Blacksad

It's one of those things where I will continue to read these because the art is so fucking fantastic. Wonderful water colors for character and backgrounds. The story is meh, just enough to get me to finish. There is A LOT of potential here which gives me hope.

So, this would get 5 stars if it didn't fall for the typical pitfalls of noir mystery genre, come on let's be a bit modern here. It has everything going for it... interesting time period with enough historical perspective to throw in more interesting events or commentary, animal characters to show natures of characters, fun scenes (like the turtle in the hare playing poker), and for the audience to connect. Best of all the art!!!

What's holding this back - the story to me is lacking. There's not much of a mystery element for me here, it's one of those where it's a mystery BUT you just kinda stick around and watch Blacksad solve it. Additionally, there isn't world building...when I first saw the arctic clan I thought this world was going to based on our world/time period with artistic liberty and inspiration. They instantly toss with what they created with the Arctic Clan when they establish Hitler. Why bother making a fictional kkk when a real one exists? Just use that!
To me it seems one sided and sloppy, but to give the benefit of the doubt maybe they just didn't know what they wanted from the world yet?

The world currently revolves around Blacksad, which is boring. I think this would work much better - like mad max fury road - if Blacksad was an explorer in the enriched world. Following Blacksad sets up only scenarios and doesn't give me much satisfaction.

The biggest pit fall is the sexism. Look at the diverse animals, nature, and design ...of the male characters! Seriously, in the Arctic Klan series you have a polar bear husband/wife. The husband is a fucking polar bear and I thought the wife was a mouse - NOPE! She honestly looks like just some lady. This is ridiculous, just lazy designs. There was a stork and a hippo background women getting shoes that had more character and design than the main women in the story.

Anytime you see a woman involved in the story she will be used as a plot, killed, to show weakness, heartbreak over blacksad, or sexualized (even by our Blacksad has no respect for them). The ladies that are introduced, might as well not bother putting them in...oh wait we need some tits. It seems the more human they look the more likely they will be naked, that's the only point of designing them this way.

It's old & tiresome...it's a shame in a beautiful and modern written noir novel that it's so prevalent. I have high hopes that this will be get better, because it really was worth the read and I do plan on reading a bit more before I'll probably drop it.