Juan Diaz Canales

The 27th Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards took place at the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront San Diego on Friday night, and it was a great night for diversity, for women in comics, for comics aimed at a younger audience, and for the future of the industry.

It never rains but it pours. Hot on the heels of the news that IDW will be publishing the whole of Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese in English for the first time, publishers Casterman have announced that Blacksad writer Juan Diaz Canales and Spanish artist Ruben Pellejero have been tapped to author a new, original Corto Maltese story. Due for release in October 2015, the book will be simultaneously released in French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish, although there is no news yet of a potential English edition from IDW or anyone else.

If you've not come across Blacksad before, created by Spanish authors Juan Diaz Canales (writer) and Juanjo Guarnido (illustrator), it is an anthropomorphic noir series, set in 1950s America, centering around eponymous trench-coated private investigator, John Blacksad, a lithe, witty and cynical cat. Wildly popular France since the release of the first book in 2000, it's equally loved around the world, having been translated in 23 languages, with Dark Horse doing the honors for English reading audiences. This fifth and latest volume, Amarillo, was published in its original French in November last year, with October seeing the release of the English language edition. It's a few rungs above, thanks to Canales' writing: mixing up the mystery with social issues at the time, but largely due to Juanjo Guarnido's breathtaking watercoloured art and the superb manner in which he amalgamates human and animal characteristics.

Not long after "Blacksad" returned to American publication via Dark Horse's collection of the series' first three volumes, select artwork from its fourth installment allegedly began sprouting online. Flash forward to September 1, though, and fans of Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido's anthropomorphic feline detective can pretty easily discern that the previous art is not only legit,

Last week Dark Horse reintroduced English-reading audiences to Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido's "Blacksad," with a new hardcover collecting the first three volumes of the planned four-part series. We weren't shy in our excitement for the new release, especially as it localized the series' third volume for the first time, and other blogs responded with similar praise. It wa... Read