The stories

• Vol I: Blacksad: Somewhere with the Shadows, Arctic Nation, Red Soul
• Vol II: A Silent Hell; artist working methods, and the two shorts, “Spit at the Sky” and “Like Cats and Dogs”
• Vol III: Amarillo

I was absolutely entranced by Blacksad, put out by (iirc) a couple of Spaniards; the artist was evidently employed by Disney, which may be part of the reason for his superb anthropomorphic depictions of the various animals peopling the noir comic, which actually is aimed at the French market, which influence can be seen in some of the intricate backgrounds; my favorite, perhaps, are two views of Blacksad's office in the first story.

Set in the 50s, featuring a minority-race cat, with strong social justice themes, of course this concept was gonna intrigue my interest. The first story sets up the conceit: people as brutal, vicious “animals”. No-one in the story is pure, not even the noble German Shepherd police officer, who begins the story by warning Blacksad not to take vengeance into his own hands paws over the death of an ex-lover, Natalia Willford; by the end, even he is forced, by political exigencies, to exact justice outside the law.

A big part of the strength of this series is the way the writer sets up complex, competing interests. Thus, in the second story, Arctic Nation, the fascists prove to be just as deadly to their own, and the ultimate murderers are exacting vengeance not out of political ideology, but from older, more personal injustices. This story also bears (ahem) the distinction of featuring the only female character I can recall without the sexualized mouth/lips the artist uses to distinguish non-default (i.e. male) characters—the middle-aged deer teacher who initially hires Blacksad and who hews to devoted, sexless, and mentor-to-young (see also: traditional librarian) stereotype.

It should be noted, the character design for Natalia's face is based on Katharine Hepburn,^[1] . Since Hepburn, a tomboy, preferred tennis, golf and swimming, Natalia's love of ballet probably came from Audrey Hepburn (who started her career as a ballet dancer), a witty reference, perhaps, to the fact that both highly regarded actresses have the same surname. The lush figure, not to mention the mob associations are, one presumes, a legacy of Marilyn Monroe. All three of these women, from what I was able to determine, were strong minded; Katharine Hepburn, reared very progressively, had a reputation of being so cold and independent she deliberately had a man strike her on-screen so as to look more acceptably feminine. Audrey Hepburn was a noted humanitarian and part of the Dutch resistance during WWII. Monroe stood by her husband, Arthur Miller, during HUAC inquiries, which were often career-killing. That had to have taken guts. None of them struck me as the sort to ‘cower in fear’ the way Natalia does, all so big strong Blacksad can rescue her—from a wimpy gardener.^[2]

However, the books suffer more from pervasive sexism than active misogyny: after a 1 page prologue, for example, Silent Hell opens with Blacksad quoting Sartre—while watching a pretty leopard stripper, your sort of standard noir entertainment. Blacksad, of course, is too refined to drool over her boobs, that being left to Weekly, his weasel sidekick. (Blacksad's alienation is ably depicted in this and other similar scenes when he's looking off to the side, as in this case, or even the other way, as during an A-bomb test, while simultaneously setting the tenor of the times. It's brilliant, and one of the reasons I love these stories.)^[3] But at least the stripper appears to be enjoying herself, ^[4] which certainly can't be said for Natalia,^[5] the first female character introduced to us—naked, with a bullet hole through her forehead.

Well ok, it's a murder mystery after all, so somebody had to be dead. It's the gratuitous boob shot in the first panel of page 2, along with the rolling, opened eyes, and sagging mouth with the artistic trail of blood down her face, that had to be actively swatted with the sexism auto-tune-out mechanism. —I suppose the creators thought the contrast between the appalling death on her face and lusciousness of her breast (mediated by a beautifully drawn hand that sets up a circular focus between the wound and boob) was supposed to set up sympathy for the wasted life, but the subtexts (as the story would make clear) is that a) all that, ahem, pussy wasted and b) sexual infidelity in women shall be punished.

Sigh. Thanks guys.

By Arctic Nation the woman slaughtered at least has a shirt on, and in fact her boobs are concealed entirely by the pose. Instead we get her ass up in the air, clad in beautiful lace panties. But it is covered. Progress! And in the next three stories, no women are fridged at all, so we merely have to deal with the none to one-third depiction that is consistent in most mainstream media. This holds for a lot of the secondary villainous characters—women can be prostitutes, but not hit men, drug dealers, or even bar-tenders at dives. Granted, they would have been uncommon in those roles in the 50s, but I'd guess not non-existent.

Equally irritating are the various racial stereotypes: horses are nearly universally poor, usually stupid, and dark-colored—PoC. Reptiles—or any furless creature—generally are criminal. Sometimes the author is being sort of clever, as with a magpie character who is betrayed by his love of shiny things, or Weekly's romantic encounter with a skunk, someone who actually finds his mustelid odor attractive. More often than not popular animals—canids and felids, and to some extent birds—tend to be cast as smarter, more successful and, if not more appealing, then at least, more powerful characters. Gorillas and monkeys, painfully, appear as boxers and voudoun witches, roles traditionally associated with blacks. (Kudos for the gay couple in one of Silent Hell's crowd scenes though;)

Annoying as these weaknesses are, most people are far more focused on the superlative art. And it is spectacular: the artist has a first-rate grasp of facial expression, figurative anatomy, perspective, control of large, complex scenes full of people and architecture, and color, using it lyrically and effectively not only to set mood, but also as a plot aid. Not to mention a fascination with complex, dappled shade:)

Garnido plays with this a good deal in Red Soul, switching for example abruptly from his typical warm-earth tones to a harsh blue and magenta-pink scheme to signal a shift to a futuristic nuclear missile bunker (not to mention the impending mental breakdown of the POV character in the scene), but it is in the fourth story, A Silent Hell, set in New Orleans, that this really comes into play. In order to delineate the multiple, intercut timelines, the happier past is in sunny, cheerful colors, the present (night) in the darker noir palette typical of the book (and the far-distant past is in blue and white). Weekly's scene with the skunk has an appropriately greenish tinge (this color traditionally being used in western comics to indicate malodorous environs.) The artist, in the long section explaining his process, talks about how he uses color to indicate time:

[T]here is an “evolution” in the palette from blue (the water [in which Blacksad is drowning, before we switch to Sebastian's POV]) to red (blood), and then to yellow (a golden age that never was), and even to pink (for the impossible “vie en rose”) and beyond that to brown, signaling a return to reality to Sebastian's actual life of shit. (p. 97)

I personally loved trying to untangle all that,^[6] though I guess that sort of decoding is not to everyone's taste. It is probably my favorite in the series, for all that Blacksad himself is mostly a framing character; the tale is really about the musician, Sebastian, and the ways his environment ultimately destroys him.

What I particularly appreciate about these narratives is that they're multi-stranded. The first story, which is pretty close to archetypical detective noir, deals with infidelity, treachery and the freedom from consequences extreme wealth can bring; as well as references to racism. The second story draws racism into sharp focus with the conflicts between the Black Claws—poor black furred persons, in the form of horses and bulls, and the Arctic Nation—a polar bear police commissioner, a fox, an ermine—complete with shops refusing to serve blacks. But the story also references the economic depression that allowed these gangs their foothold, and ultimately turns on intrafamily betrayal over some three generations.

The next story, Red Soul, which completes the collection making up the first volume, combines references to communism and McCarthyism, the A-bomb and spies, the Beats and Abstract Expressionists. Also, Blacksad falls in love again, with predictable results.

Blacksad, humoring a failed client, claims in the short “Spit at the Sky” (collected in Volume II) to be a second rate shamus. Of course everything else in that narrative, indeed the series as a whole—his musings about world war II and Korea, militaristic jingoism, not to mention his college education—is supposed to convince us that his “failure” as a detective is not so much (lack of) intellect, but conflicts with his code of ethics (and, possibly, a poor fit between a profession for which his childhood in the slums may have equipped him, but which is not really an ideal career choice for someone as introspective and sensitive as he).

But Red Soul shows us that Blacksad is incompetent. —In many ways, it's a superb story, if a bit frustrating to those of us with just enough historical knowledge to be dangerous. Frex: the owl ‘Professor’ Otto Lieber is pretty clearly modelled on two men, the rocket scientist Werner von Braun and Robert Oppenheimer. Fine and dandy, these stories are meant to be lively, action driven detective noir of roughly 50 pages each, so it's not surprising that the author combines multiple historical sources. And yes, Braun really was photographed with Hitler, and yes, Oppenheimer really was a communist, and he did indeed manage the Manhattan Project. (And Albert Einstein ‘The father of the A-bomb’ did regret bringing it into existence, and did campaign for peace and disarmament later in life.)

However, none of the scientists, (not for lack of opportunities in von Braun's case, as he was evidently actively courted by spies) let alone the color field painter Mark Rothko betrayed the US by giving away atomic secrets! Von Braun evidently lied about his nazi associations (big surprise)^[7] and Oppenheimer actively threw subordinates under the bus in a (failed) attempt to conceal his communist connections in order to keep his security clearance, so it's not like they didn't have real-life flaws the authors could have exploited; as I keep saying over and over again, it's the nuanced characterization, in which no-one's pure, that makes these stories so engaging.

However. It does seem a little unfair to do a 180 on their characters. (This is the sort of thing that turned a honored, wealthy supporter and probable apostle of Jesus into a reviled^[8] prostitute.) Rothko has it even worse.^[9] The Litvek character in particular seems to exemplify the left-leaning hippy dippy artist for whom political creed is more critical than making art; and while these people certainly exist, the vast majority of artists, of whatever political stripe, are far more concerned about Making Art. Even the brief wikipedia account makes very clear that Rothko took his work very seriously indeed; and he hung out with other artists, not communists and spies.

Granted, the characters’ motivations are beautifully balanced: former nazi scientist professing for peace allied with a communist painter who gives away atomic secrets versus ex-holocaust murderer^[10] versus a McCarthyite senator whose FBI minions commit torture and murder versus an assholish liberal^[11] ...It's amazing storytelling, no doubt about it. History, once you start digging, is always more complicated and messy than the narrative in your textbook.

However.

McCarthy is justly reviled as a witch-hunter mostly interested in cementing his own power, not finding real threats. The HUAC, or House Un American Committee's^[12] effort to divide and crush the american left is a shameful period in our history, a price I feel we're still paying: it was not and never has been illegal to belong to the communist party, and, frankly no-one's business. While those reds who excused the millions Stalin and the Gang of Four saw starved and executed certainly deserve our condemnation, that hardly justifies their persecution.

Much as I might admire the craft of these complicated character motivations, it bugs me a good deal that the fictional left-leaning characters are guilty of crimes their real life analogues would have been horrified to commit. I felt this decision weakened the story: though many of the named spies (at least on the wikipedia page) were communists, most were not artists or writers. I realized, that's what bothered me. Artists, even the most flamboyant, were primarily interested in impressing their local (i.e. other artists) circle, not making a splash in politics. The Beats, annoying, sexist and petty criminal as they may have been, did not, so far as I know, ever consider betraying the US, however scathing their criticisms of its stifling, suburban culture may have been.

IOW, the underlying theme of this story, inasmuch as it had one, is that while blowhards might betray for political power (or wealth) the idealistic left was just as likely if not more so commit even worse crimes in name of their philosophies, a trope that still persists today, and which is, in my opinion, unfair. That such people exist, no-one will deny; idealogues of any stripe are dangerous. But poverty-stricken artists and writers are far less damaging than the wealthy elites who scapegoat them, and there appeared to me a fair bit of this going on.

Really, intellectuals of any kind of get a bum rap across this whole story: frex, when Blacksad walks down the hall of what is presumably a decent school, (since Oppenheimer taught at CalTech and Harvard,) every female student in view goes ga-ga over him. Blacksad, not the professor. The boyfriends are suitably jealous. This is annoying and unrealistic, implying that these students [of either sex] are not serious about their studies.^[13] Really? Particularly in the math and physics building, where female students especially would have had to struggle to be taken seriously as it was? Besides the obvious sexism, and the undercutting of the Professor's expertise in showing his students to be lightweights, there's also what this implies about racism in the Blacksad universe: namely, that it's not nearly as bad as Arctic Nation suggests,^[14] since any average co-ed will be bowled over by the detective. That's just not something your mainstream white woman back in the 50s would have cared to admit, let alone display, even if she felt it. Just travelling with a black guy in your car could get you killed, never mind interracial romance.^[15]

This sort of Gary Stuish wankery also comes into play when Blacksad flashes an FBI ID—to other FBI agents! Look, we know Blacksad is a badass. This just makes him look like a fool; or perhaps given the corruption and incompetence the agents later display in the story (they drug and inadvertently murder someone, then frame Blacksad for their crime) one just has to assume that the US government is far more venal in-universe. I mean, don't get me wrong, the government was certainly illegally wiretapping^[16] communists, socialists, an others; and as, say, Iran-contra, or the Bush II's administrations efforts to ‘rewrite reality’ prove, it's very capable of mind-bogglingly stupid and destructive behaviors; but it's Blacksad's casual impersonation that suggests a major breakdown in the rule of law; even in the looser 50s, I can't imagine a reasonable, decent type impersonating government officials to their very faces and expecting, as Blacksad so clearly does, to get away with it. It subverts the culture the background of the stories has set up, turning into something far more dystopian (and not as relatable.)

And the biggest example of Blacksad's supposed ineptitude? Well, he cuts a deal with the powerful McCarthyite senator to avoid a murder rap; but it means his girlfriend, a communist sympathizer and friend to the Professor, thinks that Blacksad has betrayed her mentor, whom she believes committed suicide as a result. He misses a crucial meeting with her by a couple of weeks—and this is the kicker that shows he's a lousy detective, because he has every reason in the world—romantic in addition to assuring her that her dear Professor is in fact alive—to find her.

And he fails.

Alma is not a spy. She has no particular gift (nor resources) for assuming a hidden identity. Blacksad (the hardboiled gumshoe) ought to be able to find her, but he can't.

As I said before, I loved the next book in the series, A Silent Hell. Its biggest problem (at least for me) is the aforementioned depiction of a black voudoun practitioner...as a monkey.^[17] It may very well have similarly sized plot holes, but the complex timelines disguised them adequately. (Though I finally had to conclude that the mysterious, cat-mermaid tattooed—how, on his fur...?^[18] —lion who rescues Blacksad from drowning is a sort of guardian angel/magic/lucky coincidence.)

But then we get to Amarillo, which for me was perhaps the weakest of the lot. Part of the problem is that it tries—and fails—to tie very disparate tropes together. The Beats and Color Field artists, like the Communists, were all, in their way, critiquing mainstream US culture, even if in real life they weren't much interacting with each other. This story returns to the Beats, specifically a Ginsberg/Burroughs amalgamation and Jack Kerouac—crossed with a runaway-to-the-circus story, a romantic, fictional trope dating to the Victorian era.

Bwuh?

The only real point of contact between these very disparate storylines is, so far as I could tell, was being On the Road, as both the poets and circus are constantly travelling about. (Blacksad's involvement, which starts when he returns a wallet to a wealthy man and is given the job of driving a Cadillac cross-country, is similar to an incident that appears in the book; so do the Beat characters driving a rickety ’37 Ford. Their theft of Blacksad's vehicle is based on Neal Cassady's habit of stealing cars; it was Cassady, rather than Ginsberg or Burroughs, who accompanied Kerouac On the Road. (The motorcycle gang Chad annoys, and from whom Blacksad borrows a bike is, presumably, an homage, like Howl, to the Marlon Brandon film. So far, so good.

However, as in Red Soul, real events get moved and displaced. Burrough's drunken accidental killing of his wife while playing William Tell with a martini glass on her head gets transformed into an artistically jealous rage-fuelled murder by the Kerouac character (Chad, a lion) of Burroughs/Ginsberg (Abe Greenberg, as a bison). (The other famous Beat murder, of a man named Kammerer by Lucien Carr, for which Kerouac and Burroughs were named accessories after the fact doesn't appear at all, as the rampant homosexuality amongst the male Beats is completely disappeared from this narrative.) In other words, the real murders associated with the Beats had nothing to do with art, let alone a victorian-style defense of a poor maiden's honor (which is about as far as you can get from [male] Beat sensibilities, which mostly involved deserting women, usually after impregnating them first.)

Chad, the Kerouac character, then flees to the circus, where he meets up with a heiress who is hiding out from her family, to whom he's gentle and courtly. I'm not an expert on Keruoac, but he never struck me as the shy, skinny kid he's depicted as in the book; nor did I see how On The Road was tied to the circus and its travels, which were very much about day-to-day economic survival. Needless to say, at this point this story diverges considerably from the actual historical lives on which (some of) the characters were based, and to my mind goes off the rails the worst. —Some reviewers complained that Chad escaped any consequences of his murder, but since he turns himself in and confesses to save Blacksad from being framed once again for murder, I don't really see that—especially as I recall, Carr mounted a successful gay panic defense against Kammerer, and Burroughs was never prosecuted at all for his wife's death. (That's another thing that annoyed me: of the four Beats referenced one way or another in this story, Burroughs, Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg, only Kerouac never had homosexual relations; frankly I think the story would have made a lot more sense if Luanne had been male; as a closeted homosexual, she would have had a lot more to fear from her family, even as an adult.)

The first story in particular explores the effect of the powerful elite and their betrayal upon weaker members of society, a trope that reappears in Arctic Nation, Red Soul and A Silent Hell. That's not really an issue in Amarillo. Sure the owner/leaders of the circus have more power relative to Chad (who's a menial) or even his love interest (since she's desperate to conceal her wealthy background); and the FBI agents who are the bane of Blacksad's existence reappear—but mostly to act as incompetent comic relief. But the systemic injustices that serve as the series’ backbone simply aren't present in this book.

Blacksad himself doesn't come off looking any too clever, either. First, he fails to recognize Abe the Bison (despite commenting on his reading of the poem “Howl” a few scant months ago); then he lets a valuable car that isn't even his get stolen from him; then he's back to pretending to be an FBI agent, even though he swore he'd never do something that stupid again a couple of books ago; and finally he sets himself up to get framed for murder yet again by a couple of enemies whom he knows are out to get him.

Thematically, the story zigzags about as well. The heiress, Luanne, is afraid of her wealthy family, which made sense when she was fourteen, but she's now presumably old enough and definitely strong-minded enough to fend them off (even if she hasn't reached her majority, which is certainly implied by her demeanor).^[19] She fits beautifully into the old-fashioned ‘run away to the circus’ plot bunny (which evidently hopped into existance as early as the late 1800s). The circus—and its various members—don't seem to provide much except an assortment of backstabbing characters for the protagonists to be threatened by (Luanne, of course) or reacted against (Chad and Blacksad).

Likewise, Chad's ‘big problem’ is that (unlike the real Beats who struggled for years, and in some cases decades to get published) he's having an artistic crisis after the success of his first book, but some reason never adequately demonstrated is unwilling to publish his beloved scroll, though he's perfectly happy to wave it around—even kill for it—despite having (evidently) a wealthy family lawyer and friend who would be thrilled to take care of the details for him. In effect, Luanne and Chad (unlike most of the real Beats, with the exception of William S Burroughs, who was supported by his family) are charmed young things from wealthy backgrounds whose disillusionment with the world seems to have more to do with personal (i.e. parental) issues^[20] (or angst) than a genuine desire to ecstatically pursue ‘IT’ and ‘TIME’.

One could, perhaps, argue that the creators aren't keeping track of their earlier works, but in fact, they do: Blacksad is in an unexpectedly sour mood at the beginning of Red Soul because of a lookalike beauty contest featuring his dead ex-girlfriend from the first story; he's in an equally foul mood in this story because a racist plays a song that brings up painful memories of the lost Alma in Red Soul. (One presumes the literal as well as figurative detour to visit Blacksad's ‘girl-next-door’ level-of-wholesome sister, not to mention dropping mysterious references to their missing(?) father is mostly laying down for the next book, but more subtlety would have been welcome.) So I don't really know what the creators are trying to do here, except, perhaps, show the romance (or not) of traveling along route 66 in a spiffy new car, or with a circus.

That's a bit of a comedown, after the powerful themes in the prior stories.

Update, 14may20: numerous minor spelling, grammar & clarification edits.

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Sylvus Tarn