The influence of European comicbook artists on the world of fantasy and sci-fi is incalculable, yet few reigned more so than Jean Giraud, also better known as Mœbius.

It's a topic of great interest to me, but one we won't delve into too much right now. Nor will we dare to delve into Giraud’s extensive body of work; there are plenty of better places for that. Rather we'll focus in on single detail, amongst many, that is particularly salient to our mission; the origins of Star Wars.

It came about in a way that is tangentially related to Star Wars itself, when in the mid-70’s cult-filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky famously gathered his crew of ‘spirit warriors’ to create a mindblowing, all-singing, all-dancing spectacular adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune, as covered so splendidly in the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. Amongst his so-called spirit warriors, indeed one of the greatest, most inspired pre-production crews ever assembled for film, were a number of heavy-hitters in the world of science fiction. Amongst these were Chris Foss, H.R. Giger, Dan O’Bannon and Jean Giraud (who used the name Mœbius when he did science fiction), all of whom would also go on to work on Alien.

O'Bannon and Girad ended up working on a short comic together during pre-production on Dune, which despite its brevity, as with so much of what Mœbius touched, has become something of a cult classic. It was called The Long Tomorrow, and Giraud later relaid their collaboration in the introduction to the hardcover graphic story collection bearing that same name: