Line #106 ComicBook/Blacksad


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Blacksad_1_00_2604.gif]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Gritty anthropomorphic noir goodness.]]
3
4	->''"I had wrapped myself in a vicious atmosphere made of hate, vengeance, and corruption. From that day on, this would be my world. A jungle where it's survival of the fittest, where people act like animals. I had chosen to walk the darkest path in life... and I'm still on it."''
5
6	''Blacksad'' is a series of (seven so far) comic albums created by Spanish authors Juan Díaz Canales (writer) and Juanjo Guarnido (artist and ex-Creator/{{Disney}} animator; he was the lead animator for Sabor in ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}'' and Helga in ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire''), and published by French publisher Dargaud. Though both authors are Spanish, their main target audience for ''Blacksad'' is the French market and thus they publish all ''Blacksad'' albums in French first; the Spanish edition usually follows about one month later. Because of this it is considered both a Spanish and French comic book.
7
8	In an [[FunnyAnimal anthropomorphic]] rendition of America in the [[TheFifties 1950s]], [[HardboiledDetective private investigator]] John Blacksad, a black cat, is embroiled in stories of mystery and intrigue. The albums come critically acclaimed and are a dedicated homage to the FilmNoir genre. There have been five albums published so far (the first three in English in an omnibus edition by Creator/DarkHorseComics, the fourth in a standalone hardcover):
9
10	* ''Somewhere Within the Shadows'' (French: ''Quelque part entre les ombres'', 2000) has Blacksad investigating the murder of an old flame.
11	* In ''Arctic Nation'' (2003) Blacksad is hired to investigate the disappearance of a young girl in a [[FantasticRacism racially charged]] atmosphere.
12	* In ''Red Soul'' (''Âme Rouge'', 2005) Blacksad watches over an old friend in the midst of the RedScare, and falls in love.
13	* ''A Silent Hell'' (''L'Enfer, Le Silence''[[note]]Literally "Hell, Silence"[[/note]] 2010), sets him in UsefulNotes/NewOrleans trying to track down a musician, before assassins do.
14	* ''Amarillo'' (2013) is a direct sequel to the fourth book, where Blacksad tries to track down the guy who stole an expensive car he was ferrying.
15	* ''They All Fall Down'' (''Alors tout tombe'', October 2021-November 2023) is a [[MultiPartEpisode two-part story]] that finds Blacksad in New York City involved in nefarious goings on with unions, organized crime, and the dark parts of the city, including Solomon, a construction magnate with many plans for the city.
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17	Canales and Guarnido have confirmed that they are working on the sixth and seventh installments in the series -- both books have been stuck in a bit of a DevelopmentHell though, the sixth installment having been originally set for release in 2017, but later pushed back, due to both creators being busy with other projects. With the sixth book released in October 2021, the seventh one is tentatively planned for release in November 2023.
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19	A TabletopRoleplayingGame, ''Blacksad: The Roleplaying Game'' (''Blacksad: Juego de Rol''), was published by the Spanish company Nosolorol Ediciones in 2015. A Website/{{Kickstarter}} campaign for [[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nosolorol/blacksad-the-roleplaying-game-0 an English edition was held in 2020]] which raised €17,220, tripling its original goal of €5,000 and funding new cases for the game.
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21	A video game, ''VideoGame/BlacksadUnderTheSkin'', was released by Pendulo Studios and YS Interactive and published by Microids in 2019 for PC, Platform/Playstation4, Platform/NintendoSwitch, and Platform/XboxOne. ''Under the Skin'' is an {{Interquel}}, taking place chronologically between ''Arctic Nation'' and ''Red Soul''.
22	----
23	!!This comicbook series provides examples of:
24
25	* AbandonedWarehouse: This is where the titular racial extremist group meets up in ''Arctic Nation'' and the location of the climax of the story.
26	* AccidentalMurder: In ''Amarillo'', [[spoiler:Chad and Neal have a heated argument, Neal tries to step away, Chad grabs his suit's sleeve... which rips apart, causing Neal to stumble and fall in front of a moving bus.]]
27	* ActuallyPrettyFunny: In ''Arctic Nation'', a pair of (literal) white supremacists approach a crow, heckling him to get out of a bar where colored people are banned. The crow quips back with the fact that he's blind, and therefore can't see their 'immaculate white pelts'. Surprisingly, they laugh it off and let him go, moving onto Blacksad. [[spoiler: We later find out they work with him.]]
28	* AlasPoorVillain: The reptilian hitman sent after Blacksad in the first album gets a surprisingly sad death scene, where he realizes that he was set up to die and quietly drops a dime on his boss to get posthumous revenge.
29	-->"Because [[spoiler:Ivo Statoc]] is a sore loser... Me, on the other hand... I'm just... a loser..."
30	* AmericanEagle: In an in-universe BMovie about giant ants menacing the States, the President of the United States is portrayed as a bald eagle. The short story, "Spit At The Sky" also depicts [[UncleSamWantsYou Uncle Sam]] as an anthropomorphic bald eagle.
31	%%* AnachronicOrder: ''A Silent Hell''.
32	* AngryBlackManStereotype: In ''Arctic Nation'' there seems to be a burgeoning Black Panthers expy (which counts with animals with black fur) in response to the white fur supremacists in the district.
33	* AngryCollarGrab: Early on in ''Somewhere Within The Shadows'', the titular detective searches for a florist who sends dead threats to Natalia, and [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Blacksad_1_action.jpg grabs him by the collar with pistol on mouth]].
34	* AnimalJingoism:
35	** The short story, "Like Cats and Dogs" uses this extensively, showing a moose yelling at a cougar (whom he apparently caught cheating with his wife), a lion sexually harassing a gazelle bellhop, a fox hotel manager yelling at a rabbit bellhop, vulture and hyena hobos fighting over the contents of a garbage can, a pack of wolf gangsters harassing a group of sheep collecting Salvation Army donations on the street corner. However, it subverts this at the end, where Blacksad (a cat) is meeting with his friend, Smirnov (a dog), for coffee, and all the extras also having coffee together in the cafe are animals that would be enemies in reality (such as a pigeon and a hawk, a hare and a lynx, a leopard and an antelope, and an owl and a squirrel).
36	** ''They All Fall Down'' presents animosity between subterranean animals and flying animals. Kenneth Clarke, as a bat, has a foot in both camps and isn't really viewed as part of either world.
37	* AnimalMetaphor: Hans Karup is the leader of Artic Nation, [[ANaziByAnyOtherName an organisation of white furred supremacists which discriminates against black people, as in those with black fur]]. The thing is however, that Karup is a polar bear, and underneath their white fur, their skin colour is ''black''. With this interesting fact, Artic Nation's racism is simply that, judging a person on their outward appearance rather than what lies beneath.
38	* AnimalStereotypes:
39	** [[WordOfGod The authors]] state that the species of each individual character was carefully chosen to represent who the character really is, and that the connection between the animal chosen and the personality of the character isn't always as obvious as the "cops=dogs" example. For instance he made bikers a bunch of sheep because of the gregarious aspects of the animals and character who are either ugly or disfigured are less anthropomorphic to underline it.
40	** In the second album there is possibly a LampshadeHanging. Blacksad is at a drive-in, watching an awful BMovie about [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever killer giant ants]]. In this film, the scientist is a giant anteater, the chief of the military forces is a lion and [[EagleLand the President of the USA is an eagle]].
41	** Politicians in general are often depicted as birds. Senator Gallo is a rooster, Solomon is a falcon, the mayor of New York City is a [[TakeThat turkey]], and the aforementioned President is a bald eagle. Perhaps this has something to do with their egos reaching for the literal skies.
42	** Solomon's chauffeur/bodyguard is a hound with a great sense of smell, allowing him to detect intruders even in a landfill.
43	** A subway building site is almost entirely staffed by animals that live underground, like moles and rats.
44	* AntagonistTitle: Arctic Nation is the group of [[FantasticRacism white fur supremacists]] in the album of the same name who serve as Blacksad's antagonists. [[spoiler:It's eventually revealed as a subversion; the real antagonist was Jezebel, who orchestrated everything that happened to get revenge on her father.]]
45	* ArmorPiercingQuestion: [[spoiler:Blacksad to Jezebel, "What about Kaylie? Did she deserve this?"]]
46	* ArcWords: "Vengeance is a dish best served cold." in ''Arctic Nation.''
47	* ArtisticLicenseBiology:
48	** At the end of ''Red Soul'', Otto compares his life to a type of predatory fish which deliberately allows itself to be consumed by smaller fish at the end of its life to atone for preying upon them. It makes for a convenient analogy, but obviously there's no such fish like this.
49	** In ''They All Fall Down'', Blacksad has lunch with a naked mole-rat mechanic named Farumfer, but is turned off his sandwich by Farumfer digging into a tin of worms. Mole-rats are rodents unrelated to moles and, unlike true moles, don't eat worms; they eat tubers.
50	* ArtImitatesArt: One panel in the ''Red Soul'' references Creator/NormanRockwell's painting "Connoisseur".
51	* AsideGlance: Weekly in ''Red Soul'', when Blacksad throws him out of his own appartment in order to be alone with Alma.
52	* TheAtoner:
53	** Otto Liebber in ''Red Soul''. [[spoiler:He worked for the Nazis in World War II under an extremely misguided notion that he was helping to better the world. He eventually realizes he was in the wrong, and has spent the rest of his life trying to rectify this... badly.]]
54	** [[spoiler:Chad]] ends up becoming one in the end of ''Amarillo'' when [[spoiler:he gives himself up the police to prevent Blacksad from taking the blame for his crimes.]]
55	* BadassBiker: A gang of them in the fifth book. Amusingly, all of them are ''sheep''. They're a friendly bunch though, allowing Blacksad to ride with them when his car is stolen. The artist commented he was surprised to hear bikers enjoying the portrayal despite the TakeThat to the gregarious aspect of a biker gang.
56	* BadassLongcoat: As a rendition of the 50's private eye archetype, Blacksad is wearing the prototypical beige trenchcoat, sometimes accompanied by a suit.
57	* BatmanGambit: [[spoiler:Jezebel]] in ''Arctic Nation'' is in the middle of one several decades in the making. A key factor in this plot is [[spoiler:marrying her own father, while keeping him from discovering this particular bit of information. She succeeds at most of her goals, but her sister is killed in the process and her niece rendered an orphan]].
58	* BearsAreBadNews:
59	** Karup, a polar bear, is the leader of a white supremacist gang, and effortlessly beats up his right-hand man.
60	** One of Statoc's henchmen is a brown bear who beats the crap out of Blacksad with his rhino friend.
61	** Polyphemus is a lecherous sun bear who works at the circus, and Chad catches him in an AttemptedRape.
62	* BestServedCold: [[spoiler: Jezebel]] and [[spoiler: Dinah]] have been waiting a long time to enact their vengeance.
63	%%* TheBigEasy: The fourth album.
64	* BigotWithABadge: The Chief of Police in the Line district, Hans Karup, is in fact the leader of TheKlan and wilfully [[DirtyCop turns a blind eye]] to any lynchings carried out by his fellow members.
65	* BigotWithACrush: Inverted in Hans Karup's backstory. In the present, he runs a white supremacist organization responsible for lynching black animals, but [[spoiler:[[UsedToBeASweetKid he was once an incredibly sweet man]] married to a black-furred woman. The Arctic Nation poisoned his mind, leading him to start [[DomesticAbuse abusing his wife]] while they were still together until he finally dragged her out of their house in the middle of winter and left her for dead. In the present, his current wife does tell his equally racist underling Huk that Karup likes to screw their black maid behind her back. This isn't true, but Huk ([[TheStarscream who was looking to get rid of him]]) believes it.]]
66	* BittersweetEnding: Since this a FilmNoir comic series, this is the best you can usually hope for at the end of each story.
67	** ''Somewhere Within The Shadows'', [[spoiler:Blacksad's former flame is obviously still dead, but he was able to bring vigilante justice to the man who murdered her, even if he and Smirnov had to go behind the law to do it, which neither of them are proud of.]]
68	** ''Arctic Nation'', [[spoiler:Blacksad is able to rescue Kylie and cripple the eponymous white-furred supremacist organization, but Kylie's mother was killed, leaving her an orphan, the sole survivor of the complicated revenge plot that involved Kylie's kidnapping to begin with [[VengeanceFeelsEmpty is left broken]], and The Line is still a DyingTown.]]
69	** ''Red Soul'', [[spoiler:Blacksad is able to prevent his friend, Otto, from being murdered and stops the hydrogen bomb blueprints from being leaked to the Soviet Union, but in the process was forced to abandon a potential LoveInterest and discovers Otto is actually a former Nazi, who is left a shell of his former self from the experience (although he returns to Germany to try and repent for his sins). The would-be assassin also killed an innocent lookalike and [[KarmaHoudini escapes justice]].]]
70	** ''A Silent Hell'', [[spoiler:Blacksad isn't able to prevent Sebastian's murder, but Faust's crimes become known to others, he's going to die broken and alone regardless, Blacksad is at least able to prevent one of the musicians from being killed, and it's assured that Sebastian's widow and child will be financially stable.]]
71	** ''Amarillo'', [[spoiler:Chad decides to stop running away from his crimes and face justice, preventing Blacksad from being arrested for the murder he committed, but [[NiceGuy Neal]] ended up accidentally dying, and it's ambiguous whether or not Chad's story ends up published. Blacksad also ends up totalling two cars he borrowed with no way to repay the owners.]]
72	** ''They All Fall Down'', [[spoiler: Solomon gets away with his crimes and successfully completes his bridge, becoming more popular than ever in the process. However it's revealed that Rachel Zucco, masquerading as the chief engineer's assistant, sabotaged the bridge during construction to ensure that it wouldn't be sturdy enough to withstand strong winds; as a result, it is completely destroyed during a rainstorm at the end of the book, ensuring that Solomon's reputation would be ruined and that he would go down in history as a man best remembered for the catastrophic failure of his most ambitious project. Also, Alma and Blacksad are shown to reconcile and run off in the rain to happily speak about what is strongly implied to be Blacksad's daughter that Alma conceived during Red Soul, [[BelatedHappyEnding which means they could be a family]], but it's left ambiguous whether or not Blacksad and Alma get back together along with whether or not the former leaves with her for Europe especially with Smirnov's Fox lieutenant most likely still gunning for him to frame him over Shelby's murder of Dill's caretaker]].
73	* {{Blackmail}}: Statoc's lizard henchman was so [[EvenEvilHasStandards disgusted]] with his murder of Natalia and Leon that he took the gun that Statoc used to blackmail his former boss. He thinks that Blacksad is trying to pull a similar scheme.
74	* BloodFromTheMouth: [[spoiler:Neal the lawyer]] after he is hit by a bus.
75	* BodyGuardCrush: How Blacksad and Natalia began their relationship. After driving off a creepy florist sending death threats to Natalia, Blacksad used his charms to get in a relationship with Natalia, which lasted a while before they had a falling out.
76	* BoomerangBigot: Oldsmill is a white tiger but his black stripes shouldn't give him any special treatment, however he is rich enough no one in the Arctics want to shun his support.
77	* BreakingOldTrends: Unlike the previous albums, ''They All Fall Down'' doesn't have any ColorMotif.
78	* BreatherEpisode: ''Amarillo''. However, it's solely one for the hurting Blacksad as there is still plenty of murder and mayhem to go around for everyone else. By the end Blacksad doesn't have that much of a good time either.
79	* BrickJoke: In the first scene of ''Amarillo'', Abe Greenberg burns his own poetry and says that the place of Chad's novel (written on a roll of paper) is "in a bathroom so people can wipe their ass with it". [[spoiler:In the end, Chad ends up leaving the roll in a bathroom of a train station in Chicago, where someone finds it and starts reading it]].
80	* BrokenBird: Luanne in ''Amarillo'' [[spoiler: She was forced to have an abortion at a young age to avoid a family scandal.]]
81	* TheBusCameBack: [[spoiler:Alma from ''Red Soul'' makes a reappearance at the end of ''They All Fall Down, Part One'']].
82	* CallBack:
83	** In ''Red Soul'', Blacksad is sufficiently annoyed when he has to attend a Natalia Wilford Look-A-Like contest while doing bodyguard duty for a rich client.
84	** The racist comment that pushes Blacksad too far in ''Amarillo'' is when the person dissed "That Old Black Magic", the song that played when he made love with Alma.
85	** In ''They All Fall Down'', Blacksad notes that Iris still loves her dead husband after all those years. That leads him to remember "That Old Black Magic." [[spoiler: This turns out to be {{Foreshadowing}}, as Alma appears at the end of that issue.]]
86	* CarnivoreConfusion: We see Karup grilling sausages in a photos, but in a world of sapient animals, one has to wonder what are these sausages made of.
87	* CatsAreMean: UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler was a cat (although this is likely a shout-out to ''ComicBook/{{Maus}}''). See NoCelebritiesWereHarmed below. Totally [[AvertedTrope averted]] by Blacksad and Alma, though.
88	* ChekhovsGun
89	** All over the place in ''Arctic Nation''. The beauty mark on Dinah, Karup's family pictures where Huk is shown embracing Karup's wife and Karup being around boyscouts sets up the PedoHunt and Huk's betrayal, General Lee's sword and Weekly's picture of Huk and Jezebel having sex.
90	** ''Red Soul'', while body-guarding a client, they walk through an art gallery showing a [[ColorMotif red]] painting by an artist named Sergei that is stated to be headed for East Berlin soon. [[spoiler:Sergei is a Soviet spy sneaking American nuclear secrets back to the Union underneath his paintings]].
91	** ''A Silent Hell'', Lenoir drops a pamphlet of Life Everlasting.
92	* ChekhovsGunman: Abraham Greenberg, a poet and a [[spoiler:murder victim]] in the fifth album, made a cameo reciting his poems in the third one.
93	%%* TheChessmaster: [[spoiler:Jezebel]] had a grand plan indeed.
94	* {{Cliffhanger}}: How book six ends. [[spoiler: Weekly is framed for murdering Iris Allen. Meanwhile, Blacksad has finally found Alma Mayer again.]]
95	* ClusterFBomb: The dialogue in the English translation of ''Amarillo'' is somewhat more profane than the translations of the book before it.
96	* ColorMotif: The albums themselves, along with their covers:
97	** ''Somewhere Within The Shadows'' introduces our protagonist and plays out like a straightforward [[FilmNoir Noir]] story.
98	** ''Arctic Nation'' takes place during a snowy winter and largely involves a white supremacist group. Given that this a world of anthropomorphic animals, its members have literal white fur.
99	** ''Red Soul'' is about the RedScare, with the title coming from an abstract, red painting.
100	** ''A Silent Hell'' features both Blacksad almost drowning and a song called "Pizen Blues".
101	** ''Amarillo'' literally means "yellow", and is the one with Blacksad going on a sunny roadtrip, while the {{Deuteragonist}} of the story is a young lion.
102	** And on a series-wide level, the five covers so far have been black, white, and one of each of the primary colors.
103	* CombatPragmatist: Blacksad fights dirty when odds are bad. In the first issue, he tries fighting bare-fisted against the BigBad's thugs, only to find they're much too tough for that. In his rematch, he ambushes them and clobbers them with a fire hydrant instead.
104	* ComplexityAddiction: John would probably never have found the connection between Ribs and [[spoiler: Laszlo]] if the latter didn't make a bomb way too complex for the hitman specialized in shanking to build.
105	* ContinuityNod: In the inside cover of ''Red Soul'', you see Blacksad [[spoiler:releasing the ashes of Cotten]] near Las Vegas, fulfilling ThePromise he made to him in ''Arctic Nation''.
106	* ContrivedCoincidence: In ''Amarillo'', Neal is Chad's book agent, and as he's looking for Chad in Denver, one of the first people he chats up is a roadrunner who mentions that he was just fired from his job at the circus and replaced by some scruffy beatnik lion (read: Chad). Blacksad, who's also looking for Chad for unrelated reasons, just happens to walking right within earshot to hear this. Later in the story, the two FBI agents who come looking for Blacksad as a murder suspect coincidentally happen to be the same two FBI agents whom Blacksad made enemies of in ''Red Soul'', and are all too happy to nail the guy who got them ReassignedToAntarctica before.
107	* CopsNeedTheVigilante: Commissioner Smirnov gives Blacksad free rein to avenge Natalia's death after he tried to investigate her murder through the official channels but was [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections quickly shut down when it got too high up]]. After Blacksad kills the wealthy businessman responsible for the murder in a VigilanteExecution, Smirnov even covers for him by lying right in front of the two employees who saw Blacksad carry out the act. He is not especially proud of it, though.
108	* CorruptCorporateExecutive:
109	** Ivo Statoc from the first book. A self-made-toad who has become the most powerful man in New York and murdered Natalia and her lover. He uses his goons and his money to cover his tracks and shows no remorse for killing Natalia.
110	** Faust Lachapelle from the fourth book once sold a faulty drug in Louisiana, resulting in many deaths and birth defects. He bribed the local judges to avoid being sued and decades later still kills anyone who seeks to blow the whistle on him.
111	** [[spoiler: Solomon from the sixth book is leading the "modernization" of transportation in New York City, i.e. an apostle for highways and other roadworks to the detriment of public transport. He's ruthless in dealing with opposition to his plans, up to ordering the murders of his main opponents.]]
112	* CoversAlwaysLie: The cover of ''They all fall down, part 2'' features Alma on the cover of the comic looking back at Shelby who's glaring at her, [[spoiler:but she does not encounter him at all and has little to no involvement with Blacksad or his case]].
113	* CradlingYourKill: In ''Amarillo'', [[spoiler:after Chad accidentally caused Neal to get hit by a bus]].
114	* CryIntoChest: Dinah does this with Blacksad.
115	* CunningLikeAFox:
116	** Smirnov's fox lieutenant has a very sly attitude about him.
117	** Huk, a polar fox, is scheming to usurp his boss.
118	* CurbStompBattle: Most fights are short and rather brutal. Either the biggest animal wipe the floor with smaller one or the smaller one is armed and sucker punch the big animal.
119	%%* DarkAndTroubledPast: Dinah, Luanne, [[spoiler:Jezebel]].
120	%%* DeadlyDodging: Provides the page image.
121	%%* DeadpanSnarker: Blacksad, especially in his [[InnerMonologue inner monologues]].
122	* DeathGlare:
123	** One FBI agent to the other when he suggests flipping a coin for who writes the report after having crashed the car.
124	** Blacksad himself gives them a lot.
125	* DidNotGetTheGirl: A result of Blacksad's necessary detainment in ''Red Soul''.
126	* DieLaughing: [[spoiler:Neal]] in ''Amarillo'' after Blacksad make one last joke to his detrimentin good nature.
127	* DisappearedDad: ''Amarillo'' reveals that John and Donna Blacksad's father is still around, but hasn't been in contact with his children for a while except through rare letters.
128	* DoubleEntendre: Ivo Statoc has 'cold blood' in a literal sense and figuratively he professes a cold detachedness.
129	* DropDeadGorgeous: The first book begins with a murder scene: the victim is a woman, wearing vaporous night clothing, with one breast exposed. In the flashback to her murder, her night gown was noticeably closed. The [[WordOfGod writers revealed]] in a background making-of album that the implication was that the murderer [[ILoveTheDead played around with the corpse just for kicks]].
130	* EvenEvilHasStandards:
131	** Statoc's henchman is not above blackmail or murder (he did charge Blacksad with a knife) but he is a bit more remorseful of the latter than his boss.
132	-->'''Henchman:''' Watching someone die is never pleasant, especially how he did it, bastard took his time with Leon...
133	** The Arctics are violent white supremacists but they seriously doubt their leader Karup when he is implied to be a pedophile. [[spoiler: They end up hanging him when Huk persuades them that the rumors are true, which was part of Jezebel's revenge plan.]]
134	** The weasel mafia in ''They All Fall Down'' are as dirty as any organized crime association, buying votes and ordering hits on people that cross them. But even they're visibly disturbed by Logan pushing a hobo's face onto a scalding skillet to teach him a lesson (of course, it could've also partly been a case of PragmaticVillainy: doing something so brutal to their potential recruits is sure to scare them off, which it does).
135	* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The fox who works for the police department is only known as "Lieutnant".
136	* ExpressiveEars: [[ShownTheirWork Like their real-life animal counterparts]] characters ears will go back when they are threatened (or are being threatening), they'll droop when they are sad, and perk up when excited. Blacksad often swivels his ears like a cat does to hear things better.
137	* ExtraLongEpisode: ''They All Fall Down'' is currently the only story that's split into two parts, with the English translation further splitting each of the two parts into another two parts. The first part ends with [[spoiler:some huge {{cliffhanger}}s.]]
138	* EyeScream: [[spoiler:Huk]] is killed by a screwdriver through his eye.
139	* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler:Karup in his backstory. Jezebel recalls that her mother told her that Karup was one of the kindest persons she had ever seen, which is why her mother fell in love with him. He eventually wanted to attain power in The Line, and became increasingly racist and abusive over time to blend in with the white elite. He finally completed his Turn when he abandonned his wife in the middle of the woods in winter, causing their eventual daughters to develop an intense hatred for their father and setting up the plot of the novel to get revenge on him.]]
140	* FacePalm: Blacksad after [[ChivalrousPervert Weekly]] [[WolfWhistle whistles]] upon seeing Karup's wife, Jezebel.
141	* FantasticRacism:
142	** The mongoose henchman from the first book makes the mistake of pursuing his target into a reptilian bar, where the bartender tells him that furry sorts aren't welcome there while the rest of the patrons close in on him.
143	** What drives the events of ''Arctic Nation''. The neighbourhood "the Line" in which Blacksad tries to find a kidnapped child is the battlefield between two racist groups, the "Arctics", who are white fur supremacists, and the "Claws", a Black Panther expy. The racial tensions in the Line are an important plot point to the story. Played with, because the characters think of literal ''color'' over ''race'', so one can find dogs in each group. As a black ''and'' white cat, Blacksad doesn't have friends in either group.
144	** One character in ''Amarillo'' (a parrot) keeps insulting "coloreds" while sharing a car with Blacksad. It takes less than a page for him to get a black eye courtesy of a very pissed-off black cat.
145	** The moles union in ''They All Fall Down'' are racist to most races that aren't one of them but mostly birds, part of it is classism as the moles and rodents are blue collar workers while birds are high city officials, even though as seen with Cotten in ''Arctic Nation'' it is not an end all be all and Farumfer mocks that mentality.
146	* FemmeFatale: Surprisingly, mostly {{averted}} for a comic so steeped in 1950s FilmNoir. Of Blacksad's love interests, Natalia Wilford is TheLostLenore for Blacksad whose worst crime was being a bit of a vain woman, and Alma Mayer is a BrainyBrunette NiceGirl. [[MeaningfulName Jezebel]] Karup sort of fits the archetype, but is really a subversion of the trope since the people she seduced to lead them to their doom are the leader of a racist lynch mob [[spoiler:who also happens to be her father]] and his even more vicious right-hand man, not the detective hero.
147	* TheFifties: Later books made it clear with the second red scare, beatniks and reconstruction of Germany. It's also implied that Blacksad himself is a World War II veteran and Iris Allen, a middle-aged woman, was already an adult during the Great Depression.
148	%%* FilmNoir
149	* FlashbackEffects: Usually, flashbacks are shown in some kind of monochrome -- sepia tone or blue-based -- to distinguish them from the present. Special mention, though, goes to the effects towards the end of ''Arctic Nation''. The oldest flashbacks look like pure sepia tone photos, but as they approach the present day, they gradually become more and more colored like reality.
150	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
151	** In ''Arctic Nation'', Weekly confuses Karup's wife for his daughter and Jezebel notes that unlike Karup's first black wife he can't just abandon her, [[spoiler: Jezebel is Karup's daughter who swore revenge about him literally abandoning his wife in the woods.]]
152	** In ''Red Soul'', the painting "Red Soul" is said to be sent to Moscow at a later date, [[spoiler: it's how Litvak sends the formula for the H-bomb to the communists.]]
153	** In ''Amarillo'', Abraham insultingly tells Chad he should leave his magnum opus manuscript in some bathroom where it can better serve a purpose as toilet paper. [[spoiler:At the end, after the TraumaCongaLine he's put through, Chad does decide to abandon his life's work in a public washroom, with the final page showing a passerby picking it up and reading it as they leave.]]
154	** In ''They All Fall Down, Part One'', after spending an evening with Iris Allen, Blacksad muses that she's still in love with her long-dead husband. On his way home, he can't get the song "That Old Black Magic" out of his head. [[spoiler: It's the song that was playing when he was with Alma during ''Red Soul''. Guess who reappears in the book's very last scene.]]
155	* FrameUp: [[spoiler: After strangling Iris Allen to death, Shelby leaves an unconscious Weekly next to her corpse, with the murder tool wrapped around his hand. Weekly wakes up and panics when he realizes what's going on, but when he tries to flee the scene, he walks right into police officers with their weapons drawn.]]
156	* FriendOnTheForce: Commissioner Smirnov is one of the few friends Blacksad has and helped him on cases.
157	%%* FullyDressedCartoonAnimal: The entire cast.
158	* FunnyBackgroundEvent:
159	** In ''Somewhere Within the Shadows'', Blacksad visits the Cypher Club. A baboon and a leopard are seen arguing in the background (in an inversion, one panel has the two in the foreground, while the focus is on Blacksad in the background). The confrontation goes from shouting in the first panel we see them, to strangling each other in the last...
160	** In ''Red Soul'', when Blacksad goes to visit Liebber at Columbia he walks past a row of couples. All the girls instantly take notice of him and when he walks by them a few pages later they're all arguing with their boyfriends for taking such obvious interest in him.
161	** In ''Arctic Nation'', when Blacksad and Weekly sit down at a bar, a bloodhound in the stall next to them notices [[ThePigpen Weekly]]'s odour and quickly leaves as the smell makes him nauseous.
162	* FurryConfusion: There are many anthropomorphized species in the series, but apparently insects and aquatic species (such as fish and sharks) are not among them as Ivo Statoc collects non-anthro insect specimens and there are aquariums.
163	* FurryReminder: Blacksad meets a mole foreman at a subway building site who offers him a sandwich before opening a can of live worms to eat from himself. Blacksad has trouble hiding his disgust.
164	* GenderEqualsBreed: Although it appears that most romances are between members of the same species, this still holds true to a certain extent. For example, Smirnov looks like a German Shepherd, and his wife is some kind of collie. Their children - a little boy and a girl -- follow their parents' breeds. And the same for Sebastian and his wife, Hannah - their son looks far more like Sebastian.
165	* TheGrimReaper: Death himself doesn't show, but [[spoiler:Faust [=LaChapelle=]]] dons a costume in his image to go around incognito. Death apparantly looks like a man with a goat skull in the ''Blacksad'' universe, merging some of the imagery with that of traditional Western depictions of {{Satan}}.
166	* HalfBreedDiscrimination: Played with in ''Arctic Nation'' in regards to Blacksad himself. There's [[FantasticRacism racism between the anthropomorphic animals]] based on fur color rather than species, so polar bears hang out with snowfoxes and black horses with rottweilers, etc. John Blacksad just happens to be a mostly black cat with a prominent white snout, so he attracts the distrust of both the Arctic Nation and the Black Crows.
167	* HandsomeLech: In the space of one book, Neal hits on three different women.
168	* HangingAround: ''Arctic Nation'' features a fair few lynchings perpetrated by the eponymous hate group. The story starts off with a black-feathered bird being strung up on a lamp post while Blacksad looks on, [[spoiler:and during the climax, Hans Karup is betrayed by the Nation and [[KarmicDeath subjected to his own lynching]]. Only the intervention of a disguised Blacksad prevents his ally, Weekly, from facing his own turn on the rope after Karup.]]
169	* HardboiledDetective: Blacksad, of course.
170	* HeelRealization: [[spoiler:Jezebel, once it dawns on her she made her niece an orphan]].
171	* HeroicDog: All the cops are canines - nearly all of them dogs, with at least one fox on the force.
172	* HeroicSacrifice: Blacksad wants to take the blame for Chad's crimes in order to let him and Luanne be free. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope But Chad ultimately refuses and surrenders to the police.]]]]
173	* HiddenDepths: Neal, a lawyer who practices narcissism and womanizing almost as a religion, is shown to be genuinely friendly with Blacksad's kid nephew.
174	* HollywoodVoodoo: Used by an old lady ape in ''The Hell, The Silence''.
175	* HugeGuyTinyGirl: Karup and his wife. [[spoiler: Both of his wives.]]
176	* HumanoidFemaleAnimal: Men look like bipedal animals, many female characters almost look like normal humans only with more fur and ears on the head. But only the beautiful women follow the trope — the rest have more variety, like the mouse cleaning lady of the first album, the doe teacher in the second, or the old lady ape in the fourth.
177	* TheHyena: Played with in the case of Neal. He laughs at Blacksad's jokes, but when he's stuck in a car between a parrot who tells racist jokes and an increasingly angry black cat, his sense of humor takes a leave of absence.
178	* IdiosyncraticCoverArt: The covers of both parts of ''They All Fall Down'' forms [[https://www.bdgest.com/forum/download/file.php?id=126110&mode=view a larger picture]].
179	* IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim: Blacksad struggles with this when confronting [[spoiler:Ivo Statoc, subverting it when he does kill him with a bullet to the head]].
180	* IKissYourHand:
181	** Blacksad kisses the hand of Smirnov's wife when they meet.
182	** Weekly kisses Rose's hand when they meet in a bar.
183	* IHaveYourWife: [[spoiler: Shelby, Solomon's enforcer, wants to quit, but Solomon points out how easy it would be to deprive Shelby's polio-stricken son of the iron lung he needs to live.]]
184	* ImperiledInPregnancy: In the ''Arctic Nation'' album, it is eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Chief Karup]]'s greatest crime after he became a white supremacist was to drag his heavily pregnant black wife out of her bed in the middle of the night and leave her behind in the cold winter woods to die. [[spoiler:She survived, and his children would grow up yearning for revenge.]]
185	* ImpliedDeathThreat: In the first book, the snake's boss threatens him via mentioning how useless insects are pinned and stuck to a case.
186	* InspectorLestrade: The fox police lieutnant becomes a particularly nasty example of this trope in the second part of ''They All Fall Down'', as detailed in TookALevelInJerkass below.
187	* InSpiteOfANail: Despite (almost) everyone being anthro animals, and having many specific issues due to that fact, general history seems mostly unchanged, what with UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and the RedScare. The comic also uses real world locations instead of inventing its own cities. Blacksad lives and works in New York City, grew up in Amarillo, Texas, and visits New Orleans among other places.
188	* InterspeciesRomance: Affairs between different species of animal happen as frequently as those between animals of the same species. For instance, Natalia in the first book had an affair with a lion and [[spoiler:a toad, Ivo Statoc the most powerful businessman in town]]. There is also the affair between Jezabel (a bear) and Huk (an arctic fox). There's also the love between Thomas Lachappelle (a goat) and Hannah Fletcher (a dog).
189	* IntrepidReporter: Weekly. He's also a bit of a [[ChivalrousPervert pervert]].
190	* InvulnerableKnuckles: Averted with Blacksad, he tends to hurt his hands punching rather strong enemies. Big animals like Leeland the hippo or Karup the polar bear however can just deck full strength anyone without issue. In ''They all fall down'' he spends multiple panels preparing ice for his hand after he hit a lizard in the head while.
191	%%* ItsAllAboutMe: [[spoiler:Chad]].
192	* ItsAlwaysMardiGrasInNewOrleans at the end of the fourth album.
193	* ItsPersonal: Natalia's death is personal to Blacksad so it's the only case he investigates without having a client paying him to do so.
194	* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: By the end of ''They All Fall Down'', [[spoiler: Solomon has successfully gotten away with his crimes, completed his bridge and his popularity is higher than ever]]. Then, in the last few pages, [[spoiler: it is revealed that his bridge has been sabotaged by the engineer's assistant, causing it to be completely destroyed during a rainstorm, ruining Solomon's greatest project and reputation in an instant]].
195	* TheKlan: The Arctic Nation is a mix between this and the Nazi Party. At the beginning they wear uniforms resembling Nazi party ones complete with red armbands, and later wear ones resembling those of the KKK. Because this is a WorldOfFunnyAnimals, they're [[FantasticRacism white fur supremacists]].
196	* LateArrivalSpoiler: The cover of ''They All Fall Down Part 2'' prominently shows [[spoiler:Alma]] whose return in the previous part was a surprise.
197	* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: At the beginning of ''Arctic Nation'' Blacksad is writing and monologuing about how he should publish his memoirs. Then he looks in the readers direction and mentions that he "Wouldn't be surprised if it ended up published as a detective novel." He was looking at a hanging body, but the 'Leaning' effect is there.
198	* LeaveTheTwoLoveBirdsAlone: Lampshaded and played with in ''Red Soul''. Blacksad jokes that his real reason for throwing Weekly out of his own apartment (to hide Alma from the FBI) probably sounded unbelievable to Weekly, and the weasel probably thinks that he only did so in order to have an intimate moment with Alma. A mere few seconds later, Weekly is actually proven right.
199	* LionsAndTigersAndHumansOhMy: A pair of human women are seen walking down the street in one panel of ''Somewhere Within The Shadows''.
200	* LoonyFan: Natalia was stalked by a florist who sent her hundreds of flowers as well as threatening cards. She hired Blacksad to make it stop and Blacksad quickly found the florist, beat him up, and judging by the giant shears between the legs, threatened to cut off his privates.
201	* LoveHurts: In five books, we get to meet several couples, but of these only one is happy and does not suffer from any tragedy: [[FriendOnTheForce Smirnov]] and his wife.
202	* LoveInterests: Blacksad has one in the first and third album. The first example is posthumously, giving Blacksad his motivation for going on a quest for revenge against her killer, the second example [[spoiler:is ultimately subverted]].
203	* LysistrataGambit: Jezebel Karup denies sex to her husband Hans because she privately despises him while playing the "good wife" in public. She also carries on an affair with his associate Huk just to humiliate him further. There's a salient reason for this: [[spoiler: Unbeknown to him, she's actually his daughter.]]
204	* TheMafia: There's a weasel mafia in New York City, who also have corrupt ties to the unions.
205	* MaleGaze: In ''Arctic Nation'', Blacksad takes a good look at Dinah through his left-side mirror when she walks away from his car at the drive-in theater. Later she changes clothes in front of him and he notices that she has a patch of white fur on her chest, which actually becomes a plot point later on.
206	* ManipulativeBitch: [[spoiler:Jezebel]]. See BatmanGambit for further information.
207	* MarryingTheMark: Jezebel goes as far as marrying [[spoiler:her own father]] who she blames for the death of her mother (though she doesn't sleep with him), in order to have him killed by the [[TheKlan KKK-like organization]] he's part of. Unfortunately, it also results in the death of her sister.
208	* MatureAnimalStory: A méchoui is referred as a hate crime.
209	* MeaningfulName:
210	** "Alma" means "soul" in Spanish and Italian. The title of the book she appears in is ''Red Soul''.
211	** "Jezebel" is a fitting name since it's often used to describe "an impudent, shameless, or morally unrestrained woman."
212	* MedicationTampering: In ''A Silent Hell'' Sebastian's heroin dealer is being paid by a man dressed as this world's version of the Grim Reaper to give Sebastian his own heroin. The dealer confesses to Blacksad that Sebastian is likely not gonna survive, likening the dope to rat poison. [[spoiler: Weekly finds Sebastian's trail but Blacksad arrives too late to stop him from injecting himself.]]
213	* MenAreUncultured: Smirnov is surprised to see Blacksad in an art gallery, Blacksad is there because his current boss wants to invest in art (who himself fit this trope, commenting his sofa has better pattern than the paintings) as the commissioner is only there because his wife wants their kids to be cultured. Blacksad can appreciate the work put into paintings and enjoys jazz but sees the left leaning intellectuals less like artists and intellectuals but more people that should worry about the black listing and committees.
214	* MightyWhitey: [[PlayingWithTropes Played with]] in ''Arctic Nation''. Plus, considering Blacksad himself is a ''black'' cat... or more precisely, a ''black and white'' cat. Which explains why neither the 'Arctic Nation' nor 'The Black Claws' can stand him. He even makes a smart-ass comment about it; when the Arctic Nation first comes around to harass him, he points to the white patch on his face and says, "What, isn't this enough white for you?". Later when a black horse tries to cover the white patch with black paint, Blacksad very seriously threatens to shoot him in the gut.
215	* MisterBig: Elmore Kupka, a diminutive koala bear who not only has a half-interest in the Sunflower Circus (and seems to have the greater influence amongst the performers), but also stars as "Elmore the Clown", a mute tramp-like character playing off his own size for laughs.
216	* MoraleEventHorizon: By the fifth book, John admits to Weekly that all the misery he's witnessed in his line of work has gotten to him, and he's very close to his own breaking point. By the sixth book, he's stopped trying to hide his growing cynicism.
217	* MrFanservice: Blacksad walks down a university hallway to ''very'' admiring glances from the female students, and extreme disapproval from their boyfriends. When he comes back, the couples are in full argument mode.
218	* MurderByMistake: Intending to assassinate [[spoiler: Otto]], Ribs kills a similar looking owl, Otero.
219	* MurderingTheHypotenuse: Natalia was involved in a LoveTriangle with a movie writer named Léon and another man who killed both Natalia and Léon out of spite.
220	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler: Jezebel, after it dawns on her that her revenge has made Kylie, her niece, an orphan]].
221	* MysteriousProtector: In ''A Silent Hell'', Blacksad is thrown into the sea and almost drowns, but is saved by another mysterious cat with an orange fur and a distinctive siren tatoo on the chest. Blacksad asks who he is but the cat doesn't give any definitive answer before going away, never to be seen again. The endpaper illustration shows Blacksad as a child being dragged out of the water by someone with the same tatoo.
222	* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Arctic Nation, an organization of white furred animals who want all the other colors to disappear in "a blizzard". They're a lot like the KKK too, even dressing in almost identical uniforms.
223	* NeverSmileAtACrocodile: Ribs from ''Red Soul'' is a gavial contract killer.
224	* NighthawksShot: In ''They All Fall Down, Part One'', when Blacksad and Iris decide to go to a bar, the scene transitions with a recreation of the famous painting.
225	* NoCartoonFish: There are anthropomorphic mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, but fish (as seen in an aquarium near the end of ''Red Soul'') and invertebrates (as seen with a bug collection in ''Somewhere Within The Shadows'') remain realistically animalistic.
226	* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed:
227	** Senator [[MeaningfulName Gallo]] is a cockerel, and is also an obvious ShoutOut to Senator UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy.
228	** UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler is present too, but remains unnamed. As in ''ComicBook/{{Maus}}'', [[CatsAreMean he is a cat]].
229	** Abraham Greenberg is based on poet Creator/AllenGinsberg, up to reciting one of Ginsberg's poems in book three.
230	** Chad Lowell and Billy Sorrows from book five are respectively based on Creator/JackKerouac and Creator/WilliamSBurroughs.
231	** Solomon from ''They All Fall Down'' is a very transparent satire of "master builder" Robert Moses, complete with an obsession with legacy, a tight and ruthless grip on New York municipal politics, and a preference for highways over urban transit and housing. Kenneth Clarke, similarly, bears a close physical resemblance to Transit Workers' Union president Michael "Red Mike" Quill, who led the NYC Transit Strike of 1966.[[note]]This makes Mayor Schumann an analogue for John Lindsay, though he also mentions it's an election year (likely '61 or '65) when speaking to Solomon, thus making him an incumbent and putting him in the place of Robert Wagner, Jr.[[/note]]
232	* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Abe and Chad try to steal a bike from a biker gang, but get caught. Blacksad intervenes to keep the gang from mauling them. They thank him by stealing his car behind his back.
233	* NonstandardCharacterDesign: Huk and Rose (the skunk who flirts with Weekly) are just about the only people in the entire series to have a tail...until ''Amarillo'', which introduced a lot of tailed background characters.
234	* NotQuiteSavedEnough: [[spoiler: Kenneth Clarke hired Blacksad to track down Logan, a hired assassin who is after him. Blacksad manages to stop Logan from stabbing Clarke in the metro, but while the detective is busy subduing the assassin, Shelby (who had remained unseen until then) grabs the unsuspecting Clarke and throws him in front of an incoming train.]]
235	* OddCouple: Big and stoic Blacksad with excitable and relatively small Weekly. Also the literal cat and dog combo of Blacksad and Smirnov.
236	* OhCrap:
237	** In Album one where Statoc's mammal henchman follows the lizard henchman into a predominantly reptile bar. As the reptiles are happy to illustrate: Hairy guys like him are '''NOT''' welcome there.
238	** Huk in ''Arctic Nation'' when Karup is about to kick his ass all over the church after Blacksad outs Huk's relationship with the chief's wife.
239	--->'''Huk:''' About the cat, you didn't believe anything he- ''[Karup locks the door]''
240	** In album five: see PopTheTires.
241	** Happens several times to Weekly in book six. First because his editor is getting tired of old journalism and then because the villains are on to him and he realizes it too late.
242	* OnceAnEpisode: Every story has a classic American song in the background ("Cemetery Blues", "[[Music/BillieHoliday Strange Fruit]]", "That Old Black Magic", "Summertime", "Route 66", and "The Birth of the Blues").
243	* OneHourWorkWeek: When he first meets Blacksad, Weekly claims that his articles are of such superior quality that he can get away with only showing up at the office once a week or so, which is how he got the nickname. Later on, he 'fesses up that it's actually because of an office rumor about his bathing habits. Since it's never established one way or the other whether his claim about the amount of time spent in the office is true, it's possible he's encouraged to stay away to save his coworkers from dealing with his...distinctive odor.
244	* OneLastSmoke: Blacksad offers a dying {{Mook}} a cigarette in ''Somewhere Within The Shadows''. The mook [[SubvertedTrope happens to be a non-smoker]], and instead spends his last moments giving crucial information so that Blacksad can kill the boss who ordered the mook's death.
245	* TheOwlKnowingOne: Otero and Liebber from ''Red Soul'' are both renowned owl scientists.
246	* ParentalIncest: [[spoiler:Jezebel's BatmanGambit relies on her marrying Karup, her own father. However, Karup is unaware of her true identity and she refuses to sleep with him.]].
247	* PedoHunt: Karup becomes the victim of this. See below.
248	* PedophilePriest: Karup is the director of the church's children choir. He may or may not be a pedophile... point is, [[spoiler: by the end all the townsfolk, and the members of the local KKK analogue, believe it]].
249	* PeriodPiece: The stories are set in TheFifties, and deal with all sorts of period-appropriate situations like the RedScare, TheKlan, beatniks, post-war {{jazz}}, the repercussions of the end of World War II, and UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar.
250	* PlayboyBunny: ''They All Fall Down'' features a high-class party with bar maids in bunny outfits. Naturally, the girls actually ''are'' bunnies, so the ears aren't technically part of the costume.
251	* PluckyComicRelief: Weekly's role in the story is mostly to provide the bulk of the more lighthearted moments. Case in point, after closing the case of Kylie's kidnapping, Blacksad's day is brightened by Weekly's funny confession about his nickname.
252	* PopTheTires: Successfully used by one of the FBI agents in ''Amarillo'', only for the target car to veer out of control and into their own car's way.
253	--> '''Both FBI agents:''' [[OhCrap AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!]]
254	* PosthumousCharacter: Natalia Wilford and [[spoiler:Leon Kronski]] in the first album. The entire plot of said album revolves around Blacksad tracking down Natalia's killer and avenging her death.
255	* PullTheTriggerProvocation: Blacksad is about to kill Ivo Statoc, the rich businessman who raped and murdered his former girlfriend, but still has his doubts whether he can really go through with a VigilanteExecution even after he already put Statoc's bodyguards in the hospital to get to him. Fortunately, Statoc's arrogant gloating about [[VirtueIsWeakness his own coldblooded nature]] and flashing a [[SmugSmiler confident smirk]] angers Blacksad enough to pull the trigger.
256	* PreciousPuppies: Smirnov's children and Sebastian's son, all puppies, are quite cute.
257	* PrettyLittleHeadshots: In the first story, even though Blacksad's old flame was murdered via a shot to the head, there's only a bit of blood and a small hole instead of brains and stuff being splattered all over the wall…
258	** … which might be explained by the fact that she was lying down on her bed and the shot was downwards. The nastiness would have splattered the pillow under her head rather than the wall.
259	** Played straight when he shoots [[spoiler:Ivo Statoc]] in the head, while the target is standing up and facing him. There's barely any blood where the victim lands.
260	* PrivateEyeMonologue: Lampshaded at the start of ''Arctic Nation'', when Blacksad notes his memoirs would read like a detective novel.
261	%%* ThePromise: Blacksad's promise to Cotten.
262	* PyrrhicVictory: [[spoiler:Faust [=LaChapelle=]]] from ''A Silent Hell'' will never be punished for his crimes while he was a SnakeOilSalesman, as everybody who could expose him is either dead or a nobody without a voice. However, Faust's guilt is also consuming him, he has alienated his own son, and is dying of a congenital disease anyway.
263	* RageBreakingPoint: In ''Amarillo'', Blacksad (an anthropomorphic black cat) and Neal (a hyena) hitch a ride with a racist parrot who keeps making derogatory remarks about "niggers" before smugly adding a JustJokingJustification. Blacksad tries to ignore it at first, but eventually reaches over to give the driver a black eye.
264	* ReassignedToAntarctica: the two FBI agents from the third book were reassigned to Albuquerque, New Mexico sometime before the fifth book, which they blame on Blacksad.
265	* RedHerring: One that does not last long in Arctic Nation, Black Claws are blaming the son of a rich white tiger who have kidnapped a girl that is rumored to be his daughter. The father laughs it off as saying that no women will sleep with his son, who is a mentally disabled cheetah, and even muses that the kidnapped girl might be Karup's. [[spoiler:He's off by one generation.]]
266	* RedScare: ''Red Soul'' deals with the Red Scare with Blacksad being embroiled in a communist conspiracy and getting in trouble with the law for being associated with them. The individual communists are presented in a better light than the communist hunters, [[spoiler:though the suspicions of them spying for the Soviets are very true]].
267	* RedemptionEqualsDeath: When [[spoiler:Cotten]] threatens to tell the rest of Arctic Nation about the kidnapping he is promptly shot.
268	* ReptilesAreAbhorrent:
269	** Played straight in the first album; one of Ivo Statoc's henchmen is a lizard. He does get something of an AlasPoorVillain moment though.
270	** Ribs, the henchman of third album, is a croc. However, [[AvertedTrope averted]] with Hewitt Mandoline, Blacksad's first employer in the same story, who despite looking a bit like a NouveauRiche is a nice person.
271	* RescueRomance:
272	** This is the nature of Blacksad's past relationship with the deceased Natalia Wilford, as he helped her get rid of a stalker. They started a relationship afterwards but it wore off after some time, and they broke up before her untimely death.
273	** Chad and Luanne may also count in book five: though they already flirted with each other before, their relationship really picks up after each of them saves the other's life once.
274	* RescueEquipmentAttack: In "Somewhere Within the Shadows", Blacksad's first encounter with the antagonist's goons goes very poorly for him, thus in their second fight, he has the advantage of using a metal fire extinguisher as an ImprovisedWeapon.
275	* RhinoRampage: One of Ivo Statoc's enforcers in the first album is an enormous rhino. Blacksad notes that fighting him is like trying to hit a locomotive; trying to punch him just injures Blacksad's hand.
276	* RidiculouslyCuteCritter: All the children. Kylie, the little Zebra who plays with her, the children in Karup's choir, [[PreciousPuppies Smirnov's puppies]], and Ray, Blacksad's nephew. And, despite not being a kid, Weekly.
277	* RightThroughHisPants: [[spoiler: After Blacksad and Alma's sexual encounter, the next scene shows Blacksad in a tank top and his suit pants while Alma is completely naked]].
278	* SceneryPorn: This series is ''gorgeous.''
279	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: After offering Blacksad to [[WeCanRuleTogether come work for him]] instead of pursuing his revenge fails, [[spoiler:Statoc]] instead tries to buy him off. Blacksad rejects him again and makes a point of defying [[spoiler:Statoc]]'s attempt to invoke this trope.
280	* SelfDeprecation: In ''Amarillo'', one of the FBI agents is a fan of ''Magazine/{{Mad}}'', but his partner lambasts him for being a grown man reading comic books. ''Blacksad'' itself is, of course, a comic book aimed at a mature audience.
281	* SexlessMarriage: Karup and Jezebel. With good reason, given that [[spoiler:Jezebel is Karup's daughter, although he doesn't know this.]]
282	* SexualKarma: When Blacksad has sex it's implied to be very romantic and fulfilling. Whereas when we see [[spoiler: Huk and Jezebel]] having sex it's shown to be much less wholesome.
283	* SexyCatPerson:
284	** Natalia Wilford, Alma Meyer, Luanne Eva Lange and Donna Blacksad. All of whom fit this trope to a T. They are all drawn as conventionally attractive CatFolk, with even Blacksad himself being presented as a {{Hunk}} on occasion, like the FunnyBackgroundEvent with all the boyfriends arguing with their girlfriends for looking at him.
285	** Blacksad and Weekly watch a leopard exotic dancer in the opening of ''A Silent Hell''.
286	* ShoutOut:
287	** In ''Somewhere Within the Shadows'', there is an orangutan musician playing at the Cypher Club. A blackboard advertises him as Lou King Jr., making him a reference to King Louie from ''WesternAnimation/TheJungleBook1967''.
288	** In ''Arctic Nation'' when Blacksad is crouching on a roof overlooking the city his silhouette ''SCREAMS'' Batman. Down to his very Batman hood-looking ears.
289	** Several to ''Theatre/PorgyAndBess'' in album four.
290	** In the fourth album, in an establishing shot of New Orleans, [[Literature/AConfederacyOfDunces Ignatius J. Reilly]] can be seen disapproving of the whole thing.
291	** The members of Sebastian's old band in ''A Silent Hell'' - a dog, a mule, a rooster, and a cat - are a clear nod to the German folktale of the "Musicians of Bremen", who were animals of the exact same species.
292	** The leader of the biker gang in the fifth album is a ShoutOut to Creator/MarlonBrando's character in ''Film/TheWildOne''.
293	** In the third book, Blacksad's boss is looking at a modern painting, imitating Creator/NormanRockwell's ''The Connoisseur''.
294	** In ''Arctic Nation'', Blacksad's detective work leads him to a drive-in theatre showing a black-and-white b-movie about [[Film/{{Them}} giant atomic ants]].
295	** The weasel mafia hitman in ''They All Fall Down'' is a wolverine named [[ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} Logan]].
296
297	* ShutUpHannibal: Delivered non-verbally via [[spoiler: [[BoomHeadshot headshot.]]]]
298	* {{Sidekick}}: Weekly from the second album onward, Neal in the fifth album.
299	* SignificantAnagram: Leon Kronski is killed and buried under the name of "Noel Krisnok" to hide his true identity.
300	* SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan: All Alma wants is a dedicated man who will take her to Niagara Falls.
301	* SleepingWithTheBosssWife: Hans Karup's wife Jezebel is having an affair with Huk, his second-in-command in the Arctic Nation, the white supremacist cult they're both part of. Huk uses unsubstantiated allegations that Karup is a pedophile to engineer his betrayal and execution by his followers, even whispering that he'll take good care of Jezebel after he's gone. [[spoiler:This backfires on Huk, as Jezebel later kills him for becoming too much of a loose cannon in her own years-long scheme against Karup.]]
302	* SlidingScaleOfAnthropomorphism:
303	** Blacksad looks far more anthropomorphic than most characters. Sexy ladies are even more anthropomorphic.
304	** Inversely, the circus folk from the fifth album were deliberately drawn much less anthropomorphic than the rest of the characters, to emphasize their status as outcast freaks.
305	* SoundtrackDissonance: Hannah singing "Summertime" to her baby as Blacksad races to find Sebastian dead of an overdose. [[spoiler: Or a poisoning, as it's mentioned that his sellers were ordered to sell him heroin so bad they compare it to rat poison.]]
306	* StalkerWithACrush: When Blacksad meets her Natalia is harassed by a stalker, and hires Blacksad to get rid of him. Blacksad does so by shoving a gun in the guy's mouth and threatening to kill him.
307	* TheStarscream: [[spoiler:Huk the polar fox to Karup, he plots to have him framed as a pedophile so he can execute him and become the new Arctic leader. He is half successful]].
308	* StealthPun:
309	** In ''Arctic Nation'', Huk, a canine member of the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Arctic Nation]] [[spoiler:is in an affair with the leader's wife. Weekly catches them having sex from behind i.e. "Doggy Style"]].
310	** In ''Amarillo'', a bus driver who appears in a couple of panels at the Greyhound bus station is a greyhound.
311	* StepfordSmiler: Samuel Gotfield is a Type C before he goes [[SanitySlippage completely mental.]]
312	* StoutStrength: Ted Leeman, the corrupt hippo detective in ''A Silent Hell'' seems like a sweaty, obese sloth whose bark is worse than his bite. When Blacksad outsmarts him and reveals himself, Leeman unleashes a brutal beating on Blacksad and tanks three shots to the gut to show his immense strength.
313	* StrawHypocrite: Invoked by [[spoiler:Jezebel]], who told Huk that Hans Karup, despite being an outspoken white supremacist in public, was secretly screwing their black maid. He wasn't, but given how deeply racist Huk himself is, this might have played into his motivation for [[TheStarscream having Karup framed and killed]].
314	* SubParSupremacist: In ''Arctic Nation'', white fur stands in for white supremacy, with TheKlan-equivalent's iconography being a Nazi flag with the swastika replaced by a snowflake.
315	** When one goon tries to intimidate Blacksad (a black-furred cat with a white chin), Blacksad stands up to reveal he's a head taller than the goon, and easily sends him flying behind the bar.
316	** One prominent member of the Arctic Nation has a severely mentally disabled son, strongly hinted to be the result of inbreeding.
317	* SuicidalLemmings: A BrickJoke occurring in ''Red Soul'' is a group of doomsday cultist lemmings that appear in a city scene. A newspaper article at the end states they've committed mass self-immolation.
318	* SurpriseIncest: [[spoiler:Hans Karup]] unknowingly married one of his own daughters after she came of age. She was actually aware of their family relationship, and [[LysistrataGambit wouldn't let him touch her]]. The marriage was in fact all part of a decades-long revenge plot to hurt him for previously leaving their mother to her death.
319	* SwissCheeseSecurity: Statoc's building seemed pretty easy to break into. Although this may reflect Statoc's confidence that he could sway Blacksad with money.
320	* SympatheticAdulterer:
321	** Played with in the album ''Arctic Nation''. Jezebel [[LysistrataGambit refuses her husband Karup sexual relations]], knowing full well that she's pretty much a [[TrophyWife social status symbol]] for the WASP police chief. She then seduces Karup's right-hand man Huk, telling him that Karup is actually cheating on her with their black maid Dinah. [[spoiler:None of this is true: Jezebel and Dinah are sisters, and ''Karup's daughters''. It's all part of a decades-long revenge scheme against their father for having left their mother to her death.]]
322	** Alma is in a relationship with her benefactor Gotfield but by the time she sleeps with Blacksad the only reason she didn't break up is Gotfield being too far gone after selling her and the others to the police to meet again.
323	* SympatheticMurderer: By the end of ''Amarillo'', [[spoiler:Chad]] has directly or indirectly caused four deaths.
324	* ThoseTwoGuys: the FBI agents from the third album, who reappear in the fifth.
325	* ThisIsGonnaSuck: The fox lieutnant comes back in ''They all fall down'' and being on PoliceBrutality duty he is not amused when he sees Blacksad defending the theater troupe he is asked to disband with batons.
326	* TooDumbToLive: [[spoiler:Ivo Statoc]], gloating and mocking someone for having standards is not the smartest of moves. His assassin even says that he would not have gone through if he was not so smug about it.
327	* TookALevelInJerkass: The fox lieutnant in ''They All Fall Down'', especially in the second part, to the point it looks like he has a personal grudge against Blacksad. He immediately believes that [[spoiler: Weekly murdered Iris in cold blood]] despite it being a ''painfully obvious'' frame-up and impedes Blacksad's investigation at several points, even [[spoiler: trying to arrest him for the murder of Dill's nurse simply because John visited her shortly before her death)]] [[InspectorLestrade and remains utterly incompetent and clueless throughout the whole story]]. It culminates in Blacksad [[spoiler: having to smash a chair on his head to avoid getting wrongfully arrested, and the fox lieutenant ''shooting at him'' in retaliation]]. His first appearance in the story also had him disbanding an (admittedly illegal) theatrical play in the city park by having police officers [[PoliceBrutality threathen the crowd with their batons]].
328	* TragicVillain:
329	** The lizard henchman of the first volume. Most of his background implies he was just a guy from the ghetto who got hired to be a valet for a man he despised. Then he saw a gruesome murder that gave him finally a chance to blackmail himself a cozy life, which Blacksad seems to have planned that too (the henchman never realized Blacksad's motives to investigate, since he didn't know that Blacksad and Natalia were once in a relationship before she met Statoc). He ends up lamenting that while his boss was a SoreLoser, himself was just a loser.
330	** An even more tragic example would be [[spoiler:Shelby]] from the ''They All Fall Down'' two-parter. Not only does[[spoiler: his only son, Dill, develop polio and requires an iron lung to survive]], it's also revealed that [[spoiler: [[BigBad Solomon]] is paying for Dill's treatment and basically forces Shelby into the role of his personal hitman]]. Then, in the second book, [[spoiler: a city-wide power outage [[AllForNothing causes Dill to die in his sleep anyway]], and an utterly broken Shelby [[DrivenToSuicide lets himself fall to his death following a failed murder attempt on Solomon]]]]. ''[[TraumaCongaLine Ouch]]''.
331	* UseYourHead: Blacksad pulls this on an attacker in ''Somewhere Within The Shadows''. It is very effective.
332	* VengeanceFeelsEmpty: [[spoiler:Jezebel Karup]] sets up a years-long revenge scheme against her [[ArchnemesisDad abusive father]] for leaving her mother to her death, [[spoiler:even ''marrying him'' as part of the plan]], then framing him as a child molester so the town will lynch him. However, in the process she ends up making her niece an orphan, nearly gets said niece killed as well, and at the end of the day none of it will ever bring her own mother back. As Blacksad confronts her over all the collateral damage she's caused, she seems to have a HeelRealization:
333	-->''I feel so... cold.''
334	* VillainRespect: Ivo Statoc shows his respect to Blacksad for having the wits and brawns to pass through his security detail and proposes to hire him, regardless of the fact that he murdered Blacksad's old flame.
335	* TheVillainSucksSong: "Pizen Blues" turned out to be this. [[spoiler: It's the story of how a SnakeOilSalesman ended up causing massive poisoning, birth difformities and stillborn, using his wealth the salesman escaped law and renamed himself Faust Lachapelle, now a band producer who shamelessly exploited two musicians with birth defects from his past and had one sent to jail to cover his past.]]
336	* VisualPun: Ivo Statoc makes a big point to Blacksad about how much of a "cold-blooded" bastard he truly is. He's a toad.
337	* WarIsHell: Subtly implied by Blacksad in ''Amarillo'', when he mentions that he [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII went to Europe]] without getting any good memories.
338	* WeCanRuleTogether: [[spoiler:Ivo Statoc]] tries to offer Blacksad a job in his employ when he's finally tracked him down and already dispatched his bodyguards; Blacksad refuses.
339	* WhamShot:
340	** The short story "Spit At The Sky" has a hen asking for help bringing to justice the man who tricked her sons and sent them to their deaths. Blacksad muses that he knows this man and he's tricked him once too, and many other young men. Only at the very end is it shown that this man is [[spoiler:Uncle Sam]].
341	** In ''Red Soul'', Blacksad gets into a fight with Lazlo Herzl and rips open Herzl's sleeve... revealing [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust a number tattoo]]. Suddenly Herzl's motives for [[spoiler:trying to kill Lieber]] fall into place.
342	** The last panel of book six. Blacksad has just watched a performance of Macbeth, and the actress who played Lady Macbeth in Iris Allen's stead unmasks herself while saluting the audience.
343	--->'''Blacksad:''' [[spoiler: ALMA...]]
344	** The last panel of the second part is one as well: as [[spoiler: Solomon's bridge collapses, it's revealed that the engineer's assistant, a peacock, sabotaged it to ensure it wouldn't be able to withstand strong winds. Said peacock then proceeds to remove her fake beak and feathers, revealing herself to actually be ''Rachel Zucco'']].
345	* WhatHaveIDone: Quoted pretty much word for word by [[spoiler:Luanne after she kills her coworker (and would-be rapist) to save Chad.]]
346	* WickedWeasel:
347	** Averted with Weekly; he's ThePigpen, but he's still a good guy.
348	** Played straight with the snide ermine henchman in ''Arctic Nation''.
349	** ''They All Fall Down'' introduces the weasel mafia, of which all its members are mustelids (although not ''technically'' all weasels; one of them is a wolverine).
350	* WolfWhistle: in both cases, Blacksad's sidekick is whistling at a woman he shouldn't be looking at too closely:
351	** In ''Arctic Nation'', Weekly upon seeing Jezebel.
352	** In ''Amarillo'', Neal upon seeing Donna.
353	* WorldOfFunnyAnimals: The world of Blacksad is pretty much America in the 50's, except that everyone is an animal. Not that much of a funny world since the series also features a lot of the bad side of the 50's like racial tensions, the Red Scare and so on.
354	* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler: Solomon keeps Shelby in his employ by threatening to deprive Shelby's polio-stricken son of the iron lung he needs to live.]]
355	* WrongSideOfTheTracks: "The Line", which used to be prosperous during World War II. Then the armaments factories shut down and the district collapsed.
356	* YouDirtyRat: The bar patron who helps Blacksad track down Leon Kronski and [[spoiler:tries to kill him, turning out to be working for Statoc,]] is a rat. Blacksad (who's a cat) notes that he's always mistrusted rats in his internal monologue.
357	* YouKilledMyFather: This is what drives [[spoiler:[[ManipulativeBitch Jezebel]] Karup is actually her biological father who left Jezebel's mother for dead years ago after she became pregnant. Jezebel and her sister blame Karup for their mother's suffering and eventual death and hatched a complex revenge plot to get back at him]].
358	* YouWouldntShootMe: Statoc reminds Blacksad that he's not the sort of person who would shoot someone in cold blood, and so can't pull the trigger. [[spoiler:He is quickly proven wrong. Blacksad also notes that without the jolt of contempt he felt from Statoc's upfront taunting, he probably wouldn't have pulled the trigger.]]

Context ComicBook / Blacksad