here For the song by Rush, see Fear series. A photographer is a person who takes a Photograph using a Camera. An actor, actress, player or thespian (see terminology) is a person who Acts in a Dramatic production and who works Russia (Россия Rossiya) or the Russian Federation ( Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a transcontinental Country extending Painting (pān'tīng in Art, is the practice of applying Color to a Surface (support base such as e A chemist is a Scientist trained in the Science of Chemistry. Mayer herself. After Blacksad grudgingly saves a drunken Gotfield from drowning, with the help of Liebber's close friend Otero, Herzl angrily accuses Liebber of promoting nuclear weapons, ending the 'party' on a poor note. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. When Otero gets back home, he is killed by a mysterious gavial assassin. The gharial ( Gavialis gangeticus) sometimes called the Indian gavial or gavial, is one of two surviving members of the family It seems he actually meant to kill Liebber.

Blacksad and Alma - who will soon marry Gotfield, planning on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls—begin to have feelings for each other. The Niagara Falls are massive Waterfalls on the Niagara River, straddling the international border separating the Canadian province of Ontario Blacksad decides to become Liebber's 'Guardian Angel', following him and observing him. Soon he saves Liebber from a car bomb, planted at a garage entrance by the same gavial, but despite a destructive leap through a pane of glass and brutal hand-to-hand combat, he fails to stop the goon from escaping and Liebber disappears from the scene leaving just a wrecked DeSoto. The DeSoto (sometimes De Soto) was a brand of Automobile based in the United States, manufactured and marketed by the Chrysler Corporation

From Smirnov, Blacksad learns that the gavial is a highly-regarded hit man known as Ribs, and that his bomb was uncharacteristically chemically complex. Contract killing occurs when a private contractor or a government hires someone to kill a specific person or people for a sum of money Suspecting that Herzl the chemist might have hired Ribs to kill Liebber out of professional jealousy, Blacksad confronts Herzl. To his surprise, Herzl is a Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, who shows him photographic proof that Liebber used to work for the Third Reich. The Holocaust (from the Greek el ''ὁλόκαυστον'' (el-Latn holókauston holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt" also known as A Nazi-hunter is an individual who tracks down and gathers information on Former Nazis and SS members who were involved in the Holocaust so that they can Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers (The story never resolves who hired Ribs. )

Stricken with this new information, Blacksad seeks solace from Alma, but before they can meet, the FBI arrests her and other Apostles as communists, inexplicably betrayed by Gotfield. When the FBI agents visit Litvak in his art studio, they accidentally kill him after injecting him with truth serum to try and find out where Liebber is. The fictional truth drug Hyoscine-pentothal does not describe real pentothal accurately Liebber, meanwhile, has returned to his old neighborhood (where Blacksad also grew up), only to find it overcome by poverty and his father's church in ruins. Suffering a personal crisis, Liebber hides at the city aquarium, where Blacksad once hid as a child. An aquarium (plural aquariums or aquaria) is a Vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which Water -dwelling Plants

Blacksad intercepts the FBI agents before they take Alma away and rescues her, taking shelter in Weekly's apartment. Falling in love with Alma, Blacksad promises to take her to Niagara Falls, which none of her previous husbands ever managed to do, and which to her is an important act of commitment. Blacksad then finds a fatalistic Liebber at the aquarium. Liebber admits to a lifetime of failure, trying to improve the world and reduce suffering, only to make the wrong choices and leaving the world worse than before. His last sin was to follow Litvak's advice: that to maintain the balance of world peace, both Russia and the United States would need to have nuclear bombs - and Liebber has been supplying Litvak with the information for the Russians.

Hoping to minimize the damage, Blacksad visits Litvak's studio only to find his dead body. Realizing that Litvak had copied Liebber's information onto a canvas and then painted over it to disguise it as a work of art, Blacksad goes to the shipyards, where the painting has been loaded onto a boat bound for an art exhibition in East Berlin. Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which Art objects (in the most general sense meet an Audience. East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990 It turns out Litvak had made two copies of the painting entitled "Red Soul", one of which would return to North America after the exhibition, while the other copy (containing Liebber's information) would remain behind for the Russians' nuclear program. Blacksad re-routes this painting to Australia. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics.

As Blacksad prepares for his trip to Niagara Falls, the FBI agents arrest him and plant fake evidence to frame Blacksad for killing the painter. Senator Gallo himself interrogates Blacksad, trying to find out where Liebber is hiding. When Blacksad refuses to cooperate, Gallo points out that his fingerprints were found in Litvak's studio and that he is likely to die in the electric chair if he refuses to cooperate. Execution by electrocution (usually referred to after its method of implementation as the Electric Chair) is an execution method originating in the United States in which the Blacksad is then released.

Blacksad visits Gotfield to find out what made him betray his friends and move into Gallo's camp. Since Gotfield is rich, Blacksad deduces that Gallo must have offered him something money couldn't buy, and this turns out to be the case. Gotfield is now one of a selected group of people who will be evacuated to a special government shelter in the event of a nuclear war. The main criteria for selection is being a friend or supporter of Senator Gallo.

Finding a list of names along with a description of this plan (called 'Project Noah') in Gotfield's safe, Blacksad uses it to blackmail Gallo. Blacksad is not blamed for Litvak's death, and the government fakes Liebber's death and allows him to leave the country. Blacksad gives the list of names to Weekly in a sealed envelope, with instructions to publish the contents if anything happens to him.

The end of the comic is bittersweet. Liebber writes Blacksad a letter, explaining that he has returned to Germany where he is happy again, helping a community rebuild itself after the war, and is teaching children to read and write. Alma, meanwhile, gives up on Blacksad after she reads the (fake) story in the newspaper that Liebber committed suicide after Blacksad turned him in. In her mind, Blacksad is now as much a traitor as Gotfield. Blacksad tries to find her again, but she has vanished.

Commentary

A 'behind the scenes' book has already been compiled, with author commentary. [6]

Future Film Version

Variety has reported that a movie version is in the works. It will produced by Thomas Langmann and Louis Leterrier ( The Transporter, The Incredible Hulk), is scheduled to direct targeting for a 2009 release. Louis Leterrier (born June 17 1973 in Paris France is a French Film director whose most notable films include The Transporter and Transporter The Transporter (French Le Transporteur) is a Franco-American action / Crime movie directed by Louis Leterrier and Budget could be as high as $90 million-$100 million [7] .

References

  1. ^ Interview with Juan Díaz Canales
  2. ^ Overview of Blacksad on Guía del Cómic
  3. ^ Angoulême International Comics Festival - Prize for Artwork
  4. ^ Sierre International Comics Festival - Prix de la Découverte
  5. ^ Eisner Award nominees
  6. ^ forbiddenplanet.co.uk
  7. ^ Langmann launches edgy schedule - Entertainment News, Weekly International, Media - Variety

External links

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