Editing Blacksad (section)

===''Red Soul''===
{{Long plot|section|date=April 2025}}
During the [[Second Red Scare|Red Scare]], Blacksad is employed as a [[bodyguard]] for a [[tortoise]] called Hewitt Mandeline, who goes on a gambling trip to Las Vegas. After returning home, Blacksad's last assignment is to accompany him to an art gallery, where he runs into Smirnov and his family. He finds a leaflet for a lecture given by his old school teacher, Otto Liebber a [[Barn-owl|barn owl]] [[Nuclear physics|nuclear physicist]] and Nobel Prize candidate. Also appearing is the [[Dalmatian dog|Dalmatian]] philanthropist Samuel Gotfield, who heads a scientific research foundation; Blacksad takes an instant dislike for Gotfield, who makes a mockery of Otto's lecture. He also meets Gotfield's fiancée, the writer Alma Mayer.

Gotfield invites Blacksad to a party at his luxurious coastal mansion along with twelve [[leftist]] intellectuals: Greenberg, a [[Beat generation|beat poet]]; the photographer Dora; the sculptor Klein; the actor Bill Ratcliff; the scriptwriter Jess Logan; the [[Russia]]n painter Sergei Litvak, a [[brown bear]], the accomplished chemist Laszlo Herzl, a [[Rhesus monkey]] and Alma Mayer. After Blacksad grudgingly saves a drunken Gotfield from drowning, with the help of Otto's close friend Otero, Herzl angrily accuses Otto of promoting [[nuclear weapon]]s. When Otero gets back home, he is killed by a [[gavial]] assassin named Ribs. It seems he actually meant to kill Otto.

Blacksad and Alma – who plans to spend her honeymoon with Gotfield at [[Niagara Falls]] – begin to have feelings for each other. Blacksad decides to follow Otto, saving him from a [[car bomb]] planted by the assassin. However, he fails to stop the goon from escaping or a traumatised Otto from leaving the scene. Smirnov informs Blacksad that the assassin is a highly regarded [[Contract killing|hit man]] known as Ribs, and that his bomb was chemically complex. Suspecting that Herzl might have hired Ribs, Blacksad confronts him. To his surprise, Herzl is a [[Holocaust]] survivor and [[Nazi hunter]] who shows him photographic proof that Otto used to work for the [[Nazi Germany|Third Reich]].

Stricken with this new information, Blacksad seeks solace from Alma, only to learn that she has been arrested by the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] after being inexplicably betrayed by Gotfield. When FBI agents visit Litvak in his studio, they accidentally kill him while using [[Sodium thiopental|truth serum]] to ask about Otto's whereabouts. Otto, meanwhile, has returned to his old neighborhood – the same neighborhood where Blacksad grew up – only to find it overcome by poverty and his father's church a ruin. Suffering a personal crisis, Otto hides at the city [[aquarium]], where Blacksad himself once hid as a child.

Blacksad rescues Alma from the FBI, taking shelter in Weekly's apartment. Falling in love with Alma, Blacksad promises to take her to Niagara Falls, which to her is an important act of commitment. Blacksad then finds a [[fatalism|fatalistic]] Otto, who admits that his efforts to reduce the world's suffering have only left it worse than before. He also admits to conspiring with Litvak to hand over American nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Blacksad soon realizes that Litvak had copied Otto's information onto a canvas and then painted over it as a disguise. When Blacksad goes to the shipyards, he finds out that the painting is bound for an art exhibition in [[East Berlin]]. Blacksad manages to re-route the painting to Australia.

As Blacksad prepares to travel to Niagara Falls, the FBI arrests him and plant fake evidence in Litvak's death. He is interrogated by the [[rooster]] senator Gallo about Otto's current location. After he is released, Blacksad confronts a hysterical and disturbed Gotfield, and learns that he betrayed Alma in order to win Senator Gallo's patronage and become part of a selected group of people who will be evacuated to a special government shelter in the event of a [[nuclear war]]. Finding proof in Gotfield's safe, Blacksad uses it to blackmail Senator Gallo into dropping his frame-up. The government fakes Otto's death and allows him to leave the country. Blacksad gives the proof to Weekly in a sealed envelope, with instructions to publish the contents if anything happens to him.

Otto writes Blacksad a letter, explaining that he has returned to Germany and is helping rebuild a post-war community. Alma, however, abandons Blacksad after she reads the (fake) story in the newspaper that Liebber committed suicide after Blacksad turned him in. In her mind, Blacksad is now as much a traitor as Gotfield. Blacksad tries to find her again, but she has vanished.