If you’ve ever read the meta text for Multiversity (the text we snuck in to appear in Google searches and when our posts get linked around), you’ll know that we love two things: comics and cats. So of course, when one combines the two elements, its a shoe-in for one of our favorites.
Of course, even if we didn’t love cats, we’d still love Blacksad. Hell, even if we didn’t love comics, we’d love Blacksad. Created by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, Blacksad is a fantastic French noir title filled with rich artwork, compelling characters and wonderful stories, Blacksad‘s first three volumes were collected in a nice hardcover and released by Dark Horse in 2010 after various floppy releases, and today we’ve learned from Dark Horse that the fourth volume, already released overseas (back in September of 2010), is on its way stateside for the first time.
Set in New Orleans in the 1950s, the book finds Blacksad investigating the death of a celebrated pianist, only to be immediately wrapped up in a dangerous mystery filled with “drugs, voodoo, the rollicking atmosphere of Mardia Gras, and the dark underbelly that it hides.” The book will also feature a making-of section filled with preliminary sketches and watercolor studies, and the release will also collect two “never-before-collected Blacksad short stories.”
John Blacksad is a fantastic character, and is basically what you would expect from Dashiell Hammett if Hammett had written books starring cats. If Humphrey Bogart had put on cat ears during his films and acted like it was no big deal, you’d probably have a similar experience. Suffice it to say, if you love noir, you should love Blacksad. With the fourth volume finally on its way to American collections via Dark Horse, this should be the best news you hear all day.
Blacksad: A Silent Hell is set for release in July of this year. For the full press release from Dark Horse, please check behind the cut.
Dark Horse Press Release
Eisner and Harvey Award—winning duo Juan DÃaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido are back with another incredible tale to shock and awe crime-fiction fans and comics-art aficionados alike!
Detective John Blacksad returns, with a new case that takes him to a 1950s New Orleans filled with hot jazz and cold-blooded murder! Hired to discover the fate of a celebrated pianist, Blacksad finds his most dangerous mystery yet in the midst of drugs, voodoo, the rollicking atmosphere of Mardi Gras, and the dark underbelly that it hides!
Dark Horse’s Blacksad collection is already in its fourth printing, with 20,000 copies sold. Artist Juanjo Guarnido was voted the winner of the 2011 Eisner Award for Best Painter, and Blacksad Volume 1 won the Harvey Award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material.
“A lovingly crafted homage to the Hammett-Chandler chestnuts of old . . . and Guarnido’s watercolor panels feel like the unearthed film-noir storyboards of a master…A.”–Entertainment Weekly
Blacksad: A Silent Hell features an extensive making-of section, with tons of prelim sketches and watercolor studies, written by artist Juanjo Guarnido! This volume also includes two never-before-collected Blacksad short stories!
Blacksad: A Silent Hell is on sale July 11, 2012.
About Dark Horse Comics
Since 1986, Dark Horse Comics has proven to be a solid example of how integrity and innovation can help broaden a unique storytelling medium and establish a small, homegrown company as an industry giant. The company is known for the progressive and creator-friendly atmosphere it provides for writers and artists. In addition to publishing comics from top talent like Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Neil Gaiman, Gerard Way, Will Eisner, and best-selling prose author Janet Evanovich, Dark Horse has developed such successful characters as the Mask, Timecop, and the Occultist. Additionally, its highly successful line of comics and products based on popular properties includes Star Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Aliens,Conan the Barbarian, Mass Effect, Serenity, and Domo. Today, Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent comic-book publisher in the United States and is recognized as both an innovator in the cause of creator rights and the comics industry’s leading publisher of licensed material.
