Line #4 Creator/Moebius


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mobius_statue.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Mœbius by Mœbius.]]
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4	Mœbius was the PenName of Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012), an illustrator and graphic artist of the FrancoBelgianComics school.
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6	Born in 1938, Giraud got to visit Mexico and the southwestern United States in the 1950s. He considered it a formative experience, and retained from it a lifelong fondness for the {{Western}} as a genre, as well as a fascination with dreams and the exploration of the unconscious. Unsurprisingly, his breakthrough series, published from 1963 in the illustrated weekly ''Pilote'' (whose editor-in-chief was Creator/ReneGoscinny), was the story of a rogue US cavalryman in the WildWest, ''ComicBook/{{Blueberry}}''. This was under the pen-name "Gir", rather than the more famous "Mœbius".
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8	The series was quite successful, but in 1973, Giraud decided to explore a [[GenreShift radically different aesthetic and narrative style]]. Drawing inspiration from his use of hallucinogenic drugs (he speaks about this in an interview [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=501zclIUQBQ/ here]]) and from ScienceFiction, he illustrated several one-shot underground albums, and co-founded with Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Creator/PhilippeDruillet ''Métal Hurlant'', a magazine intended for alternative graphic artists (published in the US under the title ''Magazine/HeavyMetal''), and the publishing house Les Humanoïdes Associés. It was at that time that he took up the name Mœbius.
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10	One of his first sf works, ''The Horny Goof'', was a very loose and improvised space-opera style story with a lot of comedy elements, fetish appeal, porn (of all types available, and then some), and also plenty of {{mindscrew}}. It established a lot of his personal tropes and motifs in later works, especially the ones revolving around the character of Major Grubert (''The Airtight Garage'', ''The Fatal Major'', ''The Man from Ciguri''), and a lot of elements used in ''The World of Edena'', which has a wonderful GainaxEnding.
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12	In 1975, he collaborated with Alejandro Jodorowsky on the art of a film adaptation of ''[[Film/JodorowskysDune Dune]]''; the project, however, remained stillborn due to Jodorowsky's enormous financial demands (the adaptation would eventually be directed by Creator/DavidLynch). The sets produced for Jodorowsky's ''[[Film/JodorowskysDune Dune]]'' were later recycled by George Lucas in the making of ''Franchise/StarWars''. Mœbius's involvement in movies continued in 1979 with contributions to the art of Creator/RidleyScott's ''Film/{{Alien}}'' (alongside Creator/HRGiger) and in 1981 to ''Film/{{Tron}}''. In 1982, he worked with René Laloux on the animated feature film ''WesternAnimation/TimeMasters''. The 1982 cult movie ''Film/BladeRunner'' used the comic ''ComicBook/TheLongTomorrow'' (1975) as a main design reference. Other films in which he participated as a concept artist include ''Film/{{Willow}}'' (1988), ''Film/TheAbyss'' (1989), ''Anime/LittleNemoAdventuresInSlumberland'', and ''Film/TheFifthElement'' (1997). Those who had a UsefulNotes/SegaSaturn also might remember his [[NoExportForYou Japanese specific boxart]] for the first ''VideoGame/PanzerDragoon'', which was conceptually derived from Mœbius's 1975 comic, ''Arzach''.
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14	His collaboration with Jodorowsky continued in the 1980s with ''ComicBook/TheIncal'', a ScienceFiction series set in a distant future and involving a dystopian [[TheEmpire galactic empire]] in which secret organizations and [[PowersThatBe supernatural entities]] vie for hegemony. ''The Incal'' is to this day his most famous work, and the one most people associate him with.
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16	In 1988, he drew a stand-alone story for ''ComicBook/SilverSurfer'' that American artists such as Jim Lee and [[ComicBook/{{Hellboy}} Mike Mignola]] consider inspirational. His work with Creator/StanLee on the character won the duo an Eisner.
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18	Less active as a graphic artist since the early 1990s, he worked as an independent publisher and remained involved in the world of French-Belgian comics. In 2004-2005, an exhibition in Paris displayed his works alongside those of Creator/HayaoMiyazaki, and in 2009, his works were exhibited at the International Manga Museum in UsefulNotes/{{Kyoto}}. He was close friends with Miyazaki, to the point of naming his own daughter Nausicaa.
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20	Mœbius's scenery porn/gorn, object design and worldbuilding abilities, combined with the sheer amount of content he generated while still in the biz, further combined with the circle of people that got exposed to his art, make this guy's influence omnipresent in every piece of science-fiction concept art that is not Giger-inspired (H.R. Giger did all the alien stuff in ''Alien'', while all the human stuff was by Mœbius). If you cite any sci-fi film or sci-fi anime, you have a pretty good chance that it was either directly inspired by Mœbius, or inspired by something that was inspired by Mœbius, at some point in its history.
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22	Examples of Mœbius's art can be found at his [[http://www.jeangiraudmoebius.fr/ website]], all across Google, people's personal blogs, flickr, ffffound, and many other places. Go have a look.
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Context Creator / Moebius