An Introduction to Moebius, the Comic Artist Who Influenced Blade Runner and Miyazaki

The work of the com­ic artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Moe­bius (or, more styl­ish­ly, Mœbius), has often appeared on Open Cul­ture over the years, but even if you’ve nev­er seen it here, you know it. Grant­ed, you may nev­er have read a page of it, to say noth­ing of an entire graph­ic nov­el­’s worth, but even so, you’ve absorbed it indi­rect­ly through gen­er­a­tions of inter­na­tion­al pop­u­lar cul­ture. If you enjoy Blade Run­ner, Aki­ra, the man­ga and ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki, and even the Star Wars movies, you must, on some lev­el, enjoy Moe­bius, so deeply did his com­ic art shape the look and feel of those major works, to say noth­ing of all it has inspired at fur­ther remove.

The new video above by Youtu­ber matttt goes in depth on the bio­graph­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and psy­cho­log­i­cal force that shaped the artist’s vision on the page, whose sheer imag­i­na­tive force and per­sis­tent­ly strange sub­lim­i­ty looked like noth­ing else in comics when he hit his stride in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties. It helped that he was French, and thus an inher­i­tor of the grand Fran­coph­o­ne tra­di­tion of the bande dess­inée, an art form tak­en much more seri­ous­ly than com­ic strips and books in Amer­i­ca. Bel­gian comics like Spirou and Tintin caught his atten­tion ear­ly on, and time spent as a teenag­er amid the vast desert land­scapes of Mex­i­co instilled him with a taste for spir­i­tu­al grandeur.

An appren­tice­ship under the Bel­gian com­ic artist Joseph “Jijé” Gillain, whom he idol­ized, helped Giraud — who had not yet become Moe­bius — to refine his style. His cre­ation of the Jean Paul Bel­mon­do-look­ing cow­boy Blue­ber­ry in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties pro­duced what turned out to be his most lucra­tive fran­chise.  But it was­n’t until his encounter with taboo-break­ing Amer­i­can “under­ground” comics that flour­ished lat­er in that decade, and espe­cial­ly the work of Robert Crumb, that he found it with­in him­self to let loose, explor­ing tech­no­log­i­cal, mytho­log­i­cal, and psy­cho­sex­u­al realms hith­er­to unknown in his medi­um.

It was with the launch of the comics-anthol­o­gy mag­a­zine Métal Hurlant in 1974, lat­er repack­aged in the Unit­ed States as Heavy Met­al, that Moe­bius’ work found its way to a much wider pub­lic. Notable read­ers includ­ed William Gib­son, Rid­ley Scott, Luc Besson, George Lucas, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, and the Wachowskis: some imi­tat­ed Moe­bius, and oth­ers hired him. Through the Japan­ese edi­tion of Star­log mag­a­zine in the late sev­en­ties, his art re-shaped the aes­thet­ics of man­ga­ka like Aki­ra cre­ator Kat­suhi­ro Oto­mo and Stu­dio Ghi­b­li co-founder Hayao Miyaza­ki. Moe­bius him­self lat­er took on Oto­mo as one of his own influ­ences, and in trib­ute to Miyaza­ki, named his daugh­ter Nau­si­caa. For Jean Giraud, inspi­ra­tion was­n’t a one-way street; it was more like a Möbius strip.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece The Incal Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

The Long Tomor­row: Dis­cov­er Mœbius’ Hard-Boiled Detec­tive Com­ic That Inspired Blade Run­ner (1975)

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists

The Dis­ney Artist Who Devel­oped Don­ald Duck & Remained Anony­mous for Years, Despite Being “the Most Pop­u­lar and Wide­ly Read Artist-Writer in the World”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.