Canardo
Created by Benoît Sokal (1954--)

CANARDO was probably the world's first private duck dick, or at least the first to appear regularly ("canard" of course, is the French word for "duck.") He's gathered a large cult following in Europe, where his parody/salute to the hard-boiled genre has been appearing for years.Violence abounds, and it gets surprisingly dark, even noirish at times.

It may look like Disney, but this one ain't for kids, folks. Sure, humans and humanoid animals mix freely, but this is a particularly seedy, nasty world, full of drunken nights and morning-after philosphizing, where and questions of existential angst and race and class are played out with a cast psychics, mad dictators, evil scientists, and psychotic thugs, all of various species.

Rumpled trenchoat, butt jammed in his beak, the weight of the world on his shoulders, scotch on his breath, this is one hardboiled waterfowl.

COMICS

• A SUIVRE
  (1979--)
  Written and drawn by Benoît Sokal
  

• "La Cadillac Blanche"
• "Noces des brumes" (January 1984)

ALBUMS

• Canardo (1980)
• Le chien debout (1981, translated as A Shabby Dog Story, 1991)
• La Marque de Raspoutine (1982)
• La Mort douce (1983; translated as Blue Angel, 1991)

RELATED LINKS

• Hard-Boiled Mysteries Detective and Crime Comics
  Part of Etienne Borgers' Hard-Boiled Mysteries site. A brief intro to some of the best of the European and American detective and crime comics. It's also, um, where I got that the info on this page and the way cool graphic of the figurine...

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Merci to Big Al Hubin for not ducking the tough ones, and to Vesa Lehtinen. Pictured, Canardo as a figurine.