Blacksad: Using Animals to Express Character
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- Buy Blacksad: amzn.to/35rSfsM
Blacksad is a French comic by Spanish creators Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. It's some of the best crime fiction out there with exceptionally gorgeous artwork. But everyone is an animal. So this episode breaks down some "funny animal comics" history and discusses how Blacksad uses animals to express character.
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"you caught me engaging in furry culture"
Something I'd never thought I'd hear you say.
With all these intro gags, is there anything Chris will not say some time?
Good to know his fursona is a dinosaur...
@@yggdrasil3 Dinosaurs had fur?
@@andrewmorrice9139 Is it called something else when it's not a mammal? I don't know really...
@@andrewmorrice9139 feathers, so yes...
"OH HI YOU CAUGHT ME ENGAGING IN FURRY CULTURE"
Wow man
This has to be the best detailed artwork i have ever seen in comics.
I think this is the best hand-drawn watercolour work in any comic or graphic novel, it really helps take the anthropomorphism seriously.
It's actually the norm for European comics.
@@KonSimpl72 It's definitely not. In BD stores in France I thought Blacksad really stood out. The attention to detail on light sources, backgrounds, 3 point perspective, these are top illustrators in the world taking as long as they want to produce their best work.
@@bk04ft I'm not saying it's not top tier creativity. It is. But if you find yourself with ample time in a big bookstore with bandes dessinées, I can guarantee you can find at least a dozen or so showcasing similar crazy levels of detailed/inspired draftsmanship.
Oh yeah, I can't gush enough about its amazing environmental render on top of the character design.
5:57 you forgot to mention that he's black because (at least here in Spain) black cats are usually related with bad luck. Since they were playing with noir tropes, it fitted the "down on his luck detective" trope perfectly.
I want an animated movie of this comic with Keith David voicing blacksad
Mike Manhattan and i thought i was the only one who read blacksad with keith david’s voice
I haven't even read the comic and I already agree LOL
There's a game out on Steam that just was released in some form. It looks amazing but the reviews aren't exactly steallar.
Is it weird I prefer Phil La Marr's voice?
Kevin Conroy
this has become the replacement for saturday morning cartoons and pancakes for me, this show rocks
The Blacksad comics are amazing. I've recommended them to loads of people since I read them. Really incredible stuff.
Look like that cat from fairy tale
Always love to see you cover more French/European comics.
Yay! Love Bandes Dessinées!
I don't know many European comics outside of that world, but I remember The Killer Condom was super fun and even had a movie adaptation!
@@fad23 Kinda unrelated but check out ranxerox
@@someguy912 That's pretty classic. I think I've read a book or two but don't really remember much.
@Conrad Kujur I'm visiting Europe for the first time in September. I'm planning to hit Belgium for the Comic Book walk.
Noir comic with good art and story? you've sold me yet again.
Noir Sad
I'm reminded of Fish Police and Omaha the Cat Dancer. Blacksad really is something else. I'm gonna have to read those later books.
Speaking of omaha, one needa a video on that
Maкe 1 aбout dhe komik booк seriez “Fišh Polise” (whičh iz gud) & dhe anim8ed šhow deяived dherefrom (whičh iz бad)
I will never be able to unsee that intro.
Foghorn Leghorn was a rooster based on Senator Claghorn. Maybe that was the inspiration for senators being roosters.
This is interesting
AND unsetteling
THAT'S A JOKE SON!
Hysterical!!
I'm glad you noted that "trope" can be good or it can be bad. I do think that generally people use the term negatively, in a sense that something is repetitive, derivative or otherwise not good writing, but tropes in a broader sense are what define genre, and can themselves become part of the metaphorical presentation of themes. In this case, sometimes a black cat is just a black cat. In other cases, it's something else entirely.
If you haven't already I'd recommenced checking out Bryan Talbot's "Grandville" series, which mixes anthropomorphic animals with steampunk and classic European detective stories. It's named after the French caricaturist Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (aka JJ Grandville) whose "Les Métamorphoses du jour" (1828-29) are definitely the first "funny animal" drawn cartoons.
I hate that series, but it'd be fun to see an episode on that.
The horse head mask is the way to go. The only way.
PS: The new Blacksad adventure game by the Runaway team is allright btw.
I think I found this channel just this year, and I'm glad to see what's coming!
I have the first hardcover and I can attest that Blacksad is fantastic. This channel really deserves more viewers and attention .
I bought the entire collection during yesterday’s Black Friday sale and have been loving this series! Thanks for sharing this incredible gem!
*Watches opening*
I FEEL ATTACKED!
I LOVE this comic! So glad to see you covering it :D It's one of my absolute favorites. Amazing stories and characters, stunning artwork.
I have to say, this show is so educational. The way you express yourself about comics and their influence is pretty unique. I'm picking up many of these comics even some obscure ones because of this show. Thanks!!
I appreciate the research work that obviously goes into theses videos. Thank you. I have the Blacksad complete French edition and love it.
I'd heard of Blacksad but never seen it anywhere locally. Because of your review I ordered the books online. OMG, the artwork is gorgeous. Blacksad "The Silent Hell" is a good read, I'm waiting for the others to come in the mail.
Really glad to see you covering one of my absolute favorites. Hopefully the next album comes out sooner rather than later.
You've outdone yourself with that amazing intro lmao.
I'm a big Blacksad fan but never dove into making of the book. Very good stuff covered here!
I was reading comic with my coffee when your video came up. What a great timing . Great video added another serie I want to read. Have fun in Japan !
I love this channel as i get exposed to artists and stories i have never heard of,the opening artwork sold me already
Love this series. Always keep coming back to re-read this.
One of my favorite books. I look forward to more comics about john blacksad
Starting my Sunday morning tradition early today... thanks Chris!
Awesome episode, been waiting for it since I found the channel, I even learned few new things despite being a fan of Blacksad for a while now.
Can't wait for the new Blacksad books and game, hope everyone interested in noir comics give it a try.
This looks amazing! I love your channel dude.
Every once in a while you introduce me to something that I’ve never heard of, but than HAVE to read!
Brat Pack was a great read by the way. 👍
DUDE! The art on this is great! Gotta find me some of these books! That's why I watch Comic Tropes! Thx. Stay healthy.
Thank you for introducing me to Blacksad! I had heard a bit about it before, but I had no clue the art was so incredible! I have immediately ordered a copy for myself. :3
So happy you did a Blacksad episode!!
You should take a look at the recently released El Buscón de las Indias, an apocryphal sequel to Quevedo's El Buscón with story by Alain Ayroles and art by Guarnido, to see how he works with human characters (also, there's a music clip he animated for Freak Kitchen's Freak of the week). Also, I don't remember if you've ever done it, but if you haven't, you should make a video on Enki Bilal's stuff. May I recommend the Nikopol Trilogy or the Black Order Brigade.
Would you recommend the third Nikopol book? I've never been able to get my hands on a copy.
@@yggdrasil3 I would. The plot is still a fever dream but the art is gorgeous. Check if you can get the omnibus in your preferred language.
@@TheDecatonkeil Thanks, reading the second one was kind of confusing after how concrete the first one was.
Nikopol was such a mess
@@kostajovanovic3711 It's not for everyone. Its tone is weird with it feeling so melancholic and yet so cheesy at times. Like I said, it's a bit of a fever dream, but I can't help but love it.
I just discovered your channel, and the Maus image you showed just makes me want a video form your about that now! That comic is one of my favorites ever
Great episode, gonna have to pick these up.
Blacksad is a Spanish-French comic, as a matter of fact.
Juanjo Guarnido (which worked for Disney, BTW) and Juan Díaz-Canales are the Spanish creators and the comic was printed in France.
Many people will miss out a FANTASTIC noir story with OVER-THE-TOP artwork if they mistakenly label it as a "furry comic".
Blacksad novels are must-buy. So just don't waste time, GO BUY IT.
You're welcome.
Hi Chris, thanks for the video, I’m intrigued, definitely will be looking to purchasing these, the art looks awesome..🤙🏼🤙🏼🤙🏼
Love this comic, glad to here there are more stuff in the works
Great video! Thanks for the recomandation. Time to head for my local comic store :D
Always with the solid upload times, it’s 5 am in Canada but great video
The first 6 seconds have traumatized me to my core. Subscribed.
Thank you for introducing us to this! I’ll be looking to buy that omnibus soon
Another fantastic week. So I was walking down Whyte Ave in Edmonton last week and got handed a Chick Trac. Bad Bob. Some good stuff right there!!
Funny, I used to see ads for collections of this very comic in the pages of Kevin Eastman's run on Heavy Metal. Thank you for a closer look at what seems to be a very interesting book.
Happy to see another Heavy Metal fan
Great episode, Chris!
Dying or being stricken with blindness are the only things that could stop me from reading comics. Excelsior!
Great episode! I never heard of Blacksad before! I right away, went over to ComiXology to grab volume 1!
Blacksad is one of the best books I’ve read last year and it deserves much more attention than it gets.
Nice work here! I wish you some nice vacation in Japan!
14:46 This seems to be common in anything with anthropomorphic animals. Males look ugly, distorted, or very animal like, and females look like human women, with animal noses and ears stuck on. Take a look at something like 90's cartoon Swat Kats...two main characters are very cartoony, and the main women have small noses instead of snouts, and well, take a look yourself. It's a really strange trope you'll see oft repeated.
Absolutely!! And then it gets even worse once you delve into the furry fandom and see just how varied and unique female body types can get on it... :/ I'm saying this as a long-time furry myself - not exactly a greymuzzle, but still, I've been in this mess for what? Seven, eight years now? :P
I have noticed similar tendencies not only in stories about anthro animals but also in science fiction and fantasy with different races and nations (males are monstrous but females are more humanoid).
Maybe it is done for fan service.
I also heard a theory that we are easier to project empathy onto characters resembling humans (especially children and women)
@@andreydoronin6995 You're referring perhaps to the "women are wonderful effect"? It's quite startling to realise when you look into prison sentences. Men are wired to sympathise with women - that's why you'll get women victims in comics/games/tv more often.
@@reveranttangent1771 Sex sells. Doesn't really work the other way round that well...pretty boys don't sell women targeted stuff that well. It only works when you try it with things like shades of grey....that whole rich and powerful man doing the dominance angle. The charity shops ended up building forts out of donated copies.
I've seen this trend in cartoons/comics depicting 'normal' humans too. The women always have to look cute or attractive while the men get variety. Annoyingly common.
16:17 The Senator being a rooster is a callback to Foghorn Leghorn. Foghorn Leghorn's voice is based on the fictional radio character Senator Claghorn. Claghorn was a wildly exaggerated Southern supremacist based on real life Senator Huey Long from Louisiana. It's actually an extremely well researched dig at American fiction and American history.
Another great video and recommendation
I distinctly remember seeing the first Blacksad compilation in a bookstore, in English, in the middle 2000s, so I'm puzzled about 3:47
I see what you mean by the female characters, but BEAR in mind (ho ho) that it's just the 'sexy' ones that are more humanoid. There's a few that are more 'animalistic' (ie. the mouse house-keeper and the giraffe art gallery lady) but nonewithstanding, I don't feel the artist should have been afraid to try and make the attractive characters look more like the animals they are based on. Also as for choosing which animals to cast as which characters? Sometimes that may just be purely arbitrary. Sometimes that's literally my logic. If I have a design I want to use, I'll just use it - human, animal, whatever, it's a design, so just have fun!
Story aside, it peaked my interest visually, because sometimes, just sometimes, you can get a bit tired of humans. You see them every day in real life and comics/cartoons are a break from reality.
6:46 Dhe fem fatâl (lajke yn Khristofer Nowlan'z “Memento”) iz Natalja∴
I agree with you! The artist can do more animalistic women! Perhaps for me it annoys me more that it is clearly a decision? Because I adore the men's designs more then the women's because of their animal characteristics!
i wonder what the PS4 Blacksad game will be like. Thanks for all you do @comictropes
Great video as usual, Blacksad is probably my favorite series of the 2000's. Btw, on one of the trope you point out, I would say that mostly the beautiful females of the comic and/or potential love interests of Blacksad are made more "human-like". My guess is that it's probably so that the audience could see them from Blacksad's perspective you know, find them beautiful just like he does. It's also to make them stand-out as while not major characters usually, there actually many female characters that are more animal-like (more akin to something like Zootopia). For instance, the Maid in the first book, Miss Grey in the second one, The hookers (A pig and and fox) and Madame Gibraltar in the forth book, the flower shop owner in the last book etc.
The goat is named Faust, which SPOILERS
is a reference to the W H Göthe novel about a man who's about to make a deal with the devil, who is sometimes shown as a goat.
Yggdrasil isn’t his last name even pronounced “goat-eh”?
@@TheRealNormanBates Ouch, I don't remember.
Blacksad is a masterpiece and one of my top 3 favorite ALL TIME.
Great episode
Reminds me of both Saga and Bojack Horseman.
Animals being used to illustrate characteristics, but within an adult context. Granted, Bojack's animals are usually just background gags or wordplays, but still.
Chris, this may be the best intro yet.
Dude these intros are on point.
"Transgression!!!" Boy how that should become a popular meme these days.
Also that cover art for Blueberry looks so sweet I'm going to have to give that one a look.
Man I hope there will be more Blacksad comics came out.
I'm gonna have to pick that up it looks beautiful. Thanks.
Been wanting to pick up a copy of blacksads first volume, Noir is just such a under utilized genre these days so it's always great to see creators bring it back.
"you caught me engaging in furry culture" you´ll get hard time with COPPA
No children are watching this channel.
Dude I love this comic so much. I still can't believe that it's game was released this month.
Fwahahahaha! That’s the funniest fucking opening I’ve ever seen!
You’re the best. 🤣
I will never be able to unsee that beginning now!
"Fear & Loadhing in Las Vegas"
I love your videos! Have you ever covered the BPRD comics? I recently got into them and think they're criminally underrated.
Good episode!
I had read it on digital but I got the hardcover last month. It is gorgeous.
The women looking human is a classic anthro cartoon trope. The films Rock & Rule and Treasure Planet is a good example. Im a big fan of furry art and blacksad in general. But even some of the guys stand out. Theirs 2 characters ive notised with tails. While all of the others lack tails. Thanks for doing this story!
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 what an intro!!!
That frame at 9:12 looks like Canal Street in New Orleans, and that pig in the lower right corner reminds me of the character Ignatius Reilly from John Kennedy Toole's novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, which was set in New Orleans. It's an excellent read, and I highly recommend it.
OH MY GOD HE DID IT HE ACTUALLY DID IT
Please do a video about Scalped and 100 Bullets. I loved the Criminal one and those are my other two favorite crime series. Especially Scalped. I think it's one of the most underrated comics ever.
Scalped is fantastic.
There is an unstranlatable joke in the books, when Blacksad goes looking after some drug trail he meets a drugged horse and a camel who sell drugs, in spanish a "camel" is a drug dealer and being drugged is "having the horse"
GinHindew110 Puts a new light on Camel cigarettes
Planned new titles
I’m excited nowww
I really would love if you'd cover Zot! and Tales of the Beanworld.
I hope so: I love Zot.
blacksad is friggin awesome - cat wait for the next ones!
if anyone has anything similar to suggest, please comment! :D
Would love to see you do an episode on Cybersix or touch on it somehow, it's got a really interesting history and a lot of people only know it for the newer animated series. Might be a neat topic.
Blacksad reminds me of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds and Around the World with Willy Fog, both anime shows that I watched as a kid. Interestingly enough, both shows were Spanish and Japanese collaborations. (The two series are officially on UA-cam!)
Blacksad and Beastars can go along with each other as great adult comic/seinen manga about anthropomorphic society.
Awesome, I'm really liking the anime Beasters so this looks awesome I will check it out.
I was waiting for Blacksad in its original French. I finally got a copy and enjoyed it well. I didn't remember it was set in America, but that makes sense.
Only read the first book
Happy to see a Spanish artist here!
Haven't checked out 'Blacksad' yet but, if you like noir, you should check 'Torpedo'.
Fab! I absolutely love ‘Blacksad’ and it’s brill seeing you cover more European comics. I’d love you to delve into ‘Tin Tin’ and hear your thoughts on it. 👍🏻
One of the best comic book series from the two last decades. And I'm not saying that just because I'm french.
6:18 Yn mani eurotrash laŋguages odher dhan Eŋglish (lajke Spanišh & Frenčh) dhere iz onli 1 woяd 4 bowth “goяilla” & “bodyguaяd”
Boi you ever gonna vlog about Transmet or Constantine? I love the gritty Vertigo imprint stuff
Whatchutalkin' 'bout Willis??
well, I need to buy this now.
I noticed Monstress in the back. Any chance you'll be covering that, at some point? It's just so wildly different from other big books in the market.
I’m excited for the Blacksad video game that’s coming out in a couple of weeks.
0:00 aight imma head out
This is 100% where they got the idea for the movie Zootopia.
And they fucked up
Great opener. 10/10.
Great episode. That splash of New Orleans with Ignatius J Reilly in the corner is incredible.
The rooster might be a reference to communism. The red rooster was the symbol of the communist party of Venezuela and I have a Spanish friend who sang communist songs that referred to the red rooster.
I love that cameo of Ignatius Reilly. Good eye.