Jean Giraud

Jijé apprenticeship (1960–1961)

Shortly before he entered military service, Giraud had visited Jijé at his home for the first time with Mézières and Mallet, followed by a few visits on his own. When Giraud left military servies, he was uninterested in continuing work at Fleurus, and became an apprentice of Jijé on his invitation. Jijé was then known for his tendency to act as a mentor for young artists, going as far as welcoming them into his family home in Champrosay.

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. Jijé used Giraud as an inker on his Western series Jerry Spring, which Giraud had used as a model for his "Art Howell" character. Actually, Jijé had intended his promising pupil for 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 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 lost touch with his mentor, 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 a miracle, I was provided with one, a[n] [comic] artist no less!".

Hachette (1961–1962)

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 reference work. Spurred on by Jijé, who considered the opportunity a wonderful one for his pupil, Giraud accepted. He considered the assignment a daunting one, having to create in oil paints 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 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, for whom Giraud provided two-thirds of the illustrations in gouache, including the cover. In the Pilote era, Giraud provided art in gouache for two Western-themed LP covers, as well as the covers for the first seven volumes of 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.

Pilote (1963–1974)

In October 1963, Giraud and writer Jean-Michel Charlier started the comic strip Fort Navajo. for the Charlier-co-founded Pilote magazine, in issue 210. While the Fort Navajo series had originally been intended as an ensemble narrative, it quickly focused on having Blueberry, whose facial features were based on actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, as its central figure. At this time the similarity 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, when "Fort Navajo" started its run, Pilote received angry letters accusing Giraud of plagiarism. Jijé encouraged his former pupil to stay the course, propping up his self-confidence. Jijé had to pencil several pages for the series: first during the production of the second story, "Thunder in the West" (1964), on plates 28–36 and a year later, during the production of "Mission to Mexico (The Lost Rider)" on plates 17–38, when Giraud left to travel the United States and Mexico. While the art style of both artists had been nearly indistinguishable from each other in "Thunder in the West", after Giraud resumed work on plate 39 of "Mission to Mexico", a clearly noticeable style change was 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 early Blueberry comics used standard Western themes and imagery, specifically those of John Ford and Howard Hawk. Gradually Giraud developed a darker and grittier style inspired by the 1970 Westerns Soldier Blue and Little Big Man (for the "Iron Horse" story-arc), and 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. During the May 1968 social upheaval in France, Giraud and other key comics artists staged a protest, 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"), was more experimental than his previous Western work. While the editorial revolt 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 Dargaud in 1974, partly because he 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 to explore and develop his "Mœbius" alter ego. Jodorowsky, who was impressed by the graphic qualities of Blueberry, invited Giraud to start production design on his Dune movie project, which constituted the first Jodorowsky/Mœbius collaboration. Giraud was so eager to start the project, that he accelerated work on the Blueberry serial "Angel Face", cutting off weeks from its originally intended completion.

Jodorowsky 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 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 impression on Giraud, already open to Native-Mexican folk culture due to his previous extended trips to the country (he had visited the country a third time in 1972), and it influenced his art as "Mœbius". Unbeknownst to writer Charlier, he managed to sneak in some Castaneda elements in the Blueberry story "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".

Charlier was conservative in nature and wary of science fiction in general, and never understood what his younger colleague tried to achieve as "Mœbius". Despite this, Charlier understood Giraud's need for a "mental shower" from time to time, and he was appreciative of the graphic innovations Giraud brought into the Blueberry series, making him "one of the all-time greatest artists in the comic medium," as Charlier said in 1982. Artist Michel Rouge, who was brought on by Giraud in 1980 as an inker on "La longue marche" ("The Long March") 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", 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 the medium.. According to Giraud, Charlier's purported stance negatively influenced his son (who became the 50% Blueberry co-owner after the death of his father), causing their relationship to rapidly deteriorate into open animosity, Philippe Charlier for example did not hesitate to veto the Blueberry 1900-project that Giraud had written for François Boucq.

Post-Pilote (1979–2007)

In 1979, the long-running disagreement Charlier and Giraud had with their publishing house Dargaud over the residuals from Blueberry came to a head. They began the Western comic Jim Cutlass as a means to put pressure on Dargaud. It did not work, and Charlier and Giraud turned their back on the parent publisher, 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.) When Charlier died in 1989, Giraud took over 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, 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 after 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 – had not, instead plying his trade as a free-lancer.

Blueberry has always remained Giraud's most successful work in France and mainland Europe, despite the artist expressing a love/hate relationship with his co-creation in later life, which was exemplified by his regular extended leaves of absence. Giraud has admitted as early as 1979 that Blueberry has remained his primary source of income, allowing him to indulge in his artistic endeavors as Mœbius: "If an album of Moebius is released, about 10,000 people are interested. A Blueberry album sells at least 100,000 copies [in France],". In 2005, Giraud said, "Blueberry is in some ways the 'sponsor' of Moebius, for years now."

Science fiction and fantasy comics

The "Mœbius" pseudonym, which Giraud came to use for his science fiction and fantasy work, was born in 1963, after 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"). Though Giraud enjoyed 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. Moreover, he found himself confronted with the artist's version of a writer's block as far as Mœbius comics were concerned. "For eight months I tried, but I could not do it, so I quit", stated Giraud additionally. 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 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, a limited edition hardcover series, collecting work from seminal science fiction writers, from French publisher Éditions OPTA, continuing to do so throughout 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 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. Giraud notwithstanding did a couple of Hara-Kiriesque 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".

L'Écho des savanes (1974)

In 1974 he truly revived the Mœbius pseudonym for comics, and the very first, 12-page, story he created as such 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 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 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 was brainstorming with the founding editors of the magazine (founded by former Pilote friends and co-artists), 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 a law-abiding citizen of the planet Souldaï, who awakens one day with a permanent erection, and therefore is pursued through space and time. When discounting the as "Gir" signed "La déviation", it is in this story that Giraud's signature, minute "Mœbius" art style, for which he became famed 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 the time, but one reviewer put it in perspective when stating, "Peut-être Porno, mais Graphique!" ("Porn maybe, but Graphic Art for sure!"). In the editorial of the 1990 American edition, Giraud conceded that he was envious of what his former Pilote colleagues had achieved with L'Écho des savanes in regard to creating a free and creative environment he had already enjoyed at Hara-Kiri.

Métal Hurlant (1974–1982)

In December 1974, 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) Bernard Farkas, who took on the role of financial manager. In imitation of the example set by the L'Écho des savanes founding editors, this undertaking was therefore also an indirect result of the 1968 revolt. Together they started the monthly magazine Métal hurlant ("Screaming metal") in January 1975, for which Giraud had temporarily abandoned his Blueberry series. The translated version 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 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.

Tahiti (1983–1984)

From 1985 to 2001 he also created his six-volume fantasy series Le Monde d'Edena, (The Aedena Cycle). The stories were strongly influenced by the teachings of 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 Venic