Jean Henri Gaston “Moebius” Giraud
Genius
May 8, 1938 — March 10, 2012
How does one Moebius’s younger and newer fans go about writing an article on Moebius exactly?
His Works in comics and production design for science fiction films, of which he became a visual grandmaster, are vast and numerous. The art team that worked on Blade Runner took much of the inspiration for Blade Runner's city and architectural design from Moebius' illustrations, comics, and books. As did George Lucas in many of his Star Wars works.
Moebius primarily lived and worked in France, primarily in the subgenre of French Comics, but through his vast amount of detail-and-imagination oriented artwork, he attained an iconic status among the comics community, as one of the Grandmasters of Architectural design and detail, primarily acknowledged for the most part by fellow creators, authors, manga-ka, production designers, and authors in France, America, and Japan. While alive, he maintained open communication with such famous Japanese and iconically respected creators as Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro Otomo, both among many others of whom his work influenced…heavily. If it’s cinematic and hyperdetailed, chances are Moebius had a hand in its creative design influence in origin, considering he was one of the originators of the postmodern and contemporary detailing-&-perspective technique.
It’s not easy to quickly describe Moebius’s visual style, seeing as it encompasses so much and covers so much ground.
For the last decade or so, Moebius practically went off the map, in terms of PR. Hardly anyone was publishing new articles about him. Translated American editions and art books of his work have been notoriously expensive and hard to find online, let alone in a bookstore. I was well aware of Moebius prior to his death by at least 2 to 3 years, which makes the timing of his passing seem all the stranger to me.
Moebius was truly a God, Pioneer, and Revolutionary of both comics and animation. I still remember first reading about him being described that way by Scott McCloud when I read Understanding Comics in the year 2000 or so, completely unaware of how obsessed with his work as an artist I would become in my adult years. But he was humble, and people do not consider him one of the egotists or boasters, precisely because that is NOT what he is. With Moebius, it was always about the design, the architecture, the perspective, the vision, and the art…for starters.
Here’s to many more years and many more awakenings to getting lost in the imaginative and vivid worlds Moebius created. Under many different names. Moebius's literary imagination of Visionary Creativity in sequential art, animation, literature, and filmmaking (for both television and cinema worldwide) (i suspect) is destined to live on, for many decades, if not a lot longer, whether it's in Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, or any other world cultural megahub for that matter. When you're as good as Moebius was and is (and Moebius was that good) history will not forget the legend your vision attained.
