“That Old Black Magic”: Noir and Music in Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido’s Blacksad

Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido’s Blacksad is a comic series that evokes the noir tradition through thematic and visual callbacks to noir films and comics. As they use noir tropes, the comics illuminate the tensions in both noir and comics. Yet, Blacksad stands out as a liminal text that simultaneously references and reverses traditional noir themes. One often-overlooked noir trope is the inclusion of music in each comic album. Blacksad has often been analysed as a purely visual text. However, the inclusion of music enhances the text as the songs themselves create a layered meaning in the work that is relevant to the styles present in both comics and film noir. The music enhances the intertextual and noir references embedded in Blacksad, both building the world around the story and enhancing the storytelling of an inherently ‘silent’ medium.

namely through the transatlantic blending of styles and intertextuality. This is evident in the French album format of the comic in which each comic is around 60 pages. However, an often-overlooked aspect of the comic, and an overlooked noir trope, is the music. While music in comics is not new, the music in Blacksad is unique because it recalls and perpetuates the music tradition in noir. In doing so, it reveals the inherent tensions and ambiguous combinations in both comics and noir, namely the dichotomy between silence and music. This article will explore the ways in which Blacksad is a noir text through its constant blending and intertextuality, and then discuss how music in the comic augments these tensions.

Intertextual Tensions: Blacksad as Liminal Noir Text
The Blacksad comics have both thematic and visual connections to the noir style including character archetypes, setting, lighting, colour, racial tensions, silence, and music. Due to the inherent tensions and paradoxes associated with the comics medium as well as the film noir style, Blacksad itself begins to embody various ambiguities, namely the comics' use of music to evoke the noir tradition. The majority of the music in the comics is diegetic, meaning it is internal to the fictional world. John Blacksad interacts with music by listening to the radio, playing records, listening to live music or playing the piano. Film critic and theorist André Bazin's idea of finding "equivalence in the meaning of forms" when adapting a story from one medium to another relates to comics in that they have 'lighting' and 'silence,' albeit not the same as in film (1948: 42). By including music, Blacksad is problematizing its role as a noir comic, in that the medium itself is unable to produce sound. However, comics are able to suggest silence in the lack of dialogue or equivalent representations of sound on the comic page. Charles Hatfield describes comics as "an art of tensions", because they "can be complex means of communication and are always characterised by a plurality of messages" (2005: 32, 36). Similarly, James Naremore posits, "film noir occupies a liminal space somewhere between Europe and America, high modernism and 'blood melodrama,' and between low-budget crime movies and art cinema" (1988: 220). Like the film noir style it appropriates, Blacksad occupies a liminal space between American and European comics cultures, between human and animal and also between comics and film noir. On top of this liminal space, which suggests that it is its own entity, Blacksad is also made up of a complex interweaving of intertextual and visual references to other works. Namely, the music included in each album is used to reveal the irony and mood of the scene, to reveal the internal struggle of the main character, and as foreshadowing. The songs themselves create a layered meaning in the work that is relevant to the styles present in both comics and film noir. Mikhail Bakhtin argues that no work is "monumental" or independent as every work is influenced by others (1986: 72). Blacksad, like the noir style itself, is heavily influenced by music, literature and popular culture such as comics.  (Vertaldi and Delcroix 2013). Both the album and the film feature a character that runs away to a circus, attempting to conceal their identity because they are wanted by the authorities. There are also literary references in Amarillo, to John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939), Jack Kerouac's On The Road (1957), and the influence of the Beat Generation, as well as musical references to Charlie Parker in A Silent Hell (2012). This inherent intertextuality across various media highlights Graham Allen's analysis of Bakhtin's idea of heteroglossia as, "language's ability to contain within it many voices, one's own and other voices" (2000: 28). Blacksad is able to contain references to other works, spanning across multiple mediums, as well as create a liminal space between noir and comics.
The notion of intertextuality brings forward ideas of hybridity and mixing, as seen in both the anthropomorphic representation of the characters as well as their racial identities denoted by their fur colour. Marc Singer finds that comics "have proven fertile ground for stereotyped depictions of race. Comics rely upon visually codified representations in which characters are continually reduced to their appearances" (2002: 107). In Blacksad, the characters have both racial and animal signifiers that characterise them. John Blacksad visually represents his racial tension through his representation as both black and white. The work also references historical political  (1986), Blacksad reverses the presumption of the reader by creating a serious and politically charged comic featuring talking animal heads. The creators even reference Maus in the work by depicting Hitler as a cat in Spiegelman's style (Díaz Canales and Guarnido 2010: 154). As a text, Blacksad is liminal in that "it exists at the limen or the threshold between two opposing conceptual categories, and so can be defined by both and neither of them" (Hurley 2007: 139), thus, setting it apart from or outside of both film noir and 'funny animal' comics. It also, however, continuously references works that are fundamental to film noir, as well as anthropomorphic and noir comics, which implicitly positions the work within these contexts. It is also liminal as an international text in that the comics are set in the United States while they are produced by Spanish creators in French for the French market. The albums are French in style in that they are hardbacked and longer than traditional American comics. As both within and outside of these categories, Blacksad proves a rich, international text to analyse in terms of meaning, starring a character who lies precariously between man and animal, and is racially a mixture between black and white.

Maus
The cover image of the first album, as mentioned in the introduction, is an example of Blacksad's intertextuality (Figure 1). Namely, it is a visual reference to a poster promoting Howard Hawks' film The Big Sleep (1946) starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Both the cover and The Big Sleep poster show a middle-aged male protagonist pointing a gun at an unseen foe in defense of his love interest. However, the images themselves reveal ambiguities inherent to noir and comics. Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton note an ambiguity in the characterisations of film noir protagonists, in that, "he is often more mature, almost old, and not too handsome. Humphrey Bogart typifies him" (1955: 22). The protagonists in these images, including Humphrey Bogart himself, fit this ambiguous characterization and are cast as the rugged detectives who will solve the case no matter the cost. However, it is not just the men that are characterized ambiguously. Borde and Chaumeton find that the women in noirs are ambiguous as well, describing the femme fatale as "frustrated and deviant, half predator, half prey, detached yet Austin: "That Old Black Magic" Art. 12, page 5 of 16 ensnared, she falls victim to her own traps" (1955: 22). Blacksad's lover, Natalia, is drawn as an anthropomorphic cat, with a combination of delicate features as well as claws. Her anthropomorphism makes her literally half predator, but she is an ambiguous character as well. She is also a victim because of her actions: she cheats on a man who then has her killed. Similarly, in the poster for The Big Sleep, Bacall's character is gripping Bogart's suit in what appears to be fright. Yet, her facial expression is more menacing, ambiguously showing that she is staring down the foe as well. which includes superstitions about a people who have magical powers that turn them into black panthers when angered or sexually aroused. Because of this, the woman who turns into a panther in the film is never able to fulfil her sexual desires.
Similarly, in Blacksad, "That Old Black Magic" foreshadows the couple's inability to be together and also reveals their lingering feelings for one another. Ella Fitzgerald's song returns in Amarillo, when Blacksad is being driven to Denver, Colorado by a parrot. The song plays on the car radio, leading the driver to comment, "Speakin' o' coloreds! Lissen ta jus' how low down an' funky they get when they start ta singin'…" (Díaz Canales and Guarnido 2014: 35). In this panel, Blacksad is noticeably angry and punches the parrot off-panel. Blacksad's reaction references both Red Soul, with the song reminding him of Alma, as well as the racial tensions in Arctic-Nation. "That Old Black Magic" reveals Blacksad's inner struggle, foreshadows his inability to be with Alma, and is used as both an intertextual and metatextual reference in the comics.
The fourth album, A Silent Hell, revolves around the music industry in 1950s New Orleans. Faust Lachappelle, mogul, hires Blacksad to locate his top performer, Sebastian "Little Hand" Fletcher. While looking for clues, Blacksad encounters a street peddler named Big Bill Lenoir who used to perform with Sebastian. Lenoir is The tension between music and silence in the comics form is most noticeable in this album. The music at the top of the panels both guides the eye of the reader as well as guides them to the conclusion that Lachapelle is the villain. The inherent silence of the panels and lack of dialogue creates and builds the tension toward the reveal.
Other albums use music more subtly to evoke foreshadowing. After Chad and his gang steal Blacksad's car on the way to Amarillo, Blacksad seeks help from a hardened, leather-clad gang of sheep. Their leather jackets read "Let it Bleat", a reference to The Rolling Stones' album "Let it Bleed" (1969) as well as Music is embedded in the world of Blacksad. By including music in the comics, the creators not only evoke the noir tradition, but also provide a leitmotif for each album: Bessie Smith's "Cemetery Blues" in Somewhere within the Shadows, Billy Holiday's "Strange Fruit" in Arctic Nation, Ella Fitzgerald's "That Old Black Magic" in Red Soul, Bessie Smith's "Devil's Gonna Git You" in A Silent Hell, and both Nat King Cole's "Route 66" and "Hit that Jive Jack" in Amarillo. The comics pull upon the noir tradition of music and use songs from the period to set the tone of each album: Natalia's death evokes ' cemetery blues', the lynched African Americans are 'strange fruit' hanging from the trees, Blacksad attempts to believe in 'that old black magic' called love in the midst of nuclear warfare, the devil and the drugs eventually 'get' to Sebastian, and Blacksad 'gets his kicks on Route 66' while Chad 'hits that jive' and faces the consequences. The songs are both relevant to the time as well as to the intertextual references throughout the work. The songs themselves create a layered meaning in the work that is relevant to the styles present in both comics and film noir. The use of music enhances the intertextual and noir references embedded in Blacksad, both building the world around the story and enhancing the storytelling in a 'silent' medium. Music augments the inherent tensions in both noir and comics, highlighting the blending and intertextuality of the style and medium.