RIP - Jean Giraud aka Moebius

Sad to hear that the unique and talented French comic artist Moebius has passed away. As well as producing his own work, he had done some concept work for film projects such as Dune (the unmade Jodorowsky version), Alien, and Blade Runner (which itself was inspired by Moebius’ comic ’The Long Tomorrow’, which you can see at The Bronze Age of Blogs:

Back in 1976, Jean Giraud was working on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ill-fated production of Dune, supplying concepts and designs.

One of the people in charge of special effects for the movie was Dan O'Bannon, who wrote Alien, Blue Thunder & Return Of The Living Dead, but who fans of a certain age will always remember as whiny astronaut Pinback in his & John Carpenter’s sci-fi black comedy Dark Star.

Both men were sitting around Paris for months, with basically nothing to do, while the film shuddered to a slow halt around them, so O'Bannon started drawing comics.

One of the comic strips he drew was a futuristic detective story called The Long Tomorrow. Moebius loved it, and immediately drew his own version, which was eventually published in Heavy Metal.

A few years later, O'Bannon was working on Alien, and asked Moebius to come in and do some more design work. He met with director Ridley Scott, who later asked him to work on Blade Runner, but Giraud regrettably had to pass as he was already working on an animated feature called The Time Masters ( which I recommend if you ever get the chance to see it )

Worth checking out if you have a spare hour is the BBC4 documentary ‘In Search of Moebius’ - split into three parts and embedded below:



In Search of Moebius - Jean Giraud clip1/3 by foivosloxias



In Search of Moebius - Jean Giraud _clip2/3 by foivosloxias



In Search of Moebius - Jean Giraud_clip3/3 by foivosloxias

You can see a lot more of the late artist’s work at the Tumblr blog The Airtight Garage