At first glance, the stills from Pendulo Studios and YS Interactive's Blacksad: Under the Skin might bring to mind the 3D computer-animated comedy film, Zootopia, but you'd be sadly mistaken. The French-Spanish comic the upcoming video game is based on reads like something Frank Miller created.
While a bit of an obscure comic in the U.S., Blacksad is very popular internationally, particularly in France.
As far as the video game is concerned, it's described as the investigation into the suicide/murder of a boxing club owner. His daughter hires Blacksad to investigate the suspicious disappearance of the boxing club's champion on the eve of the venue's biggest event.
Josue Monchan, designer at Pendulo states, "We want the player to discover all sides of John Blacksad’s complex personality and choose the one he wants to be."
Click the next button to scroll through the mages. Blacksad: Under the Skin is aiming for a 2019 release on PS4, Xbox One and PC.
The Blacksad comic book was previously nominated for an Eisner Award in 2004. But It wouldn't actually win the coveted award until 2013. Told in a film noir style, the setting is 1950s America but the countries inhabitants are anthropomorphic animals instead of regular humans. There's plenty of stereotypes and profiling as virtually all of the police force is composed of animals like dogs and foxes while criminals are mostly reptiles and amphibians.
Back in 2006, a film adaptation was in development that was set to be directed by Louis Leterrier. The project stalled for a number of years before Alexandre Aja expressed interest in 2011. The project has lain dormant ever since.
The main character of Blacksad is John Blacksad, a hardboiled PI. In the style of old, pulp detective novels, the comic is told through Blacksad's own narration. Past U.S. historical issues and events such as inter-racial violence and racial segregation, the Red Scare, and the nuclear arms race are reimagined in the anthropomorphic setting.
Set in a reimagined 1950s America, anthropomorphic versions of famous historical figures regularly appear, including Adolf Hitler (cat), Joseph McCarthy (rooster), and Allen Ginsberg (bison).
Created by the Spanish duo of Juan Díaz Canales (writer) and Juanjo Guarnido (artist), the comic is actually aimed at a French audience. As such, issues are released their first before making their way to Spanish-speaking countries and then eventually, the U.S. Dark Horse comics holds the North American license for the series.
There have been 5 volumes of the series released to date, with Dark Horse combining the first three into a single collection. A fifth and sixth volume have been confirmed for release originally slated for 2016. There's presently no timetable for their publication.