Check This Book Out! Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido

Check out the NEW BOOKS DISPLAY for some items recently added to our collection. Featured this month is the Award-Winning International Best Seller, Blacksad, by Spanish creators Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. In this unique and ground-breaking book, Canales and Guarnido tell three stories of love, revenge, crime, betrayal, alienation, race relations, and scientific rivalaries from the perspective of anthropomorphic cat detective, John Blacksad.

Following the long standing tradition of using animals as characters in comics (R. Crumb), Canales’ adds a new level of storytelling by having a four-footed cast, not as a means to create cute and cuddly book, but rather as device to look into the nature and personality of humans, both individually and in groups (similar to the Orwell’s Animal Farm). Likewise, Guardino’s art, is perfect blend of traditional European comics (Jaques Tardi) and American Noir films of the 1950, which put together creates a muted and shadowed urban enviroment riddled with mystery, violence, and crime.