Jean Giraud

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This article is about the French comic book artist. For the French mathematician, see Jean Giraud (mathematician).
Jean Giraud

Jean Giraud at the International Festival of Comics in Łódź, 4 October 2008.
Born Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
8 May 1938 (1938-05-08) (age 73)
Nogent-sur-Marne, Val-de-Marne, France
Nationality French
Area(s) Writer, Artist
Pseudonym(s) Moebius, Gir
Notable works Blueberry
Arzach
The Incal
Awards Full list
Official website

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (born 8 May 1938)[1] is a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius, and to a lesser extent Gir, the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist's paintings.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Blueberry is one of Giraud's most famous creations.

Jean Giraud was born in Nogent-sur-Marne, in the suburbs of Paris, in 1938.[2] At age 16, he began his only technical training at the Arts Appliqués.[3]

[edit] Career

At 18, Giraud was drawing his own comic strip, "Frank et Jeremie" for the magazine Far West. In 1961, Giraud became an apprentice of Jijé, one of the leading comic artists in Europe of the time, and collaborated on an album of Jerry Spring.[3] In 1962 Giraud and writer Jean-Michel Charlier started the comic strip Fort Navajo for Pilote. It was a great hit and continued uninterrupted until 1974. The Lieutenant Blueberry character, created by Giraud and Charlier for Fort Navajo, quickly became its most popular character, and his adventures as told in the spin-off Western serial Blueberry, are possibly Giraud's best known work in his native France before his later collaborations with Alejandro Jodorowsky. Giraud's prestige in France – where comics are held in high artistic regard – is enormous; In 1988 Moebius was chosen, among 11 other winners of the prestigious Grand Prix of the Angoulême Festival, to illustrate a postage stamp set issued on the theme of communication.[4] Under the names Giraud and Gir, he also wrote numerous comics for other comic artists like Auclair and Tardi.

The Moebius pseudonym, which Giraud came to use for his science fiction and fantasy work, was born in 1963.[3] In a satire magazine called Hara-Kiri, Moebius did 21 strips in 1963–64 and then disappeared for almost a decade. In 1975 Métal Hurlant (a magazine which he co-created) revived the pseudonym. Moebius' famous serial The Airtight Garage and his groundbreaking Arzach both began in Métal Hurlant. In 1981 he started his famous L'Incal series in collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Moebius has contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science fiction films. In 1982 he collaborated with director René Laloux to create the science fiction feature-length animated movie Les Maîtres du temps (released in English as Time Masters) based on a novel by Stefan Wul. In 1988 Moebius worked on the American comic character The Silver Surfer with Stan Lee for a special two-part limited series. Giraud also happens to be a friend of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. From December 2004 to March 2005, the two of them shared an exhibition at La Monnaie in Paris which showcased work by both artists.[5] He even named his daughter Nausicaä from Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.[6][7]

Jean Giraud drew the first of the two-part last 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).[8]

From 2000 to 2010, Moebius created and published his series Inside Moebius (its title is in English though the books are in French), six hardcover volumes totaling 700 pages. In these books 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. Moebius subsequently decided to revive the Arzak character in an elaborate new adventure series, the first volume of which, Arzak L'Arpenteur, appeared in 2010. He also began new works in the Airtight Garage series with a volume entitled Le Chasseur Deprime.

[edit] Style

[original research?]

His graphic style can change dramatically and adapt to the style and the tone of the series. It ranges from the extreme realism of the beginning of his career as in the Aventures du lieutenant Blueberry, started in 1963, to dream-like nature in more recent works. He has drawn etchings, white and black illustrations, work in colour of the ligne claire genre, water colours.[9]

The artist's working methods were also various and adaptable. Giraud's solo Blueberry works were sometimes criticized by fans of the series because the artist had dramatically changed the tone of the series as well as the graphic style.[10] However, Blueberry's early success was also due to Giraud's innovations as he did not content himself with following earlier styles, an important aspect of his development as an artist.[11]

To distinguish between work by Giraud and Moebius, Giraud uses a brush for his own work and a pen when he signs his work as Moebius. Giraud draws very quickly.[12]

[edit] Bibliography

Cover for Silver Surfer: Parable.

Jean Giraud has been active in the comics scene since the 1960s. Those works for which English translations have been published are noted as such; their respective pages describe this further.

[edit] As Jean Giraud

  • Blueberry (29 volumes, English translation, 1965 - ), artist (all vol), writer vol 25-29
  • Jim Cutlass (7 volumes, 1979–1999), artist vol. 1, writer vol 2-7
  • XIII (volume 18, La Version irlandaise in 2007), artist
  • Marshall Blueberry (3 volumes, 2000), writer
  • Le Cristal Majeur (3 volumes, 1986–1990), writer (artist: Bati), Paris: Dargaud

[edit] As Moebius

[edit] Collected editions

The English-language versions of many of Moebius's comics have been collected into various editions, beginning with a series of trade paperbacks from Marvel Comics' Epic imprint in the late 1980s and early 1990s:

The Collected Fantasies of Jean Giraud (1987–1994):

Most of these volumes were later reissued by Graphitti Designs in assorted combinations, as a series of signed and numbered hardcover limited editions.

In 2010 and 2011, the publisher Humanoids (in the U.S.) began releasing new editions of Moebius works, starting with three of Moebius's past collaborations with Alexandro Jodorowsky: The Incal (original series complete in one volume), Madwoman of the Sacred Heart (all three parts complete in one volume), and The Eyes of the Cat.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Video games

  • Fade to Black cover art (1995)
  • Panzer Dragoon (1995)
  • Pilgrim: Faith as a Weapon (1998)
  • An arcade and bar based on Giraud's work, called The Airtight Garage, was one of the original main attractions at the Metreon in San Francisco when the complex opened in 1999. It included three original games: Quaternia, a first-person shooter networked between terminals and based on the concept of "junctors" from Major Fatal and The Airtight Garage; a virtual reality bumper cars game about mining asteroids; and Hyperbowl, an obstacle course bowling game incorporating very little overtly Moebius imagery. The arcade was closed and reopened as "Portal One", retaining much of the Moebius-based decor and Hyperbowl but eliminating the other originals in favor of more common arcade games.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Comics Buyer's Guide #1485; May 3, 2002; Page 29
  2. ^ De Weyer, Geert (2008) (in Dutch). 100 stripklassiekers die niet in je boekenkast mogen ontbreken. Amsterdam / Antwerp: Atlas. p. 215. ISBN 9789045009964. 
  3. ^ a b c "Jean Giraud". Comiclopedia. Lambiek. http://lambiek.net/artists/g/giraud.htm. 
  4. ^ Hachereau, Dominique. "BD - Bande Dessinee et Philatelie" (in French). http://dominique.hochereau.free.fr/bd/lacom.htm. Retrieved 2009-07-18 
  5. ^ Official website on the Miyazaki-Moebius exhibition at La Monnaie, Paris
  6. ^ Bordenave, Julie. "Miyazaki Moebius : coup d'envoi". AnimeLand.com. http://www.animeland.com/index.php?rub=articles&id=618. Retrieved 2008-05-18 
  7. ^ Ghibli Museum, ed (in Japanese). Ghibli Museumdiary 2002-08-01. Tokuma Memorial Cultural Foundation for Animation. http://www.ghibli-museum.jp/diary/004624.html. Retrieved 2008-05-18 
  8. ^ Libiot, Eric (4 January 2007). "Giraud s'aventure dans XIII". L'Express. http://www.lexpress.fr/mag/arts/dossier/bd/dossier.asp?ida=454736. (French)
  9. ^ Expo GIR et MOEBIUS, 1997, accessed March 12, 2011.
  10. ^ "Blueberry au bord du Nervous break-down...", bdparadisio
  11. ^ "Jean Giraud sur un scénario de Jean-Michel Charlier", bdparadisio.com (French)
  12. ^ "Moebius - Jean Giraud - Video del Maestro all' opera", YouTube, 30 May 2008
  13. ^ Jean Giraud at the Internet Movie Database
  14. ^ "11° Salone Internationale del Comics, del Film di Animazione e dell'Illustrazione". immaginecentrostudi.org. http://www.immaginecentrostudi.org/saloni/salone11.asp. (Italian)
  15. ^ "14° Salone Internationale del Comics, del Film di Animazione e dell'Illustrazione". immaginecentrostudi.org. http://www.immaginecentrostudi.org/saloni/salone14.asp. (Italian)
  16. ^ noosfere.org. "Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire". http://www.noosfere.org/gpi/palmares.asp.  (French)

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