This was an interesting week because we were asked to look at comics that were not written in English for American/ English speaking audiences. For this assignment I chose to look at the comic album Blacksad (Quelque part entre les ombres) by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. Though written/illustrated by Spaniards, Blacksad is intended for a French audience. This was amusing for me since I don't speak French so what I picked up from reading it came from guessing based off my knowledge of Spanish. However, the flow and character illustration allowed me to understand what was going on. The illustrative style is very different from what we have encountered before. The drawings are much more detailed and don't rely on line quality as much. The amazing visual quality to Blacksad often proved distracting because I often found myself becoming caught up in the images for many of the panels. I laughed at how the authors, like so many comic authors, used animals in place of humans to emphasize human characteristics.
What I loved the most about these were that they hearkened to classic film noir or detective serials, which I really adore. The setting, characters (especially the hard anti-hero John Blacksad) and story lines make it seem like it could be a storyboard for a movie.
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