Blacksad: A Silent Hell Written by Diaz Canales
Art by Juanjo Guarnido
English-language Edition Edited by Diana Schutz Dark Horse Comics
U.S. Release Date: July 11, 2012
Cover Price: $19.99
Noir stories have been making yet another surge in American culture, and especially the comics world over the past few years, with Warren Ellis’ Fell, Richard Stark’s adaptation of the Parker novels, Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s The Damned, and seemingly everything Ed Brubaker touches ever being just a few shining examples. Adding to this stack of worthy reads, Dark Horse has mined the European market for a more traditional hard-boiled detective in writer Diaz Canales and artist Juanjo Guarnido‘s anthropomorphic creation, John Blacksad. Although the creative team is from Spain, they set Blacksad in the U.S. during 1950s and modeled him heavily on the archetype created by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
The first three volumes of Blacksad have already been collected in something of an omnibus of their work, and now the fourth one, Blacksad: Silent Hell, has been released for the American market. As a bonus, this edition includes two Blacksad micro-shorts and nearly 40 pages of preliminary sketches with commentary by the artist.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press