Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (; 8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012) was a French artist, cartoonist, and writer who worked in the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées (BD) tradition. Giraud garnered worldwide acclaim predominantly under the pseudonym Mœbius (;<!--at 0:58--> ) for his fantasy/science-fiction work, and to a slightly lesser extent as Gir (), which he used for his Western-themed work. Esteemed by Federico Fellini, Stan Lee, and Hayao Miyazaki, among others, he has been described as the most influential bande dessinée artist after Hergé. the only child to Raymond Giraud, an insurance agent, and Pauline Vinchon, who had worked at the agency. When he was three years old, his parents divorced and he was raised by mainly his grandparents in the neighboring municipality of Fontenay-sous-Bois (much later, when he was an acclaimed artist, Giraud returned to live in the municipality in the mid-1970s, but was unable to buy his grandparents' erstwhile house). Giraud later explained that his parents' divorce lay at the heart of his choice of separate pen names. Playing an abundance of American B-movie Westerns, Giraud, frequenting the theater there as often as he was able to, developed a passion for the genre. In 1954, at age 16, he enrolled in the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré, where he started drawing Western comics teachers. At college, he befriended future comic artists Jean-Claude Mézières and . With Mézières in particular, in no small part due to their shared passion for science fiction and Westerns, Giraud developed a lifelong friendship, calling him "life's continuing adventure" in later life. In 1956, he left art school without graduating. He lived with his mother in Mexico, who had married a Mexican, for nine months.
Giraud's impression of the Mexican desert, in particular its endless blue skies and flat plains, left a strong impression on him, which he later called "quelque chose qui m'a littéralement craqué l'âme" ("something which literally cracked open my soul"),<!--at 7:5-->. to whom he was introduced by Mézières, who had shortly before found employment at the publisher. during the Algerian War. He managed to receive a transfer out of frontline duty due to his graphics background, obtaining an illustrator position on the army magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises. Algeria was Giraud's second acquaintance with more exotic cultures, which inspired many of his future science fiction comics. Magazine editor Marijac thought Giraud was gifted with a knack for humorous comics, but none whatsoever for realistically drawn comics, and advised him to continue in the vein of "Frank et Jeremie".) and Un géant chez lez Hurons("A Giant among the Hurons"). Several of his Western comics featured the protagonist Art Howell, and are considered Giraud's first realistic Western series. For Fleurus, Giraud illustrated his first three books. During this period, his style was heavily influenced by his future mentor, Belgian comic artist Joseph "Jijé" Gillain, who at that time was a major source of inspiration for the generation of young French interested in realistically drawn comics.
Jijé apprenticeship (1961–1962)
Shortly before he entered military service, Giraud visited Jijé at his home for the first time with Mézières and Mallet, followed by a few visits on his own. When Giraud left military servies, he was uninterested in continuing work at Fleurus, and became an apprentice of Jijé on his invitation. Jijé was then one of the leading comic artists in Europe and known for his tendency to act as a mentor for young artists, going as far as welcoming them into his family home in Champrosay. In this, Jijé resembled Belgian comic master Hergé, but unlike Jijé, Hergé only did so on a commercial basis.
For Jijé, Giraud created several other shorts and illustrations for the short-lived magazine Bonux-Boy (1960/61), his first comic work after military service, and his penultimate one before embarking on Blueberry. Jijé used Giraud as an inker on his Western series Jerry Spring, which Giraud had used as a model for his "Art Howell" character. the fatherless Giraud gratefully stating in later life, "It was as if he had asked me «Do you want me to be your father?», and if by a miracle, I was provided with one, a[n] [comic] artist no less!". Spurred on by Jijé, who considered the opportunity a wonderful one for his pupil, Giraud accepted. He considered the assignment a daunting one, having to create in oil paints historical objects and imagery. It was, besides being the best-paying job he had ever had, a seminal appointment. as well as for his 1968 side project "Buffalo Bill: le roi des éclaireurs" history book written by , for whom Giraud provided two-thirds of the illustrations in gouache, including the cover. The assignment at Hachette was cut short because of his invitation to embark on Fort Navajo, meant he only participated on the first three to four volumes of the book series, leaving the completion to Mézières. In the Pilote era, Giraud provided art in gouache for two Western-themed LP covers, as well as the covers for the first seven volumes of the French-language edition of the Morgan Kane Western novel series, written by Louis Masterson. Much of his Western-themed gouache artwork of this era, including that of Blueberry, has been collected in the 1983 artbook Le tireur solitaire.
Aside from its professional importance, Giraud's stint at Hachette was also of personal importance, as he met Claudine Conin, an editorial researcher at Hachette, and who described her future husband as being at the time "funny, uncomplicated, friendly, a nice boy next-door", but also "mysterious, dark, intellectual", recognizing that he had all the makings of a "visionary" long before others did. Married in 1967, the couple had two children, (b:1970) and Julien (b:1972). Hélène has worked as a graphics artist in the animation industry, earning her a 2014 French civilian knighthood, the same her father had received in 1985. Besides raising their children, Claudine managed the business aspects of her husband's art work, and made occasional contributions as a colorist. The 1976 feminist fantasy short story, "La tarte aux pommes", was written by her under her maiden name. A character in Giraud's Blueberry series, Chihuahua Pearl, was in part based on Claudine's looks. The Mœbiusienne 1973 fantasy road trip short story "La déviation", created as "Gir" before the artist fully embarked on his Mœbius career, featured the Giraud family as the protagonists, save Julien.
Pilote (1963–1974)
In October 1963, Giraud and writer Jean-Michel Charlier started the comic strip Fort Navajo for the Charlier-co-founded Pilote magazine, in issue 210. At this time the similarity between the styles of Giraud and Jijé (who in effect had been Charlier's first choice for the series, but who was reverted to Giraud by Jijé) was so close that Jijé penciled several pages for the series when Giraud went AWOL. When "Fort Navajo" started its run, Pilote received angry letters accusing Giraud of plagiarism. Jijé encouraged his former pupil to stay the course, propping up his self-confidence. A year later, during the production of "Mission to Mexico (The Lost Rider)", Giraud unexpectedly packed up and left to travel the United States, and Mexico. Jijé came to the rescue by penciling plates 17–38. While the art style of both artists had been nearly indistinguishable from each other in "Thunder in the West", after Giraud resumed work on plate 39 of "Mission to Mexico", a clearly noticeable style change was observable, indicating that Giraud was now well on his way to develop his own signature style, eventually surpassing that of his former teacher Jijé, who, impressed by his former pupil's achievements, has later coined him the "Rimbaud de la BD". While the Fort Navajo series had originally been intended as an ensemble narrative, it quickly focused on having Blueberry as its central figure. The Blueberry series may be Giraud's best known work in native France and the rest of Europe, before later collaborations with Alejandro Jodorowsky. The early Blueberry comics used a simple line drawing style similar to that of Jijé, and standard Western themes and imagery (specifically, those of John Ford and Howard Hawk. Gradually Giraud developed a darker and grittier style inspired by the 1970 Westerns Soldier Blue and Little Big Man (for the "Iron Horse" story-arc), and the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and the dark realism of Sam Peckinpah (in particular (for the "Lost Goldmine" story-arc and beyond). With the fifth album, "The Trail of the Navajos", Giraud established his own style. After the May 1968 social upheaval in France, Giraud and other key comics artists staged a protest in the editorial offices of Dargaud, the publisher of Pilote, demanding and ultimately receiving more creative freedom from editor-in-chief René Goscinny
After having arrived in California, Giraud's wife Claudine set up Giraud's third publishing house Starwatcher Graphics in 1985, essentially the US branch of Gentiane/Aedena with the same goals, resulting in the release of, among others, the extremely limited art portfolio La Cité de Feu, a collaborative art project of Giraud with Geoff Darrow (see below). However, due to their unfamiliarity with the American publishing world, the company did not do well, and in an effort to remedy the situation Claudine hired the French/American editor couple Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, whom she had met at the summer 1985 San Diego ComicCon, as translators and editors-in-chief for Starwatcher, also becoming shareholders in the company.
It was for the Marvel/Epic publication effort that it was decided to dispense with the "Jean [Gir]aud"/"Mœbius" dichotomy—until then strictly adhered-to by the artist—as both the artist's given name and his Blueberry creation were all but unknown in the English speaking world. This was contrary to his reputation as "Mœbius", already acquired in the Heavy Metal days, and from then on used for all his work in the English speaking world (and Japan), though the dichotomy remained elsewhere, including native France.
A two-issue Silver Surfer miniseries (later collected as Silver Surfer: Parable), written by Stan Lee and drawn by Giraud (as Mœbius), was published through Marvel's Epic Comics imprint in 1988 and 1989. According to Giraud, this was his first time working under the Marvel method instead of from a full script, and he has admitted to being baffled by the fact that he already had a complete story synopsis on his desk only two days after he had met Stan Lee for the first time, having discussed what Giraud had assumed was a mere proposition over lunch. This miniseries won the Eisner Award for best finite/limited series in 1989. Mœbius' version was discussed in the 1995 submarine thriller Crimson Tide by two sailors pitting his version against those of Jack Kirby, with the main character played by Denzel Washington, emphasizing the Kirby one being the better of the two. Becoming aware of the reference around 1997, Giraud was later told around 2005 by the movie's director Tony Scott, that it was he who had written in the dialog as an homage to the artist on behalf of his brother Ridley, a Mœbius admirer, and not (uncredited) script doctor Quentin Tarentino (known for infusing his works with pop culture references) as he was previously led to believe. An amused Giraud quipped, "It's better than a big stature, because in a way, I can not dream of anything better to be immortal [than] being in a movie about submarines!" Even as late as 1997, Giraud had created cover art for two DC comic book outings, Hardware (Vol. 1, issue 49, March 1997) and Static (Vol. 1, issue 45, March 1997), after an earlier cover for Marvel Tales (Vol. 2, issue 253, September 1991). Another project Giraud embarked upon in his "American period", was for a venture into that other staple of American pop culture, trading cards. Trading card company Comic Images released a "Mœbius Collector Cards" set in 1993, featuring characters and imagery from all over his Mœbius universe, though his Western work was excluded. None of the images were lifted from already existing work, but were especially created by Giraud the year previously.
Although Giraud had taken up residence in California for five years – holding a temporary residence (the O-1 "Extraordinary Ability" category, including the "International Artist" status) visa – he maintained a transient lifestyle, as his work had him frequently travel to Belgium and native France (maintaining a home in Paris), as well as to Japan, for extended periods of time. His stay in the United States was an inspiration for his aptly called Made in L.A. art book, the latter of which having seen a translation in English by Epic.
Giraud's extended stay in the US, garnered him a 1986 Inkpot Award, an additional 1991 Eisner Award, as well as three Harvey Awards in the period 1988–1991 for the various graphic novel releases by Marvel. It was in this period that Giraud, who had already picked up Spanish as a second language as a result from his various trips to Mexico and his dealings with Jodorowsky and his retinue, also picked up sufficient language skills to communicate in English. Additionally, Giraud had met Isabelle Champeval during a book signing in Venice, Italy in February 1984, and entered into a relationship with her in 1987, which resulted in the birth of second son Raphaël in 1989. Giraud's marriage with Claudine was legally ended in December 1994, without much drama according to Giraud, as both spouses had realized that "each wanted something different out of life". and the documentary made for the occasion of its release. Giraud and Isabelle were married on 13 May 1995, and the union resulted in their second child, daughter Nausicaa, the same year. Isabelle's sister and Giraud's sister-in-law, Claire, became a regular contributor as colorist on Giraud's latter-day work.
The changes in his personal life were also accompanied with changes in his business holdings during 1988–1990. His co-founded publishing house Gentiane/Aedena went into receivership in 1988, going bankrupt a short time thereafter. The American subsidiary Starwatcher Graphics followed in its wake around the turn of the millennium, with the 1525-copy limited mini art portfolio "Mockba - carnet de bord" becoming the company's first recorded publication in September the same year. Apart from being a publishing house, it was concurrently an art gallery, located on 27 Rue Falguière, 75015 Paris, organizing themed exhibitions on a regular basis. In 1997, the company was renamed Moebius Production – singular, despite the occasional and erroneous use of the plural, even by the company itself. The company, in both publishing and art gallery iterations, is as of 2023 still being run by Isabelle Giraud who had taken over the function of publishing editor and co-ownership from Claudine (explaining the renaming of the company), after the latter's marriage with Giraud was dissolved in 1994, and her sister Claire.
The first thing Giraud did creatively upon his return was to finish up on the Blueberry album "Arizona Love" on his own after his longtime writing partner Jean-Michel Charlier had died on 10 July 1989. Due to his intimate twenty-five year familiarity with both the series and its writer, it was a foregone conclusion that Giraud would from then on take on the scripting of the main Blueberry series as well, especially since it was already agreed upon in the "contracts signed with Jean-Michel" that "the survivor would take over the series". Nonetheless, he did embark on the Marshal Blueberry spin-off series in 1990 as writer (leaving the artwork firstly to William Vance and subsequently to ), wanting to pay homage to the legacy of his late writing partner by creating a story in his spirit, or as Giraud had put it, "{A]nd [I] said to myself: Well, I'm going to see if I'm able to write a story à la Charlier. So I wrote this scenario, not too bad, but quite traditional, quite classic." In similar vein, Giraud took up the writing for the other Charlier/Giraud western creation, Jim Cutlass, that Charlier had actually been in the process of revitalizing in the year before his death, and for which he had already contracted for the artwork, besides having already started on the scenario. After having added six more volumes to the once one-shot series, the series – which he, as explained above, had published at publisher Casterman instead of (western) house-publisher Dargud – folded in 1999 due to the fact that it was not nearly as commercially successful as Blueberry had been.
Under his "Mœbius" pseudonym, Giraud concurrently continued to work on The Aedena Cycle and the Madwoman of the Sacred Heart trilogy, both of which started in the US and completed in 2001 and 1998 respectively, after which he concentrated on Blueberrys "OK Corral" cycle, started in 1994 upon his return to France. While Giraud was in the midst of "OK Corral" cycle, he also embarked on a new sequel cycle of his acclaimed Incal main series, called Après l'Incal (After the Incal). Yet, after he had penciled the first outing in the series, "Le nouveau rêve", he found himself confronted with "too many things that attract me, too many desires in all the senses", causing him to be no longer able to "devote myself to the bande dessinée as befitting a professional in the traditional sense". Despite repeated pleas to convince Giraud otherwise, it left writer Jodorowsky with no other recourse than to start anew with a new artist. This insight had repercussions though, as Giraud, after he had finished the "OK Corral" cycle in 2005, no longer continued to produce comics and/or art on a commercial base, but rather on a project and/or personal base, usually under the aegis of his own publishing house Mœbius Production.
As Mœbius Production, Giraud published from 2000 to 2010 Inside Mœbius (French text despite English title), an illustrated autobiographical fantasy in six hardcover volumes totaling 700 pages. Pirandello-like, he appears in cartoon form as both creator and protagonist trapped within the story alongside his younger self and several longtime characters such as Blueberry, Arzak (the latest re-spelling of the Arzach character's name), Major Grubert (from The Airtight Garage) and others.
Jean Giraud drew the first of the two-part volume of the XIII series titled "La Version Irlandaise" ("The Irish Version") from a script by Jean Van Hamme, to accompany the second part by the regular team Jean Van Hamme–William Vance, "Le dernier round" ("The Last Round"). Both parts were published on the same date (13 November 2007) and were the last ones written by Van Hamme before Yves Sente took over the series. The contribution was also a professional courtesy to the series' artist, Vance, who had previously provided the artwork for the first two titles in the Giraud-written Marshall Blueberry spin-off series.
Late in life, Giraud also decided to revive his seminal Arzak character in an elaborate new adventure series; the first (and last in hindsight) volume of a planned trilogy, Arzak l'arpenteur, appeared in 2010. He also added to the Airtight Garage series with two volumes entitled "Le chasseur déprime" (2008) and "Major" (2011), as well as the art book "La faune de Mars" (2011), the latter two initially released in a limited, 1000 copy French only, print run by Mœbius Production. By this time, Giraud created his comic art on a specialized graphic computer tablet, as its enlargement features had become an indispensable aid, because of his failing eyesight.
Creating comics became increasingly difficult for Giraud, as his eyesight started to fail him in his last years, having undergone severe surgery in 2010 to stave off blindness in his left eye, and it was mainly for this reason that Giraud increasingly concentrated on creating single-piece art, both as "Gir" and as "Mœbius", on larger canvases on either commission basis or under the aegis of Mœbius Production. Much of the latter artwork was from 2005 onward, alongside older original art Giraud still had in his possession, sold by the company for considerable prices in specialized comic auctions at such auction houses like Artcurial, Hôtel Drouot and Millon & Associés.
Illustrator and author
As already indicated above, Giraud had throughout his entire career made illustrations for books, magazines, music productions), but also promotional art for commercial institutions such as banks and corporations. A notable early example of the latter, concerned the Blueberry art he created in 1978 for the Spanish jeans manufacturer Lois Jeans & Jackets; Aside from being traditionally run as an advertisement in numerous magazines, it was also blown up to gigantic, mural-like dimensions and as posters plastered on walls and billboards in several places all around Paris. As book illustrator, Giraud illustrated for example the 1987 first edition of the science fiction novel "Project Pendulum" by Robert Silverberg, and the 1994 French edition of the novel "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. The subsequent year Giraud followed up in the same vein as the Coelho novel, with his cover and interior illustrations for a French 1995 reprint of "Ballades" from the French medieval poet François Villon, itself followed by similar work for 's 2001 new-age novel "La mémoire de l'âme". Much of this non-comic art, including the one for Lois has been reproduced in the artbooks that were released over the years.
Giraud was in mid-1990s approached by two video game developers to provide the box cover art for the video games that were released in 1995; the first one concerned the Fade to Black video game developed by the US Delphine Software International, whereas the second one concerned Panzer Dragoon video game developed by the Japanese Sega Corporation. And while Giraud was by now the well established Mœbius artist in both countries, he was only asked to contribute the box cover art for the two video game releases, and nothing beyond. A few years later though, he was also asked to contribute to later games as a concept artist.
In 1999, Giraud's illustrations appeared in a soft cover edition of Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia, published by the Nuages Gallery in Milan. As "Mœbius" he illustrated the "Paradiso" volume, while the two others, "Inferno" and "Purgatorio", were illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti and Milton Glaser respectively. The edition was published under the Mœbius name. Giraud's illustrations for "Paradiso" take heavy inspiration from the engravings of the Divine Comedy by Gustave Doré, whose work he had discovered in his grandparents' library and learned to appreciate in his early formative years, with compositions often approaching an exact match. Giraud acknowledged this influence directly, praising Doré's work and remarking how he sometimes literally used tracing paper to sketch compositions. Though another prominent example of Giraud's non-comic book work, the influences from his science fiction and fantasy comics shine through. The illustrations, with vivid colors and space-age headresses, are distinctly rendered in the Mœbius mode.
An out-of-the-ordinary latter-day contribution as such, constituted his illustrations as "Mœbius" for the Thursday 6 March 2008 issue of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir. His illustrations accompanied news articles throughout the newspaper, providing a Mœbiusienne look on events. In return, the newspaper, for the occasion entitled "Le Soir par (by) Mœbius", featured two half-page editorials on the artist (pp. 20 & 37).
Under the names Giraud, Gir and Mœbius, he also wrote several comics for other comic artists as listed below, and the early ones included Jacques Tardi and Claude Auclair. Aside from writing for other comic artists, he also wrote story outlines for the movies Les Maîtres du temps, Internal Transfer, Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland and Thru the Moebius Strip as outlined further down the line.
As author on personal title, Giraud has – apart from his own bande dessinée scripts – written philosophical poetry that accompanied his art in his Mœbius artbooks of the 1980s and 1990s. He also wrote the "Story Notes" editorials for the American Epic publications, providing background information on his work contained therein. In 1998, he took time off to write his autobiography, Moebius-Giraud: Histoire de mon double.