By Javier Picazo Feliú
Madrid, Apr 3 (EFE).- Since its first publication in France in 2000, ‘Blacksad’ has won everything a graphic novel can win, including several American Harvey and Eisner Awards – the latter considered the Oscars of comics – the Best Drawing prize at the Angoulême Festival in France, as well as the Barcelona Comic Book Fair and the National Comic Book Prizes in Spain.
The popular series revolutionized the world of comics shortly after its release, becoming a critical and commercial success, translated into nearly 30 languages, and selling millions of copies worldwide.
Behind this success are the Spanish artists Juan Díaz Canales (Madrid, 1972), scriptwriter and creator of the story; and Juanjo Guarnido (Granada, 1967), responsible for the drawing and coloring.
‘Blacksad’ is a tribute to the masters of detective stories, such as Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, popular for capturing the stories with realistic drawings with the aroma of a classic tale.
The comic series, consisting of six stories published in seven volumes, recounts the adventures of John Blacksad, a World War II veteran and private detective, in 1950s New York inhabited by a zoomorphic universe of animal-like characters.
The first installment, ‘Somewhere Within the Shadows’, is now being reissued for its 25th anniversary with a special 96-page collector’s edition from Norma Editorial, including the edited volume and an appendix of the first sketches, interviews, curiosities, and watercolor drawings.
“Everything is a mixture of emotions. 25 years and it seems like yesterday. We entered the world of comics through the big door, with something that was a publishing phenomenon from the first moment. We’ve been privileged, but perhaps we’ve earned it through our determination, tenacity, and hard work,” Juanjo Guarnido told EFE.
‘Blacksad’ is the result of a personal project by Díaz Canales in which he shows a dark, violent, and corrupt world inhabited by humanized animals.
“We are much more like animals than we like to admit, and most of the time we act on instinct. Our animal condition defines us as humans. In this sense, the metaphor of ‘Blacksad’ works very well,” he said.
In the story, each animal species reflects its personality, and while the main character is a sleek and elusive black cat, his fellow reporter Weekly is a cunning fox, rats and lizards are sometimes street thugs, and Jake is a boxing gorilla who acts as a bodyguard.
“It’s always more fun to humanize animals,” said Guarnido, admitting that he used his father as a model to bring the main character to life.
The Spanish comic artist left his hometown of Salobreña in southern Spain for Madrid and later moved to Paris, where he currently resides after working for Disney – where he designed and animated characters for films such as ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ ‘Hercules,’ ‘Tarzan’ and ‘Atlantis’.
‘Blacksad’ has reached the world of video games with a graphic adventure for new-generation consoles and computers including PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, role-playing board games, and has even had “attempts” to become a movie that did not quite get off the ground, according to the authors.
The story is set to continue with new cases that are sure to put the comic world’s most famous feline detective on the ropes.
“Although we are 25 years old, we have only made a few albums. There is still a long way to go before we start thinking about an end. There is ‘Blacksad’ for a while,” said Díaz Canales. EFE
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