Jean Giraud
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Jean 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.
Biography
Jean Henri Gaston 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. 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. 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.The Moebius pseudonym, which Giraud came to use for his science fiction and fantasy work, was born in 1963. In a satire magazine called Hara-Kiri, Moebius did 21 strips between 1963 and 1964 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 / 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 in La Monnaie at Paris which showcased work by both artists.
Major works
- Blueberry (1963-)
- Arzach (1976)
- The Airtight Garage (1976-1980)
- The Incal (1981-1988)
- Le Monde d'Edena (1985-2001)
- Silver Surfer: Parable (1988-1989)
Film work
- Alien (1979)
- The Time Masters (1982)
- Tron (1982)
- Masters of the Universe (1987)
- Willow (1988)
- The Abyss (1989)
- The Fifth Element (1997)
- Thru the Mœbius Strip (2005)
- Giraud worked on Alejandro Jodorowsky's film adaptation of Dune which was never completed.
- Giraud's artwork for the Dan O'Bannon short story comic "The Long Tomorrow" was a key visual reference for Blade Runner.
- George Lucas used one of Giraud's designs for the Imperial Probe Droid in . Lucas' later Star Wars films also share many visual characteristics with Giraud's work, particularly the depiction of the city-planet Coruscant.
- Giraud also shared "Story by" credit on the animated film .
- Strange frame (2009)
Video game work
- Panzer Dragoon (1995)
- Panzer Dragoon Zwei/II (1996)
- Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998)
- (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 Möbius imagery. The arcade was closed and reopened as "Portal One", retaining much of the Möbius-based decor and Hyperbowl but eliminating the other originals in favor of more common arcade games.
Awards
- 1975: Yellow Kid for the best foreign artist at the Festival of Lucca http://www.immaginecentrostudi.org/saloni/salone11.asp, Italy
- 1979: Adamson Awards, Sweden
- 1980: Yellow Kid for the best foreign author at the Festival of Lucca http://www.immaginecentrostudi.org/saloni/salone14.asp
- 1981: Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, France
- 1985: Grand Prix for the Graphic Arts, France
- 1988: Best foreign material at the Harvey Award for Moebius series, USA
- 1989: Best finite series at the Eisner Award for Silver Surfer, USA
- 1989: Best foreign material at the Harvey Award for Incal
- 1991: Best single issue at the Eisner Award for Concrete
- 1991: Best foreign material at the Harvey Award for Blueberry
- 1997: Giraud was a formally designated finalist for induction into the Harvey Award Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1989, and was inducted in 1997
- 1998: Included in the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame
- 2000: Special Prize for outstanding life’s work at the Max & Moritz Prizes of the festival of Erlangen, Germany
- 2001: Best long comic strip at the Haxtur Award for The Crowned Heart, Spain
Further Reading
- Erik Svane, Martin Surmann, Alain Ledoux, Martin Jurgeit, Gerhard Förster, Horst Berner: Blueberry und der europäische Western-Comic (Zack-Dossier 1; Berlin: Mosaik, 2003). ISBN 393266759X
External links
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