French comic reviews: 'Fang' and 'Blacksad Stories'

Fang is a comic published in France, however the writer is an American named Joe Kelly, and the artist is a French-Canadian named Niko Henrichon. Both have occasionally veered into talking animals; Kelly with Bad Dog and Henrichon with Pride of Baghdad.

Fang is an ongoing story published by Les Humanoïdes Associés. The first issue, Chasseuse de démons (Demon huntress) appeared in 2021, and the second issue, À la poursuite d'Aldafaor (In pursuit of Aldafaor) came out in 2025.

Set in a medieval fantasy setting that combines European and Chinese cultural motifs, the land is occupied by both humans and animal people of various species. Demonic creatures are apparently rampant, making pacts with people to grant them power, or possessing them to cause trouble.

Enter our protagonist Fang, a short, squat female fox who hunts demons and violently eradicates them. I'm not sure of her age; her personality comes across as unfriendly, gruff and sarcastic. She wears a grassy cloak, has fast reflexes and is capable of high acrobatic leaps. Her primary weapon is a long chain with a short blade at one end and a metal ball at the other.

To be honest, my knowledge of French was not strong enough to follow everything that was going on. I appreciated the larger, framing story just fine, but the nuances of the local adventures eluded me. I didn't at all understand the motivations nor the methods of the people that had associated with demons. While the artwork was good, it's not always pretty. Half the pages in both books are fights. The demons are huge, ugly pink monstrous abominations that lash out with long, fleshy protuberances. This significantly overshadows the anthro content.

The first book introduces Fang doing her work in a village beset by drought, with the locals intent on blaming one of their own, not helped by a rival demon hunter. The second half of the story has a deer woman who asks Fang to find her missing son. Fang flatly refuses, but then does so anyway? Arriving in a town occupied by a paranoid army of bears, Fang somehow figures out where the deer is, fights a demon, and then returns home, followed by one of the bears (Rong), and the rescued deer (Wei-Tzu). I don't understand why, but the bear can't return to his people, and the deer wants nothing to do with his mother.

Speaking of mothers, Fang's mother is... a human woman? Fang's backstory is revealed very slowly, and it's still missing a lot of details. She has flashbacks to an emotionally traumatic training regimen, being told her existence is cursed, and to make up for it, she must dedicate herself to hunting demons, while also never taking the life of an innocent.

Fang herself has some kind of demonic qualities, but while the demons she hunts are represented by pink, Fang's powers manifest as blue. She's also stand-offish to the bear and the deer wanting to come with her, I think partially out of internalized self-hatred, but also because she doesn't want to see them get hurt. The second book has Fang being given a vision quest by a magic fruit, and finding a religious cult. Some of them are quite nice, but of course there's a demon, so that's got to stop.

I'm not sure I would recommend this comic unless you're very fluent in French and don't mind all the fighting. I'm willing to wait a couple more years for the next issue, if only to find out what the deal is with Fang. Otherwise the rest of the story isn't quite grabbing me.

Blacksad Stories: Weekly

The first issue of Blacksad Stories, Weekly, was published in 2025 by Dargaud. As usual it's written by Jean Díaz Canalès, but the artist has changed from Juanjo Guarnido to Giovanni Rigano. Based on some online interviews (like this one) I get the impression that Guarnido was too busy with other projects, so with his blessing, they brought in Rigano to help make a spin-off from the regular Blacksad series until Guarnido can return. There doesn't appear to be an English translation yet.

The detailed backgrounds and watercolors persist, however the designs of the characters have changed, becoming more cartoony. Whether this will appeal to Blacksad purists or not will depend on the individual reader. Rigano has definitely studied Guarnido's work; you can see parallels in some of the facial expressions. He also emphasizes the animal characteristics of female faces more than Guarnido does; it's just that the Weekly comic doesn't have many female characters. The main one is Weekly's grandmother, who is so short and tubby that it's impossible to determine her species - except if you already know that Weekly is a weasel of some sort. (Technically in the original French comic he's a beech marten.)

Blacksad the cat detective is not present; he and Weekly will meet later in the second Blacksad comic, Arctic Nation. Instead, this is a prequel comic, introducing us to a younger Weekly and how he became a photo-journalist for the newspaper What's News. Honestly I'm not fond of Weekly as a character. His heart's in the right place (mostly) but he's extremely immature, a bit full of himself and doesn't take criticism well. Still, he's loyal and helpful to Blacksad.

If anything, the prequel establishes much that we already know about him. He's a slob and hates bathing - almost every important side-character in this comic makes a remark about his stench. He appears to be in his last years of high school (?), and is already a keen photographer. But he's more interested in earning money than going to school.

What this prequel firmly establishes is that if Weekly isn't interested in doing something, he completely ignores it. But the moment he feels motivated, he throws himself into the task at 100% - and is willing to cut corners and circumvent the rules if he thinks it'll give him an advantage. Another aspect of Weekly is his uncanny luck to be in the right (or wrong) place at the right (or wrong) time.

Weekly isn't known as "Weekly" yet - he's stuck with his actual name, Dustin Kalisnowszczyzna. He lives with his grandmother (of Russian or Polish descent) and I assume that a lot of his behavior is a coping mechanism. She's an awful person to live with. She makes exagerrated claims about her past, she's paranoid, judgemental, (possibly illiterate?) and an obnoxious fundamentalist Christian.

While she might not have the firmest grip on reality, she's pragmatic enough to know that Dustin needs focus and responsibility. So she gets him a job at a funeral home (which he's not interested in), while he independently tries to find work with a comics publisher.

There are a couple of plot threads. Something weird is going on at the funeral home, and there's a local religious moral crusade, which is interfering with the comics publisher that Dustin is trying to work for. This part of the comic is definitely inspired by the origins of the Hays Code and the Comics Code Authority. Something that's a bit out of place - Dustin starts working on a photonovel, which was more of a 1950s thing in Italy than in the United States.

Overall I'm ok with the artstyle differences, but the writing was underwhelming. Two major plot developments come out of the blue in the last few pages. Dustin never figures out for himself what was happening at the funeral home; instead there's an exposition dump from others.

Still, by the end of the story we see how the newspaper What's News is established, and Dustin becomes one of its first employees. We see him adopt his signature coat and cap. And if you compare the opening and closing artwork pages, his adventures have changed him from a teenager to a young adult, and with that, he becomes the Weekly we've come to know.

Will there be more issues of Blacksad Stories? Who knows! Maybe we'll see what happened to Alma after the events of Red Soul? Or personally I would love to see Smirnov's back-story. Time will tell!

(Also, thank you to Earthfurst for the Newsbytes update - I've been super busy in the last six weeks with visitors and a convention; now I can start catching up on things!)