Tag Archive for 'Moebius'

Radio Rackham: The Long Tomorrow

Published on 12. 09. 2022 in comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism, film, tv, video and hype & linkage. Closed Tags: , , , , , .


Denne gang nærlæser vi i selvskab med selveste Christoffer Zieler fra Weekendavisen Moebius’ og Dan O’Bannons legendarisk stilskabende SF-novelle “The Long Tomorrow” fra 1976. Det var fanme sjovt at gå den både fjollede og geniale tegneserie efter i sømmene. Lyt, lyt lyt! Og læs mere på Nummer9.

The Constant Garage

Published on 26. 05. 2022 in articles and essays, comics and cartooning and commentary and criticism. Closed Tags: , , , .


The following essay was originally written for, and published in, The Comics Journal #300 in 2009, as a special instalment of my Euro-Comics column “Continental Drift”; it was subsequently published on TCJ.com, but on a particular iteration of that website which is no longer online. I therefore now reprint it here in minimally edited form, on the occasion of our recent episode of Radio Rackham on Moebius’ Hermetic Garage.

Spanning more or less exactly the life of the Journal, Moebius’ greatest invention, the Hermetic Garage, has been a constant in his creative life. A set of concepts to which he has returned intermittently through his career and which has found new life in his most recent book—an exhilarating return to form. Continue reading ‘The Constant Garage’

Radio Rackham: Den hermetiske garage

Published on 17. 05. 2022 in comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism and hype & linkage. Closed Tags: , , .


Den her har vi længe taget tilløb til, for det er virkelig en af de store: Moebius Major Fatal, eller Jerry Cornelius’ Hermetiske Garagge, eller slet og ret ‘Garagen’. Vi fik endelig indspillet på et tidspunkt hvor vi kort var i samme tid og på samme sted og her er vores tanker i al deres rodede vælde. Vendingerne ‘fuuuuck’ og ‘groteskt fedt’ bliver brugt lidt oftere end normalt… Lyt!

Blueberry i Information

Published on 07. 10. 2019 in comics and cartooning and hype & linkage. Closed Tags: , , , , .


I fredagens bogtillæg til Information, og på nettet, kan man læse min anmeldelse af Cobolts to nys udgivne samlebind af de tidlige album i Jean-Michel Charlier og Jean “Moebius” Girauds westernklassiker Blueberry.

Hermed et uddrag:

Hjertet er på rette sted, men helt fri af stereotypen går Charlier og Giraud ikke – indianerne omtaler sig selv i tredje person og råber i flæng »Hooka hey!«, når de angriber. Det er i den sammenhæng interessant at opleve den unge Blueberrys fordomsfulde blik på dem: ligesom alle sine hvide frænder omtaler han dem som »røde djævle«, »feje hunde« og lignende.

Dette kan virke overraskende hos en mand, som vi forstår indrullerede sig i Unionshæren i Borgerkrigen, til trods for at han hidrørte fra Syden, fordi han ikke kunne tolerere slaveriet (i øvrigt et af de mest markante blinde punkter i serien som helhed).

Samtidig er det interessant hos en helt, der, som læsere af seriens senere album vil vide, ender med at blive indlemmet i en navajostamme. Det er imidlertid et vigtigt greb, både fordi det umiddelbart forankrer Blueberry i sin tids virkelighed og på den længere bane viser, at han er en person under udvikling.

Læs det hele her, hvis du har betalt.

Giraud/Moebius Remembered at Nummer9

Published on 14. 04. 2012 in comics and cartooning and hype & linkage. Closed Tags: , , .


For the past three weeks, the Danish comics site has been remembering comics legend Jean Giraud/Moebius’ passing with articles, essays, reminiscences from a number of Danish creators, and — most interesting to a non-Danish reading audience: drawn homages. Go here for a panoply of drawings on “The Theme” by Denmark’s finest.

Above is Jan Solheim, below Christian Højgaard reinterprets the last page of The Hermetic Garage.

The Week

Published on 18. 03. 2012 in comics and cartooning and hype & linkage. Closed Tags: , .


The week in review

The passing of Jean Giraud is the passing of one of the great cartoonists and visual artists of his generation. It had become easy to take the enormously productive artist for granted, even to bore of him, what with him performing well below his own best a lot of the time in the last couple of decades, but it should not be forgotten that this was somebody who generously gave of his vision of the world, making it his through his drawing and storytelling, and ever-so-subtly affecting our common visual imaginary. His was a quiet ubiquity of a kind that only few artists could ever hope to reach. He shall be missed.

The snap above was taken at the Angoulême train station on the Sunday of the festival in 2006, reading the already seminal Kramers Ergot 4. F-R-E-S-H.

Here are some Giraud/Moebius links:

  • Kim Thompson’s 1987 interview with the artist for The Comics Journal. One of the best interviews I’ve read with the man.
  • Moebius Redux. Somewhat tacky, but still very good documentary on the artist, with some choice appearances by especially Alejandro Jodorowsky and Philippe Druillet. The former is hilarious, the latter touchingly pathetic. Giraud himself is remarkably candid too, even if certain parts of his life — such as his cultism in Tahiti — are only hinted at.
  • Images from Giraud’s funeral. A veritable who’s who of French cartoonist gathered. The image of his long-time friend and partner Jean-Pierre Dionnet in itself speaks volumes.
  • My own writing on Giraud/Moebius include this week’s examination at Hooded Utilitarian of his last, great book Chasseur déprime, which connected to my 2009 essay for The Comics Journal on his greatest single creation, The Hermetic Garage. For the same magazine, I also reviewed the grand career retrospective at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2010. For Danish readers, I wrote at some length about his last, extraordinary Blueberry cycle back in 2005, plus I wrote this obit in Friday’s book section at Information.

    • Moebius at Hooded Utilitarian

    Published on 14. 03. 2012 in comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism and hype & linkage. Closed Tags: , , .


    Earlier today I posted an appreciation of the late Moebius’ last great work, Le Chasseur déprime, over at Hooded Utilitarian. Reading that book in the light of his illness and death suddenly seemed to make a lot of sense. It is among his most profound, questioning works — a fitting artistic testament from somebody who changed our way of seeing. Go check it out.

    Fin de l’épisode

    Published on 11. 03. 2012 in comics and cartooning and journal. Closed Tags: , .

    Angoulême 2011: Saturday

    Published on 24. 01. 2012 in comics and cartooning and commentary and criticism. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

    From the Frémok/Cinquième couche show


    As usual Saturday brought the crowds to Angoulême. It is difficult to get around, but it brings to the festival a heady atmosphere of art and commerce. Even the Association staff decided today partly to suspend their ongoing strike in order to support their artists who had turned up to sign their books. Killoffer, Gerner, Baudoin, Sury, Ruppert & Mulot, and several more were drawing up a storm for the throngs passing through the doors to the Nouveau monde. There is talk of upcoming negotiations between direction and staff, but for the moment the situation remains strained.

    The programming has also been popular. This morning, I tried in vain to get into the CIBDI lecture hall to hear the talk by Ikeda Ryoki, the creator of the still-to-be-translated-into-English classic Rose of Versailles. I did manage to get a seat for the similarly mobbed on-stage interview with Moebius last night, even if it turned out I needn’t have bothered. Arriving late to a sweaty, overheated lecture theater, the aging maestro was given very little to work with by the interviewer, who simply let him go on and on about the trivialities of how his current retrospective at the Fondation Cartier in Paris came to be, and how he has recently returned to his classic creation Arzak. Very little effort was made to discuss the intricacies and themes of this or other works, or his thoughts on why this was a good moment to return to a character who had his day in the late 70s, or the fact that the book in question is amongst the sloppiest-looking he has turned out in a long time. Continue reading ‘Angoulême 2011: Saturday’