318-535: Jean Henri Gaston Giraud ( French: [ʒiʁo] ; 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 ( / ˈ m oʊ b i ə s / ; French: [møbjys] ) for his fantasy/science-fiction work, and to a slightly lesser extent as Gir ( French: [ʒiʁ] ), which he used for
636-462: A one-shot , Giraud took on scripting the revitalized series after Charlier had died, while leaving the artwork to Christian Rossi [ fr ] . When Charlier, Giraud's collaborator on Blueberry , died in 1989, Giraud assumed responsibility for the scripting of the main series, the last outing of which, "Apaches", released in 2007, became the last title Giraud created for the parent publisher. Blueberry has been translated into 19 languages,
954-527: A questionable character . Both were, however, already very popular before the war and the hardships of the war period only seemed to increase the demand. This created an opportunity for many young artists to start working in the comics and animation business. At first, authors like Jijé in Spirou and Edgar P. Jacobs in Bravo continued unfinished American stories of Superman and Flash Gordon . Thus, by imitating
1272-566: A BD artist and something the de facto inventor of the Franco-Belgian BD, Hergé, has never achieved even once, not even from his own native country Belgium (presumably because of the lingering impressions left by either the criticisms regarding his early Tintin stories, the post-war collaboration allegations, or both and neither of which he had ever managed to fully free himself from in his lifetime). Exemplary of Mœbius' standing in French culture,
1590-511: A Dutch-language version as well under the name Robbedoes for the Flemish market. Export to the Netherlands followed a few years later shortly after the war. The magazine was conceived and published by publisher Éditions Dupuis S.A. (as of 1989, simply: Dupuis ), which was established by its founding namesake Jean Dupuis [ fr ] as a printing business in 1898, but changed to being
1908-428: A French historical nature) and illustrations for magazine editorials in their magazines Fripounet et Marisette , Cœurs Vaillants , and Âmes vaillantes [ fr ] – all of them of a strong, edifying nature aimed at France's adolescent youth – up to a point that his realistically drawn comics had become his mainstay. Among his realistic Westerns was a comic called " Le roi des bisons " ("King of
2226-405: A God into a film. This was to be the first major German-Soviet co-production. Mézières travelled to Moscow to join the production team and also to Uzbekistan where it was proposed to shoot the film. Travelling from there to Munich , he produced several concept drawings and paintings over a three-month period before the project was suspended due to funding difficulties. At this point Mézières left
2544-424: A bar surrounded by a bestiary of alien creatures typical of that seen in both series. "Fancy meeting you here!" says Leia. "Oh, we've been hanging around here for a long time!" retorts Laureline. Mézières has since been informed that Doug Chiang , design director on The Phantom Menace , kept a set of Valérian albums and Les Extras de Mézières in his library. Mézières also noticed similarities between some of
2862-513: A book-like format about half the former size. The albums, usually colored all the way through, are almost always hardcover for the French editions and softcover for the Dutch editions—though the hardcover format has steadily gained ground from the late-1980s onward as customer option alongside the softcover format, contrary to Francophone Europe, where the hardcover format is the norm. When compared to American comic books and trade paperbacks (such as
3180-469: A brainstorming session Alejandro Jodorowsky had with his fellows of the Académie Panique , a group concentrated on chaotic and surreal performance art , as a response to surrealism becoming mainstream. Jodorowsky worked out the story premise as a therapy to alleviate the depression he was in after the failure of his Dune project and presented the script to Giraud in 1977 during a visit to Paris. Deeming
3498-447: A career as a graphics artist in the animation industry, earning her a 2014 French civilian knighthood , the same her father had already received in 1985. Besides raising their children, wife Claudine not only took care of the business aspects of her husband's art work, but has on occasion also contributed to it as colorist. The 1976 feminist fantasy short story, "La tarte aux pommes", was written by her under her maiden name. Additionally,
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#17328551949413816-547: A children's publication – but also because communist members of the commission had issues with the strong anticommunist sentiment expressed in the comic according to writer Charlier. Both volumes remained prohibited in France until 1969, though French fans on holiday in Belgium, Switzerland or Luxembourg could pick up the albums unhindered over there. The law also came in handy to somewhat regulate – though not prohibiting –
4134-588: A comic strip together. Both had their experiences in the American West to draw upon but felt, thanks to Lucky Luke , Jerry Spring and Blueberry , that the market for Westerns was already crowded. Instead, Christin suggested that they turn their hands to science fiction, a genre that, at that time, was not prevalent in French comics. Although Goscinny was not a science fiction fan, he wanted to promote innovation and originality in Pilote and so commissioned them to produce
4452-556: A complaint by Mézières, the artist Angus McKie admitted that several panels of his strip So Beautiful and So Dangerous were copied from the Valérian album Ambassador of the Shadows . Outside of comics, Mézières' art has been especially influential on science fiction and fantasy film. In particular, several commentators, such as Kim Thompson, Jean-Philippe Guerand and the newspaper Libération , have noted certain similarities between
4770-460: A conceptual designer on several motion picture projects, most notably the 1997 Luc Besson film, The Fifth Element , as well as continuing to work as an illustrator for newspapers, magazines and in advertising. He also taught courses on the production of comics at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis . Mézières received international recognition through numerous awards, most notably
5088-527: A conscious attempt to breathe new life into the comic genre which at the time was dominated by American superhero comics in the United States, and by the traditional, adolescent oriented bandes dessinée in Europe. It tracks the journey of the title character flying on the back of his pterodactyl through a fantastic world mixing medieval fantasy with futurism . Unlike most science fiction comics, it is, save for
5406-568: A cost. He had left Pilote to escape the pressure and stifling conditions he was forced to work under, seeking complete creative freedom, but now it was increasingly becoming "as stifling as it had been before with Blueberry ", as he conceded in 1982, adding philosophically, "The more you free yourself, the more powerless you become!". How deeply ingrained this sentiment was, was evidenced in a short interview in Métal Hurlant , issue 82, later that year, where an overworked Giraud stated, "I will finish
5724-595: A couple of Hara-Kiri esque satirical comic shorts for Pilote in the early 1970s, but under the pseudonym "Gir", most of which reprinted in the comic book Gir œuvres : "Tome 1, Le lac des émeraudes", also collecting shorts he had created for the Fleurus magazines, Bonux-Boy , and the late-1960s TOTAL Journal magazine. In 1974 he truly revived the Mœbius pseudonym for comics, and the very first, 12-page, story he created as such – while on one of his stopovers from America when
6042-502: A decade, that is for comics at least, as Giraud continued its use for side-projects as illustrator. In the late 1960s-early 1970s, Giraud provided interior front, and back flyleaf illustrations as Mœbius for several outings in the science fiction book club series Club du livre d'anticipation [ fr ] , a limited edition hardcover series, collecting work from seminal science fiction writers, from French publisher Éditions OPTA [ fr ] , continuing to do so throughout
6360-480: A few. It was not just the BD scene these new publications and their artists changed, the perception of the medium in French society also changed radically in the 1970s–1980s, in stark contrast to the one it held in the 1940s–1950s. Recognizing that the medium-advanced France's cultural status in the world, the cultural authorities of the nation started to aid the advancement of the medium as a bonafide art form, especially under
6678-407: A flying taxi around a great metropolis on the planet Rubanis. Mézières sent a copy of the album to Besson when it was finished. The commercial success of Léon led to Zaltman Bléros , now re-titled The Fifth Element , being green-lit for production. Mézières returned to the production and was amused to discover that the occupation of Korben Dallas, the film's main protagonist, had been changed from
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#17328551949416996-565: A free-lancer, explaining the Jim Cutlass exception. While Giraud has garnered universal praise and acclaim for his work as "Mœbius" (especially in the US, the UK and Japan), as "Gir", Blueberry has always remained his most successful and most recognized work in native France itself and in mainland Europe, despite its artist developing somewhat of a love/hate relationship with his co-creation in later life, which
7314-693: A friend of Jijé's who had a factory in Houston , Texas . In the end, however, he never took up the job in Houston. After staying in New York for a few months, the call of the West proved too strong and eventually he ended up hitchhiking across the country, first to Seattle and then to Montana (where he worked on a ranch driving tractors, laying posts and cleaning stables) before ending up in San Francisco . His initial plan
7632-416: A group of artists who were as much responsible for its success and then some as it was this group that defined the rejuvenated magazine in the post-war era. Upon war's end three artists from the defunct animation studio CBA were hired by Dupuis as staff artists for Spirou , Eddy Paape (before he switched over to World Press), André Franquin and Maurice "Morris" De Bevere , and it was Morris who created in 1946
7950-441: A lasting trauma that he explained lay at the heart of his choice of separate pen names. A somewhat sickly and introverted child at first, young Giraud found solace after World War II in a small theater, located on a corner in the street where his mother lived, which concurrently provided an escape from the dreary atmosphere in postwar reconstruction-era France. Playing an abundance of American B-movie Westerns , Giraud, frequenting
8268-719: A later stage with the way Appel-Guéry ran his commune on Tahiti, in the process dispensing with his short-lived third pseudonym. His stay at the commune though, had practical implications on his personal life; Giraud gave up eating meat, smoking, coffee, alcohol and, for the time being, the use of mind-expanding substances, adhering to his newfound abstinence for the most part for the remainder of his life. During his stay on Tahiti, Giraud had co-founded his second publishing house under two concurrent imprints, Éditions Gentiane (predominantly for his work as Gir, most notably Blueberry ) and Aedena [ fr ] (predominantly for his work as Mœbius, and not entirely by coincidence named after
8586-417: A law-abiding citizen of the planet Souldaï, who awakens one day, only to find himself with a permanent erection. Pursued through space and time by his own puritanical authorities, who frown upon the condition, and other parties, who have their own intentions with the hapless bandard , he eventually finds a safe haven on the asteroid Fleur of Madame Kowalsky, after several hilarious adventures. When discounting
8904-940: A long tradition in comics, separate from that of English-language comics. Belgium is a mostly bilingual country, and comics originally in Dutch ( stripverhalen , literally "strip stories", or simply "strips") are culturally a part of the world of bandes dessinées , even if the translation from French to Dutch far outweighs the other direction. Among the most popular bandes dessinées are The Adventures of Tintin (by Hergé ), Spirou and Fantasio ( Franquin et al.), Gaston ( Franquin ), Asterix ( Goscinny & Uderzo ), Lucky Luke ( Morris & Goscinny ), The Smurfs ( Peyo ) and Spike and Suzy ( Willy Vandersteen ). Some highly-regarded realistically drawn and plotted bandes dessinées include Blueberry ( Charlier & Giraud , a.k.a. "Moebius"), Thorgal ( van Hamme & Rosiński ), XIII (van Hamme & Vance ), and
9222-422: A major element for the revolt at Pilote . That changed as well after 1968, when more and more artists decided to ply their trade as free-lancers , the L'Écho des Savanes founders having been early pioneers in that respect, and has as of 2017 become the predominant artist-publisher relationship. While contracts tend to be long-term for specific series at a particular publisher, they no longer prevent artists, like
9540-423: A miracle, I was provided with one, a[n] [comic] artist no less!". After his stint at Jijé's, Giraud was again approached by friend Mézières to see if he was interested to work alongside him as an illustrator on Hachette 's ambitious multivolume L'histoire des civilisations history reference work. Spurred on by Jijé, who considered the opportunity a wonderful one for his pupil, Giraud accepted. Though he considered
9858-418: A more traditional style with more text and fewer drawings. This meant that in France, magazines like Pilote and Vaillant (relaunched as Pif gadget in 1969), and Spirou and Tintin for French-speaking Belgium, gained almost the entire market and became the obvious goal for new artists from their respective countries, who took up the styles prevalent in those magazines to break into the business. With
Jean Giraud - Misplaced Pages Continue
10176-705: A movie about submarines!" As a result, from his cooperation with Marvel, Giraud delved deeper into the American superhero mythology and created superhero art stemming from both Marvel and DC Comics , which were sold as art prints, posters or included in calendars, besides becoming featured as comic book covers from both publishers. 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",
10494-514: A museum in the capital of France, Paris. These politicians did have a point however, as Angoulême is somewhat located off the beaten tourist track, resulting in that the museum only draws in about roughly half the visitor numbers its smaller Belgian counterpart does annually, and most of them visiting the museum during the festival season, whereas the Belgian museum draws in a steady stream of visitors all year round. A further revival and expansion came in
10812-427: A nervous breakdown, with Jijé taking on plates 28–36. The second time occurred one year later, during the production of "Mission to Mexico (The Lost Rider)", when Giraud unexpectedly packed up and left to travel the United States, and, again, Mexico; yet again former mentor 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
11130-594: 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
11448-471: A number of publishers in place, including Dargaud ( Pilote ), Le Lombard ( Tintin ), and Dupuis ( Spirou ), three of the biggest influences for over 50 years, the market for domestic comics had reached (commercial) maturity. In the following decades, magazines like Spirou , Tintin , Vaillant (relaunched as Pif Gadget in 1969), Pilote , and Heroïc-Albums [ fr ] (the first to feature completed stories in each issue, as opposed to
11766-462: A one-shot in Giraud's body of work in its utilization of such a high level of detail. The story, printed on yellow paper to accentuate the black & white art, was originally published directly as a, to 5000 copies limited book edition, gift item for relations of the publisher. It was only after expensive pirate editions started to appear that the publisher decided to make the work available commercially on
12084-446: A personal reason as well for Giraud to suspend his career as Mœbius comic artist; after he had returned from his second trip from Mexico, he found himself confronted with the artist's version of a writer's block as far as Mœbius comics were concerned, partly because Blueberry consumed all his energy. "For eight months I tried, but I could not do it, so I quit", stated Giraud additionally. Giraud's statement notwithstanding though, he did
12402-436: A plate, and aside from being soaked with my sweat, it was a complete disaster. So Joseph went on to do the penciling, whereas I did the inks." Even though Giraud did lose touch with his mentor eventually, he never forgot what "his master" had provided him with, both "aesthetically and professionally", 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
12720-500: A printing and publishing company) had somewhat limited itself as the album publisher of Hergé's Tintin since 1934, slightly expanded upon after the war with a couple of Hergé inspired creations by closely affiliated artists such as Jacques Martin, François Craenhals and the Danish C. & V. Hansen couple. It was with the specific intent to expand beyond the somewhat limited Hergé boundaries with other, more diverse high quality work, that
13038-509: A publishing house in 1922, publishing non-comic books and magazines. Since the launch of Spirou however, Dupuis has increasingly focused on comic productions and is currently, as of 2017, a comics publisher exclusively and one of the two great Belgian Franco-Belgian comic publishing houses still in existence. As post-war exports to France (like in the Netherlands, the magazine was not available in France until 1945-46), Spirou – featuring
Jean Giraud - Misplaced Pages Continue
13356-586: A purely self-serving commercial basis, never on a voluntarily one. 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 . In this period, Jijé used his apprentice for the inks on an outing of his Western series Jerry Spring – after whom Giraud had, unsurprisingly, modeled his Art Howell character previously – "The Road to Coronado", which Giraud inked. Actually, Jijé had intended his promising pupil for
13674-498: A ranch in Utah: this time succeeding in his aspiration of living the life of a cowboy, an experience he described as "better than in my dreams". When winter came and there was no work available on the ranches, he collaborated with Christin on a six-page strip called Le Rhum du Punch , a copy of which he sent to Jean Giraud who was by now writing and illustrating Blueberry for the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote . Giraud showed
13992-414: 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, partly because it
14310-524: A result of their deviating from the American 32-page comic book standard. In recent decades the English "graphic novel" expression has increasingly been adopted in Europe as well in the wake of the works of Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman , but with the specific intent to discriminate between comics intended for a younger and/or general readership, and publications which are more likely to feature mature content, literary subject matter or experimental styles. As
14628-633: A result, European BD scholars have retroactively identified the 1962 Barbarella comic by Jean-Claude Forest (for its theme) and the first 1967 Corto Maltese adventure Una ballata del mare salato ( A Ballad of the Salt Sea ) by Hugo Pratt (for both art, and story style) in particular, as the comics up for consideration as the first European "graphic novels". During the 19th century, there were many artists in Europe drawing cartoons, occasionally even utilizing sequential multi-panel narration, albeit mostly with clarifying captions and dialogue placed under
14946-625: 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. In late summer 1989, Giraud returned to France, definitively as it turned out, though that was initially not his intent. His family had already returned to France earlier, as his children wanted to start their college education in their native county and wife Claudine had accompanied them to set up home in Paris. However, it also turned out that his transient lifestyle had taken its toll on
15264-411: A short time thereafter, transforming the magazine into a purely French one. However, while the magazine was now targeted at an older adolescent readership with stories featuring more mature themes, Goscinny stopped short of letting the magazine become a truly adult magazine. Yet, the magazine was unable to regain the dominant position it had held in the previous one-and-a-half decade, due to the flooding of
15582-477: A short, ten-minute, 8 mm film , La vie d'un Rêve ( Life is a Dream ), with Pierre Christin. The success of Valérian led to Mézières becoming involved in several, mainly science fiction, film and television projects. The first of these was Billet Doux ( Love Letter ), a 1984 television series starring Pierre Mondy as a comic strip editor for which Mézières mocked up comic book covers and characters. Also in 1984 he produced designs for director Jeremy Kagan who
15900-487: A simple line drawing style similar to that of Jijé, and standard Western themes and imagery (specifically, those of John Ford 's US Cavalry Western trilogy, with Howard Hawk 's 1959 Rio Bravo thrown in for good measure for the sixth, one-shot title "The Man with the Silver Star"), but gradually Giraud developed a darker and grittier style inspired by, firstly the 1970 Westerns Soldier Blue and Little Big Man (for
16218-460: A single planche (page or picture). The series tells of Major Grubert, who is constructing his own multi-level universe on an asteroid named Fleur (from the "Bandard fou" universe incidentally, and the first known instance of the artist's attempts of tying all his "Mœbius" creations into one coherent Airtight Garage universe), where he encounters a wealth of fantastic characters including Michael Moorcock 's creation Jerry Cornelius . 1978 marked
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#173285519494116536-403: A single so-called "hero" in sight anywhere in his series. To hammer home the point, both artists had their medieval knights , around whom both narratives were centered, die violent deaths nowhere near the fulfillment of their respective quests, thereby reinforcing the futility of such endeavors. With such series driving home the point that real history is made by mere humans and not "super-humans",
16854-515: 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
17172-431: 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 Christian Rossi [ fr ] for the artwork, besides having already started on
17490-405: A strip. Drawing on influences from literary science fiction, Mézières and Christin devised the character of Valérian, a spatio-temporal agent from the 28th century employed by Galaxity, the capital of the future Earth, to protect space and time from interference. Neither Mézières nor Christin had any interest in making Valérian into a clean-cut hero of the type that appeared in French comics of
17808-587: 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, and much of his art he had produced in this period of time, including his super hero art,
18126-563: A third pseudonym, Jean Gir – formally introduced to the public as "Jean Gir, Le Nouveau Mœbius" in "Venise celeste" (p. 33), though Giraud had by the time of publication already dispensed with the pseudonym himself – which appeared on the art he created while on Tahiti, though not using it for his Aedena Cycle . Another member of the commune was Paula Salomon, for whom Giraud had already illustrated her 1980 book "La parapsychologie et vous". Having to move stateside for work served Giraud well, as he became increasingly disenchanted at
18444-419: A very prolific comic script writer, becoming his trademark henceforth, Charlier also became an editorial driving force and spokesperson for the agency, because of his background in law and his assertive personality. As such, he was responsible for introducing the two Frenchmen René Goscinny (who also starting out his comics career at the agency) and former Bravo artist Albert Uderzo to each other in 1951 at
18762-406: A wider scale, starting in 1981. Jodorowsky had intended the work to be the first of a trilogy, but that never came to fruition. In a certain way "Les yeux du chat" concluded a phase that had started with "La Déviation", and this viewpoint was adhered to by the publisher who had coined the era "Les années Métal Hurlant" on one of its latter-day anthologies. The very first "Mœbius" anthology collection
19080-495: A worker in a rocket-ship factory to that of a taxi driver – obviously inspired by Mézières' drawings for the film and by The Circles of Power . Mézières produced further designs for the film including more taxis as well as spaceships and sets including the Fhloston Paradise liner seen in the latter part of the film. The Fifth Element was finally completed and released in 1997. Mézières published many of his concept drawings for
19398-422: A younger, post-war generation of French BD artists like Yves Chaland , Édika and Philippe Foerster [ fr ] debuted, whereas veterans like Gotlib and Franquin found a home for their later, darker and more cynical work. A major player in the field became French publisher and newcomer Glénat Éditions (founded in 1972, and who actually started out publishing graphic novels directly as albums before
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#173285519494119716-405: Is currently also a prolific publisher of children's books. Yet, it remained French publications and French artists who would continue to dominate the field from the late-1970s onward to this day, with such (sometimes short-lived) magazines as Bananas , Virus , Mormoil , the feminist Ah ! Nana [ fr ] , Casablanca and Fluide Glacial . It were in these such magazines that
20034-630: Is in some ways the 'sponsor' of Moebius, for years now." The "Mœbius" pseudonym, which Giraud came to use for his science fiction and fantasy work, was born in 1963, while he was working on the Hachette project, as he did not like "to work on paintings alone all day", and "like an alcoholic needing his alcohol" had to create comics. In a satire magazine called Hara-Kiri , Giraud used the name for 21 strips in 1963–64 (much of which collected in Epic's "Mœbius 1 ⁄ 2 " – see below ). Though Giraud enjoyed
20352-630: Is particularly valued in continental Europe. As Mœbius he achieved worldwide renown (in this case in the English-speaking nations and Japan as well – where his work as Gir had not done well), by creating a wide range of science-fiction and fantasy comics in a highly imaginative, surreal , almost abstract style. These works include Arzach and the Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius . He also collaborated with avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky for an unproduced adaptation of Dune and
20670-475: Is why they are nowadays sub-categorized as Flemish comics , as their evolution started to take a different path from the late 1940s onward, due to cultural differences stemming from the increasing cultural self-awareness of the Flemish people. And while French-language publications are habitually translated into Dutch, Flemish publications are less commonly translated into French, for cultural reasons. Likewise, despite
20988-562: The Blueberry series and his other 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 . His most famous body of work as Gir concerns the Blueberry series, created with writer Jean-Michel Charlier , featuring one of the first antiheroes in Western comics , and which
21306-465: The Journal de Mickey , a weekly 8-page early "comic-book". The success was immediate, and soon other publishers started publishing periodicals with American series, which enjoyed considerable popularity in both France and Belgium. This continued during the remainder of the decade, with hundreds of magazines publishing mostly imported material. The most important ones in France were Robinson , Hurrah , and
21624-682: The Algerian War , returning to France just fifteen days before the Algiers putsch . Answering an advertisement in Le Figaro after his discharge from the army, Mézières was employed by the publishing house Hachette as an illustrator on a series of books titled Histoire des Civilizations ( History of Civilization ), for which he brought in Giraud to help him out with the well-paid chore. Intended to run to twenty volumes, Histoire des Civilizations folded after just five. Introduced to Benoit Gillain (son of
21942-469: The American Old West since he was a little boy through exposure to Western genre films starring the likes of Gary Cooper , Burt Lancaster and James Stewart and comics such as Lucky Luke and Jerry Spring . At the age of sixteen, he had attempted to travel to Mexico with Jean Giraud, whose mother lived there, but was prevented by his parents. In 1965, Mézières arranged a working visa through
22260-621: The Blueberry series, I will finish the John Difool [ Incal ] series and then I'm done. Then I will quit comics!" At the time he had just finished working as storyboard, and production design artist on the Movie Tron , something he had enjoyed immensely. Fortunately for his fans, Giraud did not act upon his impulse as history has shown, though he did take action to escape the hectic Parisian comic scene in 1980 by moving himself and his family as far away from Paris as possible in France, and relocated to
22578-508: The Dune production was in a lull – was " Cauchemar Blanc " ("White Nightmare"), published in the magazine L'Écho des savanes , issue 8, 1974. The black & white story dealt with the racist murder of an immigrant of North-African descent, and stands out as one of the very few emphatic socially engaged works of Giraud. Bearing in mind Giraud's fascination with the Western genre in general and
22896-539: 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
23214-551: The Far West , Giraud developed a close, lifelong friendship, calling him "life's continuing adventure" in later life. In 1956, he left art school without graduating to visit his mother, who had married a Mexican in Mexico , and stayed there for nine months. The experience of the Mexican desert, in particular its endless blue skies and unending flat plains, now seeing and experiencing for himself
23532-689: The Fleurus presse [ fr ] (on behalf of the Action catholique des enfants [ fr ] a.k.a. Cœurs Vaillants et Âmes Vaillantes de France) publications Cœurs Vaillants ("Valiant Hearts", 1929, for adolescent boys), Âmes vaillantes [ fr ] ("Valiant Souls", 1937, for adolescent girls) and Fripounet et Marisette [ fr ] (1945, for pre-adolescents), while Belgian examples included Wrill and Bravo . Coeurs Vaillants started to publish The Adventures of Tintin in syndication from 1930 onward, constituting one of
23850-611: The German-speaking Community of Belgium lies within the territory of the Walloon Region , so that French is the most utilized (second) language in that area and has caused the handful of BD artists originating from there, such as Hermann and Didier Comès , to create their BDs in French. Born Dieter Hermann Comès, Comès actually "Frenchified" his given name to this end, whereas Hermann has dispensed with his (Germanic) family name "Huppen" for his BD credits, though he maintained
24168-586: 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 Blueberry ' s "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
24486-464: The Métal hurlant , issues 7–8, publication of " The Long Tomorrow ", written by Dan O'Bannon in 1974 during lulls in the pre-production of Jodorowsky's Dune . His series The Airtight Garage , starting its magazine run in issue 6, 1976, is particularly notable for its non-linear plot, where movement and temporality can be traced in multiple directions depending on the readers' own interpretation even within
24804-507: The University of Utah , and turned up on his doorstep asking him if he could sleep on his settee. To make ends meet, Mézières produced some illustrations for a small advertising agency in Salt Lake City and for a Mormon children's magazine called Children's Friend as well as selling some photographs he had taken while working on the ranch in Montana. After a few months, he found work on
25122-507: The Valérian albums and the Star Wars film series. Both series are noted for the "lived-in" look given to their various settings and for the diverse alien creatures they feature. Mézières' response upon seeing Star Wars was that he was "dazzled, jealous... and furious!". As a riposte, he produced an illustration for Pilote magazine in 1983 depicting the Star Wars characters Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa meeting Valérian and Laureline in
25440-504: The Western comic series Jerry Spring , that started its run in Spirou in March 1954. Jijé incidentally, had magazine tenure, but closely cooperated with the World Press artists before embarking on his own creation. Successful series Charlier himself created in this period were the educational short series Les Belles Histoires de l'oncle Paul (serving as proving ground in order to develop
25758-534: The Wild West led him to travel to the United States in 1965 in search of adventure as a cowboy , an experience that would prove influential on his later work. Returning to France, Mézières teamed up with his childhood friend, Pierre Christin , to create Valérian and Laureline , the popular, long-running science fiction comics series for which he is best known and which influenced many science fiction and fantasy films, including Star Wars . Mézières contributed as
26076-404: The below-mentioned Frenchman Claude Moliterni [ fr ] , the article series was in itself an example of a Franco-Belgian BD project. The publication of Francis Lacassin 's book Pour un neuvième art : la bande dessinée in 1971 further established the term. In North America , Franco-Belgian BDs are often seen as equivalent to what are known as graphic novels — most likely
26394-574: The standard) or, to a lesser degree, 62 pages (discounting the two disclaimer, and title pages) for print and binding technical reasons as printers traditionally printed eight double-sided pages on one sheet of print paper, though albums with a larger page count—provided the total page count is a multiple of eight—are not that uncommon, the graphic novel album publications of À Suivre publisher Casterman in particular. Jean-Claude M%C3%A9zi%C3%A8res Jean-Claude Mézières ( French: [ʒɑ̃klod mezjɛʁ] ; 23 September 1938 – 23 January 2022)
26712-457: The " Asterix " series as an almost instantaneous success. The audience radicalized at a faster pace than the editors, however, which had trouble keeping up. The French satire magazine Hara-Kiri was launched, also aimed at an adult audience. In the 1960s, most of the French Catholic magazines, such as the Fleurus publications, waned in popularity, as they were "re-christianized" and went to
27030-758: 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,
27348-563: The "Iron Horse" story-arc), and subsequently by 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, and after both editorial control and censorship laws were loosened in the wake of the May 1968 social upheaval in France –
27666-487: The "unbearable realization" that he was "enriching" the publisher with his Mœbius work, thereby expediting his departure.), "Ballade" ("The Ballade", 1977 and inspired by the poem "Fleur" by French poet Arthur Rimbaud ), "Ktulu" (issue 33bis, 1978, an H. P. Lovecraft -inspired story) and "Citadelle aveugle" ("The White Castle", in issue 51, 1980 and oddly enough signed as "Gir") were examples of additional stories Giraud created directly in color, shortly after "Arzach". 1976 saw
27984-537: The (early) creations of Belgian greats like Morris , Franquin and Jijé – became a significant inspiration for future French bande dessinée greats such as Jean "Mœbius" Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières , eventually setting them off on their comic careers, but who were schoolboys at the time they became acquainted with the magazine. When Germany invaded France and Belgium, it became close to impossible to import American comics . The occupying Nazis banned American animated movies and comics they deemed to be of
28302-452: The 1968 revolt in the editorial offices, but he now found himself suddenly confronted with the magazine hemorrhaging its most promising BD talents and diminishing sales. The magazine was eventually turned into a monthly magazine, its artists who had not yet left given more creative freedoms and the Belgian influence terminated definitively with the departure of co-editor Charlier in 1972 and the last Belgian artists Hubinon and Jijé following suit
28620-449: The 1970s and 1980s, with the first realistic renderings of Valérian and Laureline, as opposed to the caricatures of the earlier stories. Valérian is Mézières' best-known work, translated into at least thirteen languages: the last album, L'Ouvre Temps , was published in January 2010. It is one of publisher Dargaud 's top five best-selling comics series. Various attempts were made from
28938-501: The 1970s with several additional covers for the publisher's Fiction (the magazine that introduced Giraud to science fiction at age 16) and Galaxie-bis [ fr ] science fiction magazine and pocket book series. Additionally, this period in time also saw four vinyl record music productions endowed with Mœbius sleeve art. Much of this illustration art has been reproduced in Giraud's first art book as Mœbius, aptly entitled "Mœbius", released in 1980. There actually had also been
29256-471: The 1979 Angoulême comics festival with its most prestigious award), along with the magazines they created their work for. It has been observed that, unlike the Belgian publications, these mostly secular native magazines were largely left alone by the Commission de Surveillance, save for one notable exception; Pierre Mouchot, creator and editor of American inspired comic magazines in the immediate post-war era,
29574-531: The 1984 Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême . Raised in the Saint-Mandé area in the suburbs of Paris, Jean-Claude Mézières met his friend and frequent collaborator Pierre Christin at the age of two in an air-raid shelter during World War II . He was first inspired to draw by the influence of his elder brother who, aged fourteen, had a drawing published in the magazine OK . Mézières' initial inspiration came from such OK strips as Arys Buck by Uderzo , Kaza
29892-798: The 1990s with several small independent publishers emerging, such as L'Association (established in 1990), Le Dernier Cri , Amok , Fréon (the latter two later merging into Frémok ), and Ego comme X . Known as "la nouvelle bande dessinée" (similar to the North American alternative comics ), these books are often more artistic, graphically and narratively, than the usual products of the big companies. Dupuy and Berberian , Lewis Trondheim , Joann Sfar , Marjane Satrapi ( Persepolis ), Christophe Blain , Stéphane Blanquet , Edmond Baudoin , David B , and Emmanuel Larcenet all started their careers with these publishers, and would later gain fame with comics such as Donjon (Trondheim & Sfar), Isaac
30210-476: The 20 December 2006 - 19 February 2007 Hergé exposition in the even more prestigious Centre Georges Pompidou modern art museum (likewise located in Paris and incidentally one of President Mitterrand's below-mentioned "Great Works") on the occasion of the centenary of that artist's birth. Giraud's funeral services in March 2012 was attended by a representative of the French nation in the person of Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand , who also spoke on behalf of
30528-520: The 76,000 copy circulation of Tintin , and it was but one of the many American comics published in France in the immediate post-war era. It was the very reason for the unlikely French Catholic-Communist alliance in this regard, and a very effective one at that as American comics all but disappeared from the French comic scene for the time being, the Le Journal de Mickey excepted, which only reappeared three years later in former occupied western Europe. It
30846-507: The American ones in particular (even though they were not mentioned by name in the law), and in this the French law actually foreshadowed the 1954 publication of the comic condemning treatise Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham in the United States itself. But there was an equally important, but unofficial, reason for the law as well; American comics were doing so well in post-liberation France, that native comic magazines, particularly
31164-533: The Arts Appliqués, the pair bonding over a mutual interest in jazz and cinema. While at college, Mézières, like Giraud, published illustrations and strips for publications such as Coeurs Valliants , Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou magazine. Following art college, Mézières entered military service , which at the time lasted twenty-eight months, including a tour of duty based in Tlemcen , Algeria , during
31482-515: The Buffalo" – has had an English publication), and another called " Un géant chez lez Hurons " ("A Giant among the Hurons"). Actually, several of his Western comics, including "King of the Buffalo", featured the same protagonist Art Howell, and these can be considered as Giraud's de facto first realistic Western series, as he himself did in effect, since he, save the first one, endowed these stories with
31800-464: The Catholic Church, in the form of its then powerful and influential Union des œuvres ouvrières catholiques de France [ fr ] , was creating and distributing "healthy and correct" magazines for children. In the early 1900s, the first popular French comics appeared. Two of the most prominent comics include Bécassine and Les Pieds Nickelés . In the 1920s, after the end of
32118-498: The Catholic ones, became threatened in their very existence, and the law therefore became concurrently a veiled market protection mechanism . An added sense of urgency was, besides the huge popularity the American magazines enjoyed among France's youth, that the native publications had at that time a distinct disadvantage over their American counterparts as the country still experienced a serious post-war paper shortage (reflected as such in
32436-505: The Cowboys ), a children's book written by Pierre Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières about a visit Christin's son Olivier paid to the ranch Mézières worked on in Utah and Adieu, rêve américain... ( Farewell, American dreams... ), again written by Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières, a nostalgic look back at their time in the United States. On his return from
32754-491: The Franco-Belgian BD with the Japanese manga format (see below ). But it is however Jean "Mœbius" Giraud, coined "the most influential bandes dessinées artist after Hergé" by several academic BD scholars , who is considered the premier French standard bearer of "Le Neuvième Art", as he has received two different civilian knighthoods with a posthumous rank elevation of his Arts and Letters knighthood to boot, an unicum for
33072-606: The Franco-Belgian historical BD had come a long way since their first romanticized and/or idealized appearances in the 1940s–1970s, particularly in Tintin and Pilote as portrayed by such artists as the Fred Funcken [ fr ] ( Le Chevalier blanc , Harald le Viking , Lieutenant Burton ), William Vance ( Howard Flynn , Rodric , Ramiro ), François Craenhals ( Chevalier Ardent ) or Victor Hubinon ( Barbe Rouge ), to name but
33390-465: The French counterparts of the slightly earlier American underground comix , also conceived and popularized as a result of the counterculture of the 1960s , of which the French May 1968 events were only a part. But unlike their American counterparts, the French magazines were mainstream from the start when they eventually burst onto the scene in the early 1970s, as publications of this kind could not escape
33708-502: The French language's cultural status. Belgium is officially a trilingual country as there is a German-speaking Community of Belgium . Belgian BD home market first print releases, be it in Dutch or in French, are rarely translated into that language with German-speaking Belgians having to wait for internationally released editions for reading in their native tongue, typically those from licensed publishers stemming from neighboring Germany . Though Dutch and German both are Germanic languages,
34026-405: The French to exercise self-censorship. Having already embarked on their divergent evolutionary path, Flemish comics escaped this kind of scrutiny, as they were at the time rarely, if at all, translated into French. In 1959, the influential French weekly Pilote launched, already from the start an attempt to be a more mature alternative to Spirou and Pilote , aimed at a teenage audience, with
34344-522: The French-language BDs extends beyond Francophone Europe, as France in particular has strong historical and cultural ties with several Francophone overseas territories. Of these territories it is Quebec , Canada , where Franco-Belgian BDs are doing best, due – aside from the fact that it has the largest BD reading Francophone population outside Europe – to that province's close historical and cultural ties with France from colonization , in
34662-476: The Frenchman Rob-Vel (and thus another early cross-fertilization example) and who served as the mascot and namesake for the new magazine, and Tif et Tondu created by Belgian artist Fernand Dineur . Both series would survive the war and achieve considerable popularity after the war, albeit under the aegis of other artists (see below). Published in a bi-lingual country, Spirou simultaneously appeared in
34980-564: The Germanic spelling for his first name. Due to its relative modesty, both in size and in scope, and despite the close historical and cultural ties, no German-Belgian artists are as of 2018 known to have created BDs specifically for the German comics world, when discounting commercial translations of their original Francophone creations. A similar situation exists in France, which has several regional languages , of which Breton and Occitan are two of
35298-637: The Martian by Kline and Crochemaille by Erik. Later he was exposed to Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin , Franquin's period on Spirou et Fantasio and, his favourite of all, Morris' Lucky Luke . He had his first drawings published in 1951, at the age of thirteen, in the magazine Le journal des jeunes , published by Le Figaro . A year later, "completely fascinated by Tintin", he created an eleven-page strip, Tintin in California , which features an unusually muscle-bound Arys Buck -influenced Tintin. This
35616-599: The Pirate (Blain), Professeur Bell (Sfar). Léo Quievreux , a key artist in the 1990s scene, founded and ran his own publication house, Gotoproduction, which he ran along with Jean Kristau and Anne-Fred Maurer from 1991 to 2000 or 2001, and which published over 60 books. Before the Second World War, comics were almost exclusively published in tabloid newspapers . Since 1945, the " comic album " (or " comics album ", in French " album BD " for short) format gained popularity,
35934-403: The United States, Mézières visited the offices of Pilote magazine to see René Goscinny and Jean-Michel Charlier . Goscinny put him to work on L'extraordinaire et Troublante Aventure de Mr. August Faust ( The Extraordinary and Troubling Adventure of Mr August Faust ), written by Fred . This would be the first serialised strip that Mézières would work on. Due to the lack of artistic freedom he
36252-445: The West", after Giraud resumed work on plate 39 of "Mission to Mexico", a clearly noticeable style breach was now 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". The Lieutenant Blueberry character, whose facial features were based on those of
36570-520: The Wind , seven volumes, set in 18th-century seafaring and slave trading Europe, becoming one of the first BD series to deal realistically in considerable detail with the dark slavery chapter in human history) and Les Compagnons du crépuscule (1983–1989, Companions of the Dusk , three volumes, set in 13th-century Europe and published by Casterman incidentally). Both series made short work of any romantic notion about
36888-549: The Youth") and passed in response to the post-liberation influx of American comics, was invoked as late as 1969 to prohibit the comic magazine Fantask [ fr ] —which featured translated versions of Marvel Comics stories — after seven issues. The formal and official justification for the law was the legislative desire to protect the youth of France from the perfidious and corruptive influence perceived to permeate foreign comics, especially in regard to violence and sexuality,
37206-555: The actor Jean-Paul Belmondo , was created in 1963 by Charlier (scenario) and Giraud (drawings) for Pilote. While the Fort Navajo series had originally been intended as an ensemble narrative, it quickly gravitated towards having Blueberry as its central figure. His featured adventures, in what was later called 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
37524-563: The advent of Pilote magazine and more specifically the May 1968 social upheaval . Legally, the Commission had no punitive powers, only advisory ones, but in practice Charlier begged to differ. The all powerful Commission, shielded by the Justice Ministry (which was the punitive authority, but who took any and all Commission recommendations at face value, no questions asked), convened on a weekly basis, sifting through publications and weeding out those they felt subject to prohibition under
37842-447: 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. As already indicated above, Giraud had throughout his entire career made illustrations for books, magazines, music productions (though playing
38160-477: The amusement of his schoolmates. In 1954, at age 16, he began his only technical training at the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré , where he started producing Western comics, though these did not sit well with his conventional teachers. At the college, he befriended other future comic artists Jean-Claude Mézières and Pat Mallet [ fr ] . With Mézières in particular, in no small part due to their shared passion for science fiction, Westerns and
38478-402: The appearance of a later, major 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. In October 1963, Giraud and writer Jean-Michel Charlier started
38796-408: The artbook "Made in L.A." ("The Words of Chief Seattle ", in Epic's "Ballad for a Coffin" ). Giraud suddenly bursting out onto the comic scene as "Mœbius", caught European readership by surprise, and it took many of them, especially outside France, a couple of years before the realization had sunk in that "Jean Gir[raud]" and "Mœbius" were, physically at least, one and the same artist. It was when he
39114-433: The artfully executed story titles, entirely devoid of captions, speech balloons and written sound effects. It has been argued that the wordlessness provides the strip with a sense of timelessness, setting up Arzach's journey as a quest for eternal, universal truths. The short stories "L'Homme est-il bon?" ("Is Man Good?", in issue 10, 1976, after the first publication in Pilote , issue 744, 1974, which however woke Giraud up to
39432-545: 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),
39750-412: The artistic freedom and atmosphere at the magazine greatly, he eventually gave up his work there as Blueberry , on which he had embarked in the meantime, demanded too much of his energy, aside from being a better paid job. Magazine editor-in-chief Cavanna was loath to let Giraud go, not understanding why Giraud would want to waste his talents on a "kiddy comic". Subsequently, the pseudonym went unused for
40068-617: The arts ) as "Le Neuvième Art" ("the 9th art"), aside from becoming accepted as a mature part of French culture by Francophone society at large (in France and French-speaking Belgium it is as common to encounter grownup people reading BDs in public places, such as cafe terraces or public transportation, as it is people reading books, newspapers or magazines). Since then more than one BD artist have received " Ordre des Arts et des Lettres " civilian knighthoods, and these were not restricted to French nationals alone, as Japanese artist Jiro Taniguchi has also received one in 2011 for his efforts to merge
40386-531: The as "Gir" signed "La déviation", it is in this story that Giraud's signature, minute "Mœbius" art style, for which he became famed not that much later, truly comes into its own. Another novelty introduced in the book, is that the narrative is only related on the right-hand pages; the left-hand pages are taken up by one-page panels depicting an entirely unrelated cinematographic sequence of a man transforming after he has snapped his fingers. The story did raise some eyebrows with critics accusing Giraud of pornography at
40704-548: The assignment a daunting one, having to create in oil paints from historical objects and imagery, it was, besides being the best-paying job he had ever had, a seminal appointment. At Hachette, Giraud discovered that he had a knack for creating art in gouaches , something that served him well not that much later when creating Blueberry magazine/ album cover art, as well as for his 1968 side project " Buffalo Bill : le roi des éclaireurs" history book written by George Fronval [ fr ] , for whom Giraud provided two-thirds of
41022-472: The availability in France of Belgian magazines like Spirou (which actually came close to prohibition however, as the Korean War stories were serialized in the magazine, but which was narrowly averted at the eleventh hour by Charlier) and Tintin in favor of the native Catholic magazines, after the conservatives had reasserted their political predominance in the country during the 1950s. Rigorously enforced by
41340-408: The below-mentioned François Bourgeon and Hermann Huppen, to create other BDs for other publishers, sometimes even suspending a series for the one in favor of a series for the other. The advent of the new adult magazines had a profound effect on France's hitherto most influential BD magazine Pilote . Editor-in-chief Goscinny had at first refused to implement the changes demanded by its artists during
41658-451: 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". Exemplary of the marriage ending without any ill will was, that Claudine was still emphatically acknowledged for her contributions in the 1997 artbook "Blueberry's", and
41976-463: The cartoonish influences of Bad Dreams . Jean-Pierre Andrevon best sums up Mézières' style at this time in his 1970 review of the story where he describes Valérian as a "kind of Lucky Luke of space-time". The City of Shifting Waters and Earth in Flames were collected together in one volume in 1970 under the title The City of Shifting Waters . This became the first Valérian album – Bad Dreams
42294-660: The city of Lille , which had been designated European Capital of Culture of 2004, to produce something for the celebrations. He created a series of futuristic arches, called Chemin des Etoiles ( The Way of the Stars ) along the Rue Faidherbe in the city, similar to those seen at the Port Abyss spaceport depicted in the Valérian album At the Edge of the Great Void which was first published
42612-413: The comic became successful in Tintin magazine in the period 1958–1962 (and thus, alongside Martin's The Adventures of Alix , one of the first purely French comics to appear in the Belgian magazine), effectively becoming the "spiritual father" of their later Asterix creation. But it were not just the artists contracted by World Press who infused Spirou with its new elan, Dupuis itself had contracted
42930-459: The comic book series The Incal . Mœbius also contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science-fiction and fantasy films, such as Alien , Tron , The Fifth Element , and The Abyss . Blueberry was adapted for the screen in 2004 by French director Jan Kounen . Jean Giraud was born in Nogent-sur-Marne , Val-de-Marne, in the suburbs of Paris, on 8 May 1938, as
43248-535: The comic magazine Vaillant (not to be confused with the two near-similarly named Fleurus publications) was launched in 1945 upon war's end. The secular magazine provided a platform for predominantly native comic talent born between the 1920s and the 1940s, not able or willing to work for the Catholic magazines, to showcase their work. French names of note who started out their career in the magazine were among others Nikita Mandryka , Paul Gillon , Jean-Claude Forest and Marcel Gotlib , and were less beholden to what
43566-529: The comic strip Fort Navajo for the Charlier-co-founded Pilote magazine, issue 210. At this time the affinity 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 . In effect, when "Fort Navajo" started its run, Pilote received angry letters, accusing Giraud of plagiarism , which
43884-624: The covers for the first seven outings in 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
44202-458: The creations of Hermann . In Europe, French is spoken natively not only in France and the city state of Monaco , but also by significant portions of the population of Belgium , Luxembourg and Switzerland . The shared language creates an artistic and commercial market where national identity is often blurred, and one of the main rationales for the conception of the (English) "Franco-Belgian comics" expression itself. The potential appeal of
44520-421: The cultural aspects of Native Americans in particular – and whose plight Giraud had always been sympathetic to – it is hardly a surprise that two later examples of such rare works were Native-American themed. These concerned the 2-page short story "Wounded Knee", inspired by the eponymous 1973 incident staged by Oglala Lakota , and the 3-page short story "Discours du Chef Seattle", first published in
44838-460: The death of his father. Giraud returned to the Blueberry series in 1979 with "Nez Cassé" as a free-lancer . Later that year however, the long-running disagreement Charlier and Giraud had with their publishing house Dargaud , the publisher of Pilote , over the residuals from Blueberry came to a head. They began the Western comic Jim Cutlass as a means to put the pressure on Dargaud. It did not work, and Charlier and Giraud turned their back on
45156-477: 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. For Giraud his second marriage was of such great personal importance, that he henceforth considered his life divided in a pre-Isabelle part and a post-Isabelle part, having coined his second wife "the key to the whole grand design". Isabelle's sister and Giraud's sister-in-law, Claire, became
45474-421: The drawings, Besson asked Mézières to draw more taxis and also a flying police car. By the start of 1993, production had stalled and Besson moved to the United States to work on the film Léon . Mézières returned to Valérian for the album The Circles of Power , published in 1994. This album made use of some of the concepts Mézières had worked on for Zaltman Bléros and featured a character, S'Traks, who drove
45792-484: The earliest known French-Belgian comic world cross-fertilizations, only reinforced when Abbot Courtois, editor-in-chief of Coeurs Vaillants , asked Hergé to create a series about real children with a real family as opposed to Tintin ' s ambiguous age and family (and thus more in line with the Catholic norms and values on which the magazine was founded), which resulted in the 1936 comic The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko . Incidentally, as Hergé created his comics in
46110-468: The earliest. Following suit was Métal Hurlant (vol. 1: December 1974 – July 1987 from also new French publisher Les Humanoïdes Associés , founded by likewise Pilote defectors, Druillet , Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Mœbius ) with the far-reaching science fiction and fantasy of Mœbius, Druillet, and Bilal . Its translated counterpart made an impact in America as Heavy Metal . This trend continued during
46428-405: The entirety of the story art, but the still-inexperienced Giraud, who was used to working under the relaxed conditions at Fleurus, found himself overwhelmed by the strict time schedules that production for a periodical ( Spirou in this case) demanded. Conceding that he had been a bit too cocky and ambitious, Giraud stated, "I started the story all by myself, but after a week, I had only finished half
46746-550: The episodic approach of other magazines) would dominate the market. At this time, the French creations had already gained fame throughout Europe, and many countries had started importing the comics in addition to—or as substitute for—their own productions. The aftermath of the May 1968 social upheaval brought many mature – as in aimed at an adult readership – BD magazines, something that had not been seen previously and virtually all of them of purely French origin, which
47064-417: The era under the shadow of the all-present Catholic publications to fill the void left by the banned American comics such as Les Grandes Séries Internationales , Cricri Journal , Mireille , Ouest-Magazine , Nano et Nanette , Héros du Far West , Frimousse , Cocorico and Allez-France , all of which filled with work from French artists, now forgotten save Marijac himself (who was honored for his efforts at
47382-412: The example set by the L'Écho des savanes founding editors, it was therefore as such also an indirect result of the revolt these artists had previously staged at Pilote , and whose employ they had left for the undertaking. Together they started the monthly magazine Métal hurlant ("Screaming metal") in December 1974, and for which he had temporarily abandoned his Blueberry series. The translated version
47700-422: The faith) such as Jijé (whose early realistic works were deeply steeped in the faith), or had, like Hergé did, strong ties with the as "healthy" considered scouting movement – a significant presence in Belgian society at the time, which also explains the contemporary popularity of Charlier's La patrouille des Castor series in Belgium, which was centered around a scouting chapter – and were thus, to use
48018-399: The famous comics artist Jijé) by Giraud, Mézières entered into a partnership with Gillain and they opened a studio in 1963. Working mainly in advertising, Mézières acted as a photographer, model maker and graphic designer. He also assisted Gillain with the setting up of Totale Journal , a publication he would later work for again upon his return from America. Mézières had been fascinated by
48336-460: The few exceptions. It was (À Suivre) that popularized the concept of the graphic novel – in French abbreviated as "Roman BD", "roman" being the translation for "novel" – as a longer, more adult, more literate and artistic BD in Europe. Unlike its Dupuis counterpart, and while their BD catalog has expanded considerably since then, Casterman has never evolved into a purely BD publisher by completely abandoning its book publishing roots, as it
48654-470: The field of comics – Patrick (Pat) Mallet and Jean "Moebius" Giraud . With Giraud in particular, he developed a life-long friendship due to their shared interest in Westerns and science fiction (both men later worked together as production illustrators on Besson's The Fifth Element ). At this time he also rekindled his friendship with Pierre Christin, who was coincidentally attending the high school next door to
48972-461: The film in Les Extras de Mézières No. 2: Mon Cinquieme Element . At the same time as he was working on Valérian and various film and television projects, Mézières also worked extensively producing illustrations and comic strips for magazines and newspapers such as Pilote , Métal Hurlant and Le Monde , as well as covers for books and art for advertising campaigns. For Le Monde , in 1993, he
49290-479: 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
49608-475: The first English book translations being published in 1977/78 by UK publisher Egmont / Methuen , though its publication was cut short after only four volumes. The original Blueberry series has spun off a prequel series called Young Blueberry in the Pilote -era (1968–1970), but the artwork was in 1984, when that series was resurrected, left to Colin Wilson and later Michel Blanc-Dumont [ fr ] after
49926-487: The first Jodorowsky/Mœbius collaboration. Giraud was so eager to return to the project during a stopover from the United States while the project was in hiatus, that he greatly accelerated the work on the "Angel Face" outing of Blueberry he was working on at the time, shearing off weeks from its originally intended completion. The project fell through though, and after he had returned definitely to France later that year, he started to produce comic work under this pseudonym that
50244-410: 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
50562-431: The first person, related his experiences under the tutelage of a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named Don Juan Matus. Castaneda's writings made a deep and everlasting impression on Giraud, already open to Native-Mexican folk culture due to his three previous extended trips to the country (he had visited the country a third time in 1972), and it did influence his art as "Mœbius", particularly in regard to dream sequences, though he
50880-468: The first three original volumes in that series, as well as the Giraud-written, but William Vance -penciled, 1991-2000 intermezzo series called Marshal Blueberry . All these series, except Jim Cutlass , had returned to the parent publisher Dargaud in late 1993, though Giraud himself – having already left the employ of the publisher in 1974 (see below ) – had not, instead plying his trade as
51198-412: The first time. Considered a key and seminal work, both for its art and storytelling, setting Jodorowsky off on his career as comic writer, the art evoked memories of the wood engravings from the 19th century, including those of Gustave Doré , that Giraud discovered and admired in the books of his grandparents when he was living there in his childhood. However, it—like "La déviation"—has remained somewhat of
51516-453: The first world war, the French artist Alain Saint-Ogan started out as a professional cartoonist, creating the successful series Zig et Puce in 1925. Saint-Ogan was one of the first French-speaking artists to fully utilize techniques popularized and formularized in the United States, such as Speech balloons , even though the text comic format would remain the predominant native format for
51834-437: The formal status (when discounting the manga, which has achieved a near-similar status in native Japan), with its resultant strong backing from cultural authorities. A visible manifestation of the latter has become the prestigious " Centre belge de la Bande dessinée " (Dutch: "Belgisch Centrum voor het Beeldverhaal", English: "Belgian Comic Strip Center") established in 1989 in the Belgian capital Brussels , and which, as one of
52152-403: The former French resistance, although most were released soon afterwards without charges being pressed. For example, this happened to one of the famous magazines, Coeurs Vaillants . It was founded by Abbot Courtois (under the alias Jacques Coeur) in 1929. As he had the backing of the church, he managed to publish the magazine throughout the war, and was charged with being a collaborator. After he
52470-506: The former in no small part due to the revolt key comic artists, Giraud chief among them, staged a short time thereafter in the editorial offices of Dargaud , the publisher of Pilote , demanding and ultimately receiving more creative freedom from editor-in-chief René Goscinny – the strip became more explicitly adult, and also adopted a thematically wider range. The first Blueberry album penciled by Giraud after he had begun publishing science fiction as Mœbius, "Nez Cassé" ("Broken Nose"),
52788-459: 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
53106-475: The government oversight committee Commission de surveillance et de contrôle des publications destinées à l'enfance et à l'adolescence [ fr ] (Committee in Charge of Surveillance and Control over Publications Aimed at Children and Adolescents), particularly in the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, the law turned out to be a stifling influence on the post-war development of the French comic world until
53424-450: The graphic innovations Giraud ported over from his work as "Mœbius" into the mainstream Blueberry series, most specifically "Nez Cassé", making him "one of the all-time greatest artists in the comic medium," as Charlier himself put it in 1982. Artist Michel Rouge [ fr ] , who was taken on by Giraud in 1980 for the inks of "La longue marche" ("The Long March") painted a slightly different picture though. Already recognizing that
53742-437: The highest court of appeal (though only receiving symbolic punishment) under article 2 of the 1949 law for real. However, the conviction did serve as an effective deterrent for other native artists – and thus firmly establishing the Commission as a force to be reckoned with, even though they had a tough time becoming so as Mouchot kept winning his lower court cases – who continued to create their comics while erring on
54060-547: The historical town of Angoulême , already the locus of France's biggest annual BD festival since 1974. A major project in the making, involving the renovation of several ancient buildings and the designing of a new one spread over the grounds of the town's former brewery by renowned architect Roland Castro , the museum, Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l'image [ fr ] , only opened its doors in June 2009 (though two smaller sub-museums, eventually incorporated in
54378-461: The illustrations in gouache, including the cover. The assignment at Hachette being 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 additionally provided art in gouache for two Western-themed vinyl record music productions as sleeve art, as well as
54696-432: The in that year opened Paris, France, office of World Press, in the process creating one of Franco-Belgium's most successful bande dessinée partnerships. One of the first comics both men created together in the employ of the agency was the in colonial French-Canada era set Western series Oumpah-pah , which was already conceived as loose gags in 1951, but failed to find a magazine publisher. Reworked into complete stories,
55014-433: The increasingly popular speech balloon format, it initially led to a conflict with Cœurs Vaillants , which utilized the text comic format its editors considered more appropriate from an educational point-of-view. Hergé won the argument, and speech balloon comics were henceforth featured alongside text comics in the magazine (and that of its spin-offs) until the mid-1960s, when speech balloon comics were all but abandoned by
55332-460: 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
55650-449: The larger final one, were already open to the public as early as 1991) in the process becoming the largest BD museum in Europe. The museum is administered by the CNBDI, established in 1985 for upcoming museum, but which has since then expanded its work on behalf of the bande dessinée beyond the confines of the museum alone, as already indicated above. On 11 December 2012, one of the buildings on
55968-513: The largest BD museum in Europe, draws in 200,000 visitors annually. The museum is housed in a state-owned 1905 building designed by architect Victor Horta in the Art Nouveau style, the same style French female artist Annie Goetzinger has employed for her BDs. Belgium possesses two other, smaller, museums dedicated to individual BD artists, the Marc Sleen Museum (est. 2009), located across
56286-438: The late 1970s onwards to adapt Valérian for film or television and an animated series, entitled Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline , made its debut in 2007. Mézières was always as interested in the cinema as he was in drawing. In 1957, he began work with Jean Giraud on creating an animated Western. Dissatisfied with the results, the project was abandoned after 45 seconds of animation had been completed. The same year he shot
56604-455: The late 1970s—in graphic novel format trade editions, under its Epic imprint from 1987 to 1994. These incidentally, included three of Mœbius' latter-day art books, as well as the majority of his Blueberry Western comic. 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
56922-456: The later American graphic novel format), the European albums are rather large (roughly A4 standard). Comic albums started to receive their own individual ISBNs from the mid-1970s onward all over Europe solidifying their status as books. Conceived as a format as currently understood in Belgium with the first Tintin albums in the early 1930s—incidentally the second reason for considering Tintin
57240-595: The latter in the 1960s) other than the original creators, none of them succeeded to find a readership outside France itself and are consequently remembered in their native country only. One of the earliest proper Belgian comics was Hergé 's The Adventures of Tintin , with the story Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , which was published in Le Petit Vingtième in 1929. It was quite different from future versions of Tintin,
57558-449: The launch of Circus ) with their two main magazine publications Circus (comics) [ fr ] (1975–1989) and Vécu [ fr ] (1985–1994, with emphasis on mature stories of an accurate historical nature), featuring predominantly the work of French BD talents, but who did so with a twist; Glénat targeted their magazines at a readership positioned between the adolescent readership of Pilote , Tintin and Spirou and
57876-412: The law, every decision they took being final, under no obligation to ever provide any formal justification whatsoever and without any possibility for appeal, which amounted to de facto state censorship according to Charlier. Yet, it were also the communists who provided the comic scene in France with a single bright-spot; Having its origins in the communist wartime underground resistance publications,
58194-469: The magazine at a later point in time. Nonetheless, with Lombard Francophone Europe had received its first specialized comics publisher actually conceived as such. Le Lombard went on to become one of the three great Belgian publishing houses to produce comics in French (and in Dutch as well for that matter due to the bi-lingual nature of the country), alongside Dupuis and Casterman, and like them as of 2017 still in existence. Many other magazines did not survive
58512-403: The magazine directly after the liberation, when he started the secular comics magazine Coq hardi [ fr ] (1944–1963), France's first recognizable modern bande dessinée magazine. Marijac himself became a prolific figure of note in the French comic scene of the 1950s as co-editor and contributor for a series of native comic magazines other than his own Coq Hardi , and conceived in
58830-416: The magazine on his most popular creation Gaston in 1957. With the addition of artist Willy "Will" Maltaite , who took over the series Tif et Tondu from original creator Fernand Dineur, the group that became known as " La bande des quatre " (Gang of 4), consisting of Jijé, Franquin, Morris and Will, was complete and constituted the foundation of what was coined the "Marcinelle school"-style. However, such
59148-423: The magazine to break out on their own, after they had staged a revolt in the editorial offices of Dargaud, the publisher of Pilote , during the 1968 upheaval, demanding and ultimately receiving more creative freedom from then editor-in-chief René Goscinny (see also: " Jean "Mœbius" Giraud on his part in the uprising at Pilote "). Essentially, these new magazines along with other contemporaries of their kind, were
59466-449: The magazine — in the process introducing something new in the Belgian comic world: the comic album . The 1930 Tintin au pays des Soviets title is generally considered the first of its kind – even though there are three similar Zig et Puce titles from French publisher Hachette , known to predate the Tintin title by one to two years, but which failed to find an audience outside France however. The magazine continued to do so for
59784-575: The magazine(s), the general trend notwithstanding. In 1938, the Belgian Spirou magazine was launched. Conceived in response to the immense popularity of Journal de Mickey and the success of Tintin in Le Petit Vingtième , the black and white/color hybrid magazine featured predominantly comics from an American origin at the time of its launch until the war years, but there were also native comics included. These concerned Spirou , created by
60102-405: The main market. The situation for France's German-speaking minority is therefore identical to its more sizable counterpart in northern neighbor Belgium in regard to BD-related matters. The term bandes dessinées is derived from the original description of the art form as "drawn strips". It was first introduced in the 1930s, but only became popular in the 1960s, by which time the "BD" abbreviation
60420-502: The market with alternatives. Lagging behind the French for the first time in regard to the more mature BDs, the Belgians made good on their arrear when publisher Casterman launched the magazine ( À Suivre ) ( Wordt Vervolgd for its Dutch-language counterpart, both of which translating into English as "To Be Continued") in October 1977. Until then the old venerable publisher (est. in 1780 as
60738-544: The marriage, causing the couple to drift apart, and it was decided upon his return to enter into a " living apart together " relationship, which allowed for an "enormous freedom and sincerity" without "demands and frustrations" for both spouses, according to the artist. 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
61056-517: The mature readership of such magazines as (À Suivre) , Métal Hurlant and others. French BD artists of note who were nurtured into greatness in the Glénat publications were among others Mayko and Patrick Cothias , but most conspicuously François Bourgeon and André Juillard . Exemplary of the different, older target audience Glénat was aiming at, became the two finite, historical series Bourgeon created; Les Passagers du vent (1979–2009, The Passengers of
61374-446: The medium. Even Giraud was in later life led to believe that Charlier apparently "detested" his other work, looking upon it as something akin to "treason", though his personal experiences with the author was that he had kept an "open mind" in this regard, at least in his case. According to Giraud, Charlier's purported stance negatively influenced his son Philippe, causing their relationship to rapidly deteriorate into open animosity, after
61692-423: The modern Franco-Belgian BD format was conceived after all, was somewhat slower in advancing the format as a bonafide art form, but has strongly followed suit in considering the Franco-Belgian BD as a "key aspect of Belgium's cultural heritage". While the expression "the 9th art" has been popularized in other countries as well, Belgium and France remain as of 2017, the only countries where the medium has been accorded
62010-459: The modern Franco-Belgian comic as currently understood, and as amply demonstrated in the vast majority of treatises and reference works written on the subject since the 1960s, and the first to find a readership outside its originating country. As such the Tintin series went on to become one of the greatest post-war successes of the Franco-Belgian comic world, having seen translations in dozens of languages, including English, as well as becoming one of
62328-443: The modern expression, already " politically correct " in the first place, that is from the Belgian perspective at least. However, the incident Charlier had experienced with the Commission shook up the editors of Spirou and Tintin , and as France was a too important market to lose, they too henceforth chose to err on the side of caution by screening the creations of their artists before magazine publication, essentially being forced by
62646-448: The money from these strips to pay for his ticket home. In leaving America, Mézières also left behind a young woman, Linda, one of Christin's students: she followed him to France some months later and became his wife. Mézières' experiences in the United States have provided the inspiration for several magazine articles published in Pilote , Tintin , and GEO magazines as well as two books – Olivier chez les cow-boys ( Olivier with
62964-525: The more substantial ones. But while these languages are culturally recognized as regional languages, they are not official national languages, contrary to Belgium in regard to German, with similar consequences as in Belgium for BDs and their artists. Native BDs are rarely, if at all, released in these languages by the main BD publishers, whereas artists stemming from these regions, invariably create their BDs in French – like their German-Belgian counterparts forced to do so in order to gain commercial access to
63282-428: The most visible manifestation of Giraud's stay on Tahiti, aside from the artbooks "La memoire du futur" and "Venise celeste". Concurrently collaborating on "La nuit de l'étoile" was young artist Marc Bati , also residing at the commune at the time, and for whom Giraud afterwards wrote the comic series Altor ( The Magic Crystal ), while in the US. It was under the influence of Appel-Guéry's teachings that Giraud conceived
63600-434: The museum grounds, the futuristic building finished at the end of the 1980s housing the museum and CNBDI administrations, cinema, conference rooms, library and the other facilities for comics studies , was rechristened "Le Vaisseau Mœbius" (English: "The Vessel Mœbius"), in honor of the in that year deceased BD artist. When Lang had presented his plans, he was faced with opposition from some politicians who had rather seen such
63918-463: The mysterious disappearance of a cargo vessel, the Lady Polaris . The narrative comprises various documents related to the lost ship: comic strips, log books, even an investigative journalism account by a fictionalised Mézières and Christin. The action takes place against the backdrop of many of the great seaports of Europe. Mézières undertook considerable research in putting together this book, visiting
64236-402: The name Jean Giraud did not cause any of the present pencillers, colorists or storyboard artists to even bat an eye. Yet, whenever I introduced myself as "Mœbius", all of them jumped up to shake my hand. It was incredible! 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
64554-410: The nation at the services, and who was incidentally also the nephew of former President of France François Mitterrand , who had personally awarded Giraud with his first civilian knighthood in 1985, thereby becoming one of the first BD artists to be bestowed the honor. Giraud's death was a considerable media event in France, but ample attention was also given to his demise in press releases all around
64872-455: The native comics (aided by the fact that Belgium had not seen the massive influx of American comics in the same measure France had, as Belgium had been predominantly liberated by British and Canadian forces, whose soldiers did not bring along their comics in the same volume the Americans did), whereas the majority of Belgian comics artists were either Catholics themselves (or at least sympathetic to
65190-639: 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). Franco-Belgian comics Bandes dessinées (singular bande dessinée ; literally 'drawn strips'), abbreviated BDs and also referred to as Franco-Belgian comics ( BD franco-belge ), are comics that are usually originally in French and created for readership in France and Belgium . These countries have
65508-527: The next two to three decades in France, propagated as such by France's educators. In 1920, the Abbot of Averbode in Belgium started publishing Zonneland , a magazine consisting largely of text with few illustrations, which started printing comics more often in the following years. Even though Les Pieds Nickelés , Bécassine and Zig et Puce managed to survive the war for a little while longer, modernized in all three cases and all of them continued by artists (the most notable one being Belgian Greg for
65826-497: 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 subsequently raised by mainly his grandparents, who were living 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). The rupture between mother and father created
66144-470: The panels rather than the speech balloons commonly used today. These were humorous short works rarely longer than a single page. In the Francophonie , artists such as Gustave Doré , Nadar , Christophe and Caran d'Ache began to be involved with the medium. In the early decades of the 20th century, comics were not stand-alone publications, but were published in newspapers and weekly or monthly magazines as episodes or gags. Aside from these magazines,
66462-480: The parent publisher definitively, leaving for greener pastures elsewhere, and in the process taking all of Charlier's other co-creations with them. It would be nearly fifteen years before the Blueberry series (and the others) returned to Dargaud after Charlier died. (For further particulars, including the royalties conflict, see: Blueberry publication history .) After the first album, "Mississippi River", first serialized in Métal Hurlant and for two decades remaining
66780-435: The patronage of Minister of Culture Jack Lang , who had formulated his long-term Quinze mesures nouvelles en faveur de la Bande dessinée ( 15 new measures in favor of the BD ) ministry policy plan in 1982, which was updated and reaffirmed by a latter-day successor of Lang in 1997. It was consequently in the 1980s–1990s era that the medium achieved its formal status in France's Classification des arts ( Classifications of
67098-467: The people who worked there were Bob de Moor , Jacques Martin and Roger Leloup , all of whom exhibit the easily recognizable Belgian ligne claire (clean line style), often opposed to the " Marcinelle school "-style (named for the seat of Spirou publisher Dupuis), mostly proposed by authors from Spirou magazine such as Franquin, Peyo and Morris. In 1946, Hergé also founded the weekly Tintin magazine, which quickly gained enormous popularity, like
67416-506: The piano and electric guitar, Giraud was, unlike his second son Raphaël, regrettably not a creative musician himself by his own admission, but did have a lifelong fascination with jazz ), 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
67734-405: The poor paper quality, relatively low page count and lower circulation numbers of the native magazines of that era), something the higher quality American ones did not suffer from, they receiving preferential treatment under the Marshall Plan . The first targeted American comic for example, Tarzan , enjoyed a weekly circulation of 300,000 copies, twice the one Coeurs Vaillants had and dwarfing
68052-415: The ports of Liverpool , Copenhagen , Antwerp , Rotterdam , Hamburg , Lübeck , Bordeaux , Bilbao and Genoa . Another collaboration with Christin was Canal Choc , a series of four albums about a television news team investigating strange phenomena. Mézières did not draw these albums but supervised a team of artists including Philippe Aymond and Hugues Labiano. In 2001, Mézières was approached by
68370-449: The process heavily influencing its own native Quebec comics scene. This is in stark contrast to the English-speaking part of the country, which is culturally American comics oriented. While the originally in Dutch written Flemish Belgian comic books, or rather comic/BD albums (see: below ) are influenced by Francophone BDs, especially in the early years, they evolved into a distinctly different style, both in art and in spirit, which
68688-495: The production and returned to France. Filming was eventually scheduled to begin in April 1986 in Kyiv and Mézières re-joined the production, creating storyboards for some scenes. However, at this time the Chernobyl disaster occurred only 100 km from Kyiv and production was again halted. The film was eventually finished in 1989, but Mézières' concepts were barely used. Again, many of Mézières' designs were later published in Les Extras de Mézières . In December 1991, Mézières
69006-404: The publication of the 54-page "Les yeux du chat" ("Eyes of the Cat"). The dark, disturbing and surreal tale dealt with a blind boy in a non-descript empty cityscape, who has his pet eagle scout for eyes, which it finds by taking these from a street cat and offering them to his awaiting companion who, while grateful, expresses his preference for the eyes of a child. The story premise originated from
69324-521: The publisher launched (À Suivre) , which printed BD creations by Ted Benoît , Jacques Tardi , Hugo Pratt , François Schuiten , Paul Teng and many others from French, Italian and/or Dutch origins, but relatively few from Belgian artist as there were not that many active in the adult field at that time, with Schuiten, Didier Comès – as already stated, one of the very few BD artists of German-Belgian descent, alongside Hermann Huppen – and Jean-Claude Servais [ fr ] being three of
69642-409: The publisher released as such, was the 1980–1985 Moebius œuvres complètes six-volume collection of which two, volumes 4, "La Complainte de l'Homme Programme" and 5, "Le Désintégré Réintégré" (the two of them in essence comprising an expanded version of the 1980 original), were Mœbius art books. It also concluded a phase in which Giraud was preoccupied in a "characteristic period in his life" in which he
69960-553: 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 by 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;
70278-410: The relatively few European comics to have seen a major, successful, Hollywood movie adaptation as late as 2011, nearly thirty years after the death of its creator. A further step towards modern comic books happened in 1934 when Hungarian Paul Winkler , who had previously been distributing comics to the monthly magazines via his Opera Mundi bureau, made a deal with King Features Syndicate to create
70596-507: The remainder of his life, creating close to three dozen series, several of them becoming classics of the Franco-Belgian bande dessinée . Spirou magazine became the agency's first and foremost client, and the first post-war decade saw the infusion into the magazine with many new series from young, predominantly Belgian talents like Eddy Paape , Victor Hubinon , Mitacq , Albert Weinberg [ fr ] , instituting an era in which Jijé's career truly took off with his best-known creation,
70914-427: The revolt in the offices of Pilote , artists worked in a studio system, namely a tenured exclusive working relationship at the magazine or publisher, with artists having little to no control over both commercial and creative aspects of their creations – except for a few artists who also held editorial offices at publishing houses such as Goscinny, Charlier and Greg, the former of which incidentally, having also been
71232-431: 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
71550-405: 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 Jean-Jacques Launier [ fr ] '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
71868-827: The same year. Mézières died on 23 January 2022, at the age of 83. Mézières' arrival on the French comics scene with Valérian was contemporaneous with the debuts of other notable French science-fiction strips including Luc Orient by Greg and Eddy Paape and Lone Sloane by Philippe Druillet . The success of these strips eventually led to the creation of Métal Hurlant , the highly influential French comics magazine dedicated to science fiction. Mézières' influence has been noticed in such strips as Dani Futuro [ es ; de ; it ] (by Víctor Mora and Carlos Giménez ) and Gigantik (by Mora and José Maria Cardona). His visual style also influenced some American comics artists, notably Walt Simonson and Gil Kane . On occasion this went beyond mere influence – following
72186-422: 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
72504-412: The scrutiny of the Commission de Surveillance prior to 1968, as editor François Cavanna of the satirical magazine Hara-Kiri (launched in 1960) had experienced several times to his detriment, having had to reinvent his magazine on several occasions. Aside from the creative aspects, the 1960s brought in effect another kind of freedom for French BD artists as well - commercial and financial freedom. Until
72822-401: The second one of the great Franco-Belgian comic classics, Lucky Luke , which made it first appearance in the Almanach appendix issue of 7 December 1946. Franquin was passed the comic Spirou et Fantasio by his mentor Jijé, who himself had taken over the series from original creator Rob-Vel in the war years, and it was Franquin who provided the series with its popularity, before he embarked for
73140-411: The sequel to The Airtight Garage , "L'Homme du Ciguri" in 1995. Together with Claudine he founded Stardom in 1990, his first true family operated business without any other third-party participation according to Giraud, 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
73458-510: 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". Stunned by the sudden death of his longtime co-worker though, he could not bring himself to work on the art for Blueberry afterwards for nearly five years before he embarked on Blueberry again as artist. Giraud stated that
73776-467: The series had lost its "father", and that the "mother needed time to mourn". 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 Michel Rouge [ fr ] ), 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
74094-419: The series he was working on at the time), together with friend and former editor at Les Humanoïdes Associés, Jean Annestay [ fr ] , for the express purpose to release his work in a more artful manner, such as limited edition art prints, art books ("La memoire du futur" was first released under the Gentiane imprint, and reprinted under that of Aedena) and art portfolios. Both men had already released
74412-424: The series in question, Bourgeon depicted an historical reality devoid of any so-called "heroes", only featuring common people who were as often victimized as they were heroic, living in a world which was brutally hard while living a live which was therefore all too often very short for the common man, being habitually subjugated to the will of the powerful without any recourse whatsoever to objective justice, especially
74730-466: The seventies, until the original Métal Hurlant folded in the early eighties, living on only in the American edition, which soon had an independent development from its French-language parent. Nonetheless, it were these publications and their artists which are generally credited with the revolutionizing and emancipation of the Franco-Belgian BD world. As indicated, most of these early adult magazines were established by former Pilote BD artists, who had left
75048-487: The shared language, Flemish BDs do not do that well in the Netherlands and vice versa, save for some notable exceptions, such as the Willy Vandersteen creation Suske en Wiske ( Spike and Suzy ) which is popular across the border. Concurrently, the socio-cultural idiosyncrasies contained within many Flemish BDs also means that these comics have seen far less translations into other languages than their French-language counterparts have due to their more universal appeal, and
75366-433: The side of caution for the next decade. It is in this light that some of the other early French contemporary greats, such as Martin, Graton, Uderzo and his writing partner Goscinny opted to start out their careers for Belgian comic publications, neither wanting to submit themselves to the scrutiny of the Commission de Surveillance directly, nor wanting to work for either the Catholic or communist magazines for personal reasons.
75684-435: The situation in Belgium was nowhere near as restrictive as it was in France. Catholics, who were the dominant factor in politics in the country as well at the time, did not have to contend with the negligible influence of the communists, contrary to their French counterparts. There was actually no need perceived for regulating measures in Belgium as American productions, contrary to France, were already supplanted in popularity by
76002-410: The small Belgian animation studio Compagnie Belge d'Animation – CBA), Willy Vandersteen , and the Frenchmen Jacques Martin and Albert Uderzo , who worked for Bravo . A lot of the publishers and artists who had managed to continue working during the occupation were accused of being collaborators and were imprisoned after the liberation by the reinstated national authorities on the insistence of
76320-433: The small city of Pau at the foothills of the Pyrenees . It was while he was residing in Pau that Giraud started to take an interest in the teachings of Jean-Paul Appel-Guéry, becoming an active member of his group and partaking in their gatherings. From 1985 to 2001 he also created his six-volume fantasy series Le Monde d'Edena , which has appeared in English as The Aedena Cycle . The stories were strongly influenced by
76638-547: The start of the industry career of the French-Belgian Jean-Michel Charlier , in the process becoming one of its most towering figures. That year and a lawyer by trade, Charlier joined the newly formed comic syndication agency World Press [ fr ] of Georges Troisfontaines , Belgium's answer to King Features Syndicate. Originally hired as an editorial draughtsman, Troisfontaines recognized Charlier's talent for writing and persuaded him to switch from drawing to scripting comics, something Charlier did with great success for
76956-399: The starting point of the modern Franco-Belgian comic, besides the art style and format—albums were usually published as a collected book after a story or a convenient number of short stories had finished their run in serialized magazine (pre-)publication, usually with a one to two year lag. Since the inception of the format, it has been common for these albums to contain either 46 (for decades
77274-402: 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
77592-518: The story too short for a regular, traditional comic, it was Giraud who suggested the story to be told on the format he had already introduced in "Le bandard fou", to wit, as single panel pages. On recommendation of Jodorowsky, he refined the format by relating the eagle's quest on the right-hand pages, while depicting the awaiting boy in smaller single panel left-hand pages from a contra point-of-view. Giraud furthermore greatly increased his already high level of detail by making extensive use of zipatone for
77910-416: The street of the Comic Center and dedicated to the work of the namesake Flemish BD creator, and, unsurprisingly, the especially built Musée Hergé (est. 2009) located in Louvain-la-Neuve , its interiors designed by Dutch BD artist Joost Swarte , who had worked in the Hergé tradition. In France, Minister Jack Lang – who hit upon the idea after he had visited the permanent bande dessinée exhibition in
78228-409: The strip to Pilote' s editor, Rene Goscinny , who agreed to publish it (issue 335, 24 March 1966). This was followed by another collaboration titled Comment réussir en affaires en se donnant un mal fou ( How to succeed in business by almost killing oneself through hard work ) which was also published in Pilote (issue 351, 14 July 1966). By this stage Mézières visa was almost expired and so he used
78546-431: The style and flow of those comics, they improved their knowledge of how to make efficient comics. Soon even those homemade versions of American comics had to stop, and the authors had to create their own heroes and stories, giving the new talents a chance to be published. Many of the most famous artists of the Franco-Belgian comics started in this period, including the Belgians André Franquin , Peyo (who started together at
78864-413: The style being very naïve and simple, even childish, compared to the later stories. The early Tintin stories often featured racist and political stereotypes , which caused controversies after the war, and which Hergé later regretted. After Tintin 's early massive success, the magazine decided to release the stories in hardcover book format as well, directly after they had run their respective courses in
79182-433: The subsequent three stories until 1934 when the magazine, as such not particularly well-suited as book publisher, turned album publication over to Belgian specialized book publisher Casterman , who has been the Tintin album publisher ever since. The criticisms regarding the early stories notwithstanding and even though the format still had a long way to go, Tintin is widely considered the starting point and archetype of
79500-458: The subtitle " Un aventure d'Art Howell ". For Fleurus, Giraud also illustrated his first three books. Already in this period, his style was heavily influenced by his later mentor, Belgian comic artist Joseph "Jijé" Gillain , who at that time was the major source of inspiration for an entire generation of young, aspiring French comic artists, including Giraud's friend Mézières, interested in doing realistically drawn comics. How major Jijé's influence
79818-462: The summer 1985 San Diego ComicCon , as translators and editors-in-chief for Starwatcher, also becoming shareholders in the company. Already veterans of the US publishing world ( and Mœbius fans), it was the Lofficier couple that managed to convince editor-in-chief Archie Goodwin of Marvel Comics to publish most of Moebius' hitherto produced work on a wider scale in the US—in contrast with the Heavy Metal niche market releases by HM Communications in
80136-480: The talents and skills of young aspiring artists like Belgians Mitacq, Arthur Piroton [ fr ] , Hermann, Dino Attanasio and the Frenchman Jean Graton among others, several of whom switching over to industry competitor Lombard at a later point in their careers, most notably Hermann), Buck Danny (with Hubinon), La Patrouille des Castors (with Mitacq after his apprenticeship on L'oncle Paul ) and Jean Valhardi (with Paape and Jijé). Aside from being
80454-431: The teachings of Jean-Paul Appel-Guéry, and Guy-Claude Burger 's instinctotherapy. In effect, Giraud and his family did join Appel-Guéry's commune on Tahiti in 1983, until late 1984, when the family moved to the United States, where Giraud set up shop first in Santa Monica, and subsequently in Venice and Woodland Hills, California. Giraud's one-shot comic book "La nuit de l'étoile" was co-written by Appel-Guéry, and has been
80772-433: The theater there as often as he was able to, developed a passion for the genre, as did so many other European boys his age in those times. At age 9–10, Giraud started to draw Western comics while enrolled by his single mother as a stop-gap measure in the Saint-Nicolas boarding school in Issy-les-Moulineaux for two years (and where he became acquainted with Belgian comic magazines such as Spirou and Tintin ), much to
81090-450: The time "funny, uncomplicated, friendly, a nice boy next-door", but on the other hand, "mysterious, dark, intellectual", already recognizing that he had all the makings of a "visionary", long before others did. Married in 1967, after Giraud had become the recognized Blueberry artist, the couple had two children, Hélène (b:1970) and Julien (b:1972). Daughter Hélène in particular has inherited her father's graphics talents and has carved out
81408-435: The time of the demise of the animation studio not considered by Dupuis because of his young age. For Spirou Peyo continued with the series Johan et Pirlouit , which he had already started in 1947 for the Belgian newspapers La Dernière Heure and Le Soir . It was this series that in 1957 spawned another of the great Franco-Belgian comic classics, Les Schtroumpfs ( The Smurfs ). With both magazines firmly in place, it
81726-512: The time with a graphics background – served out his military obligations being set to work as illustrator on the army magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises , besides being assigned to logistic duties. Algeria was Giraud's second acquaintance with other, more exotic cultures, and like he did in Mexico, he soaked in the experience, which made another indelible impression on the young man born as a suburban city boy, leaving its traces in his later comics, especially those created as "Mœbius". At 18, Giraud
82044-468: The time, but one reviewer put it in perspective when stating, "Peut-être Porno, mais Graphique!", which loosely translates as "Porn maybe, but Graphic Art for sure!". In the editorial of the 1990 American edition , Giraud has conceded that he was envious of what his former Pilote colleagues had achieved with L'Écho des savanes in regard to creating a free, creative environment for their artists, he had already enjoyed so much back at Hara-Kiri , and that it
82362-603: The time. Instead they sought to create an anti-hero , "a banal character [without] any extraordinary means of action". The first Valérian adventure, Les Mauvais Rêves ( Bad Dreams ) appeared in Pilote in 1967, with the first installment of the story published on 9 November in issue 420, and ran for fifteen issues, concluding in issue 434 on 15 February 1968. Bad Dreams shares an artistic style similar to that of Mézières and Christin's earlier collaborations for Pilote , with influences from Franquin, Morris and Mad magazine artist Jack Davis . Also introduced in this story
82680-466: The town's art museum in 1982, incidentally inspiring his long-term fifteen points policy plan for the medium that year, which included the establishment of a national BD museum – announced in 1984 the advent of a major national bande dessinée museum as part of President Mitterrand's grand scheme of providing the nation with major public works of a cultural nature (in France coined as Grandes Operations d'Architecture et d'Urbanisme ), to be housed in
82998-412: The two Korean War volumes of the popular aviation comic series Buck Danny , created by Belgians Charlier (who as spokesperson for World Press/ Spirou was actually summoned to appear in person for a board of inquiry at the French Ministry of Information to account for himself) and Hubinon, which were prohibited in 1954 as article 2 expressly forbade any mentioning of an actual, current armed conflict in
83316-414: The two historic eras still lingering in anyone's subconscious because of imagery imbued upon them by 1940s–1960s Hollywood movie productions or Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées as published in Coeurs Vaillants , Tintin or Spirou in the same era for that matter. Renowned for his meticulous research into the subject matter of the BD series he was creating, not seldom taking as long as it took him to create
83634-504: The two men were living in different worlds, he noted that Charlier was not pleased with Giraud taking on an assistant, afraid that it might have been a prelude to his leaving the series in order to pursue his "experimentations" as Mœbius further. While Charlier was willing to overlook Giraud's "philandering" in his case only, he was otherwise of the firm conviction that artists, especially his own, should totally and wholeheartedly devote themselves to their craft, as Charlier had always considered
83952-486: The very first such art book in the Humanoïdes days, and the format then conceived – to wit, a large 30x30cm book format at first, with art organized around themes, introduced by philosophical poetry by Mœbius – was adhered to for later such releases, including "La memoire du futur". There were thousands of professionals who knew my work. That has always amazed me every time I entered some graphics, or animation studio, at Marvel or even at George Lucas '. Mentioning
84270-481: The vistas that had enthralled him so much when watching Westerns on the silver screen only a few years earlier, left an everlasting, " quelque chose qui m'a littéralement craqué l'âme " ("something which literally cracked open my soul"), enduring impression on him, easily recognizable in almost all of his later seminal works. After his return to France, he started to work as a full-time tenured artist for Catholic publisher Fleurus presse [ fr ] , to whom he
84588-524: The wake of the events of 1968, their continued legal existence in the fringes does constitute the proverbial " Sword of Damocles " for the French BD world, despite artists, publishers, politicians and academics having questioned the relevance of both manifestations in a modern world in a public debate during a 1999 national conference organized on the subject by the Centre national de la bande dessinée et de l'image [ fr ] (CNBDI), France's largest and most important BD organization. Belgium, where
84906-504: The war: Le Petit Vingtième had disappeared, Le Journal de Mickey only returned in 1952. In the second half of the 1940s many new magazines appeared, although in most cases they only survived for a few weeks or months. The situation stabilized around 1950 with Spirou and the new Tintin magazine (with the team focused around Hergé) as the most influential and successful magazines for the next decade. Yet, 1944 (both France and Belgium were liberated before war's end) had already seen
85224-399: The weekly Spirou appearing in a Dutch version under the name Kuifje for the Flemish and Dutch markets. Notable Belgian comic artists who at a later point in time achieved fame while working for Tintin magazine included among others William Vance , the aforementioned Greg, Tibet and Hermann Huppen . Tintin magazine publisher Les Éditions du Lombard (as of 1989 simply: Le Lombard )
85542-435: 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
85860-410: The women. Bourgeon however, made his harsh message to his readership palatable by his relatively soft art style and his optimistic view regarding human resilience. No such respite was afforded the reader however with Hermann's 11th-century epos Les Tours de Bois-Maury (1984–1994, The Towers of Bois-Maury ), whose original ten-volume series was serialized in Vécu in the same era Bourgeon's Passagers
86178-455: The world in even as faraway places like Indonesia ( Jakarta Globe , 11 March 2012), a country not particularly known for a thriving comic culture. Yet, and despite the nation having embraced the bande dessinée , it should also be noted that both the law of 1949 and its oversight committee are as of 2017 still in existence, their legitimacy remaining as intact as it was in 1949. And while their impact and influence have significantly diminished in
86496-407: The writings of Castaneda, Charlier, being of a previous generation, conservative in nature and wary of science fiction in general, never understood what his younger colleague tried to achieve as "Mœbius". Nonetheless, he never tried to hinder Giraud in the least, as he understood that an artist of Giraud's caliber needed a "mental shower" from time to time. Furthermore, Charlier was very appreciative of
86814-404: 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
87132-422: The youth market was partly written by the French Communist Party , a major political force in France directly after the war (because of their highly successful and effective resistance in the war years ), to actually exclude most of the American publications. The law, called " Loi du 16 juillet 1949 sur les publications destinées à la jeunesse [ fr ] " ("Law of July 16th 1949 on Publications Aimed at
87450-408: Was Métal hurlant in particular that revolutionized the world of Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées , whereas its American cousin left an indelible impression on a generation of not only American comic artists, but on film makers as well, as evidenced below . Starting its publication in the first issue of Métal hurlant , "Arzach" is a wordless 1974–1975 comic, executed directly in color and created as
87768-506: Was "very somber and pessimistic about my life", resulting in several of his "Mœbius" stories of that period ending in death and destruction. These included the poetic "Ballade", in which Giraud killed off the two protagonists, something he came to regret a decade later in this particular case. In the magazine's issue 58 of 1980 Giraud started his famous L'Incal series in his third collaboration with Jodorowsky. However, by this time Giraud felt that his break-out success as "Mœbius" had come at
88086-505: Was Laureline, a peasant girl from the Middle Ages . Originally intended to appear in only one story, the popular reaction to the character meant that she was retained for subsequent stories and she has since become elevated to the main star of the series. Bad Dreams was followed by La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes ( The City of Moving Waters ) and its sequel Terre en Flammes ( Earth in Flames ) in 1968 and 1969 respectively. These two stories show some evolution in Mézières' art but also retain
88404-479: Was a French bandes dessinées artist and illustrator. Born in Paris and raised in nearby Saint-Mandé , he was introduced to drawing by his elder brother and influenced by comics artists such as Hergé , Andre Franquin and Morris and later by Jijé and Jack Davis . Educated at the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art , he worked upon graduation as an illustrator for books and magazines as well as in advertising. A lifelong interest in
88722-426: Was a regular illustrator for the Heures Locales column. Mézières was also involved at one point in giving hands-on courses on the production of comic strips at the University of Paris, Vincennes . Graduates of his course include André Juillard and Régis Loisel . He collaborated with Pierre Christin on a number of non- Valérian projects. The first of these was Lady Polaris in 1987, an illustrated novel about
89040-466: Was a shared marital possession of the original Giraud couple and partly because the publication efforts of his work in the United States had run its course. Also in 1988, Giraud sold his shares in Les Humanoïdes Associés to Fabrice Giger , thereby severing his formal ownership ties with that publishing house as well, though it remained the regular publisher of his Mœbius work from the Métal hurlant era, including L'Incal and some other later titles such as
89358-404: 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
89676-539: Was also in use for its book, or album, publications (see below ). Bandes dessinées were described as the "ninth art" in Francophone scholarship on the medium ( le neuvième art ). The "ninth art" designation stems from a 1964 article by Claude Beylie [ fr ] in the magazine Lettres et Médecins , and was subsequently popularized in an article series about the history of comics, which appeared in weekly installments in Spirou magazine from 1964 to 1967. Written by Belgian Morris with editorial input from
89994-555: Was also indicative of France rapidly becoming the preeminent force in the (continental) European BD world, eventually usurping the position the Belgians held until then. L'Écho des Savanes (from new publisher Éditions du Fromage [ fr ] , founded by Pilote defectors Nikita Mandryka, Claire Bretécher and Marcel Gotlib), with Gotlib's pornography watching deities and Bretécher's Les Frustrés ("The Frustrated Ones"), and Le Canard Sauvage ("The Wild Duck/ Mag"), an art-zine featuring music reviews and BDs, were among
90312-454: Was an inspiration for the endeavor, Giraud embarked upon next. Later that year, after Dune was permanently canceled with him definitively returning to France, Giraud became one of the founding members of the comics art group and publishing house " Les Humanoïdes Associés ", together with fellow comic artists Jean-Pierre Dionnet , Philippe Druillet (likewise Pilote colleagues) and (outsider) financial director Bernard Farkas. In imitation of
90630-409: Was approached by director Luc Besson, a lifelong fan of Valérian , who wanted Mézières to work on designs for a science fiction film called Zaltman Bléros . Along with his old friend Jean Giraud, who had also been approached by Besson, he began work producing concepts of buildings and vehicles for the futuristic New York depicted in the script. Interested by the flying taxi cabs that appeared in some of
90948-478: Was attempting to adapt René Barjavel 's novel La Nuit des temps ( The Ice People ). Due to difficulties experienced by the film's Iranian producer as a result of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the film was never made. Some of Mézières' production art was published in Les Extras de Mézières . In October 1985, Mézières was contacted by the German director Peter Fleischmann who proposed to adapt Russians Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 's 1964 novel Hard to Be
91266-441: Was brainstorming with the founding editors of the magazine (founded by former Pilote friends and co-artists in the wake of the revolt at the publisher, when they decided to strike out on their own), that Giraud came up with his first major Mœbius work, "Le bandard fou" ("The Horny Goof"). Released directly as album (a first for Mœbius comics) in black & white by the magazine's publisher, the humorous and satirical story dealt with
91584-408: 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
91902-577: Was drawing his own humorous, Morris - inspired , Western comic two-page shorts, Frank et Jeremie , for the magazine Far West , his first freelance commercial sales. Magazine editor Marijac thought young 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". Tenured at publisher Fleurus from 1956 to 1958 after his first sales, Giraud did so, but concurrently continued to steadfastly create realistically drawn Western comics (alongside several others of
92220-494: Was especially founded by Raymond Leblanc for the magazine's launch in conjuncture with Hergé as the latter could not find a publisher due to the fact that he was at that time still under investigation for alleged collaboration. Remarkably, album publications of the creations from the early group of artists centered around Hergé was, then and now, outsourced to longstanding Tintin book publisher Casterman, while Lombard itself only started album publications for those artist who joined
92538-428: Was exemplified by his regularly taking extended leaves of absence from it. That Blueberry has always remained his primary source of income, allowing him to fully indulge in his artistic endeavors as Mœbius, was admitted as such by Giraud as early as 1979: "If an album of Moebius is released, about 10,000 people are interested. A Blueberry album sells at least 100,000 copies [in France]," and as late as 2005, " Blueberry
92856-480: Was followed, at the age of sixteen, by La Grande Poursuite , a Western influenced by Tintin , Lucky Luke and Roy Rogers which he sent to Hergé in the hope of getting published. Hergé sent a reply encouraging him to keep up his efforts. In 1953, the fifteen years old Mézières enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art for four years. His class there included two other aspiring artists who would go on to find success in
93174-475: 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
93492-421: Was forced out, his successor Pihan (as Jean Vaillant) took up the publishing, moving the magazine in a more humorous direction. Likewise, Hergé was another artist who also found himself on the receiving end of similar accusations of the former Belgian resistance. He managed to clear his name and went on to create Studio Hergé in 1950, where he acted as a sort of mentor for the assistants that it attracted. Among
93810-405: Was given (because Fred's script came with all the strip panels already blocked out), Mézières found this a difficult assignment. By this time Pierre Christin was dividing his time between Paris and Bordeaux , where he was working on founding the school of journalism at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie (IUT). Meeting up with Mézières one day, Christin suggested that they work on creating
94128-410: 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
94446-432: Was however foreseen by Jijé and Giraud. Shirking off the accusations, Jijé encouraged his former pupil to stay the course instead, thereby propping up his self-confidence. The first time Jijé had to fill in for Giraud, was during the production of the second story, "Thunder in the West" (1964), when the still inexperienced Giraud, buckling under the stress of having to produce a strictly scheduled magazine serial, suffered from
94764-405: Was in Circus ; Not only did Hermann's stark and uncompromising art style served to reinforce the grim atmosphere of his medieval settings, any and all redeeming optimistic commentary on human nature was also lacking in his narrative, quite the contrary actually, making his Middle Ages truly the Dark Ages where the vast majority of humanity was living short, violent lives in abject squalor, with not
95082-400: Was introduced by Mézières, who had shortly before found employment at the publisher. In 1959–1960, he was slated for military service in, firstly the French occupation zone of Germany, and subsequently Algeria , in the throes of the vicious Algerian War at the time. Fortunately for him, however, he somehow managed to escape frontline duty as he – being the only service man available at
95400-442: Was known in the English-speaking world as Heavy Metal , and started its release in April 1977, actually introducing Giraud's work to North-American readership. Mœbius' famous serial " The Airtight Garage " and his groundbreaking " Arzach " both began in Métal hurlant . Unlike Hara-Kiri and L'Écho des savanes though, whose appeal has always remained somewhat limited to the socially engaged satire and underground comic scenes, it
95718-399: Was much more experimental than his previous Western work. While the editorial revolt at Dargaud had effectively become the starting point of the emancipation of the French comic world, Giraud admitted that it also had caused a severe breach in his hitherto warm relationship with the conservative Goscinny, which never fully mended. Giraud left the series and publisher in 1974, partly because he
96036-484: Was not just American productions which were prohibited under the law, several Belgian French-language comic creations of the era also fell victim to the scrutiny of the oversight committee charged with upholding the law for varying reasons, as stipulated in its rather sweeping article 2 (presently article 3), which allowed for almost at will prohibition of comics for reasons that suited the policies of any French government in power at any given time. A famous example concerned
96354-589: Was not quite able to work in such influences in his mainstream Blueberry comic. Yet, unbeknownst to writer Charlier, he did already sneak in some Castaneda elements in "Nez Cassé". Castaneda's influence reasserted itself in full in Giraud's later life, having worked in elements more openly after Charlier's death in his 1999 Blueberry outing "Geronimo l'Apache", and was to become a major element for his Blueberry 1900 -project, which however, had refused to come to fruition for extraneous reasons. Even though Giraud had vainly tried to introduce his Blueberry co-worker to
96672-443: Was on recommendation of the Commission persecuted for his likewise American (and Italian) inspired comic series Big Bill le Casseur and P’tit Gars , having to appear in court no less than eight times in the period 1950 - 1954, actually winning most of his cases in the lower courts. While both he and his creations are likewise forgotten, Mouchot became the only French comics artist to be legally persecuted, and ultimately convicted by
96990-548: Was on these young artists, was amply demonstrated by the Fleurus publications these youngsters submitted their work to, as their work strongly resembled each other. For example, two of the books Giraud illustrated for Fleurus, were co-illustrated with Guy Mouminoux , another name of some future renown in the Franco-Belgian comic world, and Giraud's work can only be identified, because he signed his work, whereas Mouminoux did not sign his. While not ample, Giraud's earnings at Fleurus were just enough to allow him – disenchanted as he
97308-419: Was published in the magazine he co-founded, Métal Hurlant , which started its run in December 1974 and revolutionized the Franco-Belgian comic world in the process. It was Jodorowsky who introduced Giraud to the writings of Carlos Castaneda , who had written a series of books that describe his training in shamanism , particularly with a group whose lineage descended from the Toltecs . The books, narrated in
97626-441: 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
97944-411: Was reproduced in this, and the follow-up art book Fusions , 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
98262-450: Was skipped because of its short length – thirty pages – relative to the usual album length of around 46 pages. Every Valérian story up to and including The Rage of Hypsis in 1985 would debut in serial form in Pilote before being published as an album. L'Empire des Mille Planètes ( Empire of a Thousand Planets ) premiered in Pilote in 1969 and marked a further development for the Valérian series and for Mézières art. This story
98580-413: Was the high-status, high-profile «Mœbius transe forme» exposition the prestigious Parisian Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain art museum organized from 2 October 2010 – 13 March 2011. As of 2017, it stands out as one of the largest exhibitions ever dedicated to the work of an individual BD artist by an official, state-sanctioned art museum – art as in art with a capital "A" – alongside
98898-407: Was the series' first full-blown attempt at space opera and it set out for the first time the two main signature elements of Valérian : the use of science fiction as a political allegory and Mézières' meticulously detailed depictions of alien worlds. The follow-up story World Without Stars saw the final evolution of Mézières' art into the style that became prevalent in the Valerian stories of
99216-404: Was the success of Spirou and Tintin that initiated what many fans and scholars consider the golden age of the (Franco-)Belgian comic. As a result, the American comics didn't come back in as great a volume as before in both Belgium and France after the war, but in the case of France not for want of popularity, quite the contrary actually. In France, a 1949 law about publications intended for
99534-399: Was the success of these artists, that the work of pre-war artists Rob-Vel and Dineur, was eclipsed by that of the younger generation, causing them to slide into oblivion. In 1952, another future great working in the Marcinelle school tradition was added to Spirou , artist Pierre "Peyo" Culliford upon introduction by Franquin. Peyo was actually a former colleague of Franquin at CBA, but was at
99852-408: Was then one of the leading comic artists in Europe and known for his gracious tendency to voluntarily act as a mentor for young, aspiring comic artists, of whom Giraud was but one, going even as far as opening up his family home in Champrosay for days on end for these youngsters which, again, included Giraud. In this, Jijé resembled Belgian comic grandmaster Hergé, but unlike Jijé, Hergé only did so on
100170-401: Was then still the Belgian bande dessinée tradition, other native contemporaries were – in essence ranking among the first native French artists to provide the "Franco" element in what later would become the "Franco-Belgian comics" expression, with comic artist Marijac having been a trailblazer. Marijac actually started out for Coeurs Vaillants in the 1930s, but distanced himself from
100488-427: Was tired of the publication pressure he was under in order to produce the series, partly because of an emerging royalties conflict, but mostly because he wanted further explore and develop his "Mœbius" alter ego, in particular because Jodorowsky, who was impressed by the graphic qualities of Blueberry , had already invited him to Los Angeles to start production design on his Dune movie project, and which constituted
100806-408: Was to find work in an advertising agency in San Francisco but he ran foul of the Immigration Service who told him that his visa was good for working in the factory in Houston and nowhere else. He quickly left San Francisco in search of an authentic "Wild West" cowboy experience. Arriving in Salt Lake City , Utah with no money, he sought out Pierre Christin, who was living there while teaching at
101124-745: Was with the courses, prevalent atmosphere, and academic discipline – to quit his art academy education after only two years, though he came to somewhat regret the decision in later life. Shortly before he entered military service, Giraud visited his idol at his home for the first time with Mézières and Mallet, followed by a few visits on his own to see the master at work for himself. In 1961, returning from military service and his stint on 5/5 Forces Françaises , Giraud, not wanting to return to Fleurus, as he felt that he "had to do something else, if he ever wanted to evolve", became an apprentice of Jijé on his invitation, after he saw that Giraud had made artistic progress during his stay at 5/5 Forces Françaises . Jijé
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