Blacksad

How have I been completely ignorant of this? It's a visually stunning series of noir-stories set it an increasingly complex setting, and that uses anthropomorphic animal characters in a way that actually serves a purpose other than making them distinct of each other or cute. The stories are all complex, and instead of being "whodunits", they're gradually unwinding tales of morally amibigous characters, corrupt people in power, and everything you would expect from a proper noir. It uses the most interesting parts of the time period its set in. It doesn't at all shy away from handling serious matters (murder, rape, abduction of children, nazism), but it handles these dark themes in a way that doesn't feel cheap.

This collection consists of the first three stories, and while I'm not able to read them in their original language, the English translations seems really well done - and the lettering is perfect. It's large enough to serve proper justice to the art (even though every single frame could easily have been a page of itself), and it's kind enough to let you know what songs and texts people are quoting within the stories themselves.