Jean Giraud

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This article is about the French comic book artist. For the French mathematician, see Jean Giraud (mathematician).
Jean Giraud
Birth name Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
Born May 8, 1938 (age 68)
Nogent-sur-Marne, Paris
Nationality
French
Area(s) penciller, inker, writer
Pseudonym(s) Moebius, Gir
Notable works Blueberry
Arzach
John Difool
The Incal
Awards full list

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (born May 8, 1938) is a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius, and to a lesser extent Gir.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Blueberry is one of Moebius' most famous creations.
Blueberry is one of Moebius' most famous creations.

Jean Giraud was born in Nogent-sur-Marne, in the suburbs of Paris. At age 16, he began his only technical training at the Arts Appliqués.[1] At 18, he was drawing his own comic strip, "Frank et Jeremie" for the magazine Far West. In 1961, Giraud became an apprentice of Jijé, one of the leading comic artists in Europe of the time, and collaborated on an album of Jerry Spring.[1] In 1962 Giraud and writer Jean-Michel Charlier started the comic strip Fort Navajo for Pilote. It was a great hit and continued uninterrupted until 1974. The Lieutenant Blueberry character, created by Giraud and Charlier for Fort Navajo, quickly became its most popular character, and his adventures as told in the spin-off Western serial Blueberry, are possibly Giraud's best known work in his native France. Giraud's prestige in France — where comics tend to be held in higher artistic regard than in the United States — is enormous; France has even issued postage stamps to commemorate him. Under the names Giraud and Gir, he also wrote numerous comics for other comic artists like Auclair and Tardi.

A panel from Incal.
A panel from Incal.

The Moebius pseudonym, which Giraud came to use for his science fiction and fantasy work, was born in 1963.[1] In a satire magazine called Hara-Kiri, Moebius did 21 strips in 1963-64 and then disappeared for almost a decade. In 1975 Métal Hurlant (a magazine which he co-created) brought it back and in 1981 he started his famous L'Incal series in collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky. Moebius' famous serial The Airtight Garage and his groundbreaking Arzach also began in Métal Hurlant.

Moebius has contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science fiction films. In 1982 he collaborated with director René Laloux to create the science fiction feature-length animated movie Les Maîtres du temps (released in English as The Time Masters) based on a novel by Stefan Wul. In 1988 Moebius worked on the American comic character The Silver Surfer with Stan Lee for a special two-part limited series. Moebius' take on the character was unfavorably alluded to in the film Crimson Tide by Lt. Commander Ron Hunter (played by Denzel Washington) in deference to that of Silver Surfer co-creator Jack Kirby (in a scene written by an uncredited Quentin Tarantino). Moebius/Giraud is also known to be a friend of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. From December 2004 to March 2005, the two of them shared an exhibition at La Monnaie in Paris which showcased work by both artists.

Jean Giraud is drawing one episode of XIII titled La Version irlandaise on a script by Jean Van Hamme, to accompany the next volume by the regular team Van Hamme-William Vance, Le Dernier Round, scheduled for publication in November 2007.[2]

[edit] Major works

Cover for Silver Surfer: Parable.
Cover for Silver Surfer: Parable.
  • The Collected Fantasies of Jean Giraud (1987-1994):
  • Moebius 0 - The Horny Goof & Other Underground Stories (Dark Horse, 1990)
  • Moebius ½ - The Early Moebius & Other Humorous Stories (Graphitti Designs, 1991)
  • Moebius 1 - Upon A Star (Marvel/Epic, 1987)
  • Moebius 2 – Arzach & Other Fantasy Stories (Marvel/Epic, 1987)
  • Moebius 3 - The Airtight Garage (Marvel/Epic, 1987)
  • Moebius 4 - The Long Tomorrow & Other Stories (Marvel/Epic, 1987)
  • Moebius 5 - The Gardens of Aedena (Marvel/Epic, 1988)
  • Moebius 6 - Pharagonesia & Other Strange Stories (Marvel/Epic, 1988)
  • Moebius 7 - The Goddess (Marvel/Epic, 1990)
  • Moebius 8 - Mississippi River (Epic, 1991)
  • Moebius 9 - Stel (Marvel/Epic, 1994)

[edit] Film work

  • Alien (1979)
  • The Time Masters (1982)
  • Tron (1982)
  • Masters of the Universe (1987)
  • Willow (1988)
  • The Abyss (1989)
  • Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland
  • The Fifth Element (1997)
  • Mister Gir & Mike S. Blueberry (1999) - A documentary portrait by Canadian filmmaker Damian Pettigrew produced by the Centre National de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, France. Giraud does numerous sketches and watercolors of his most famous creation, Blueberry, travels to Saint Malo for the celebrated comic-book festival, visits his Paris editor Dargaud, and in the film's last sequence, does a spontaneous life-size portrait in real time of Geronimo on a huge sheet of glass using a felt-tipped pen.
  • Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (2002) Giraud conceived the poster for the documentary's 2003 North American release and appears in the bonus extras of the French version.

[edit] Video game work

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

[edit] Awards

[edit] Further reading

  • Erik Svane, Martin Surmann, Alain Ledoux, Martin Jurgeit, Gerhard Förster, Horst Berner: Blueberry und der europäische Western-Comic (2003, Zack-Dossier 1; Berlin: Mosaik, ISBN 3-932667-59-X)

[edit] References

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c Lambiek. Jean Giraud.
  2. ^ Libiot, Eric (January 4, 2007). Giraud s'aventure dans XIII. L'Express.(French)
  3. ^ immaginecentrostudi.org. 11° SALONE INTERNAZIONALE DEL COMICS, DEL FILM DI ANIMAZIONE E DELL'ILLUSTRAZIONE.(Italian)
  4. ^ immaginecentrostudi.org. 14° SALONE INTERNAZIONALE DEL COMICS, DEL FILM DI ANIMAZIONE E DELL'ILLUSTRAZIONE.(Italian)
  5. ^ noosfere.org. List of the winners of the Grand Prix de la SF Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire.(French)

[edit] External links

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