Just looking at anything Moebius is both daunting and a master class. Heavy Metal in general, man, growing up on random superhero Marvel and DC stuff when I eventually got exposed to the old EC stuff and Heavy Metal and realizing theres a whole world of comics outside of Batman and Spider-Man was a gamechanger.
At around the same time in Metal Hurlant was the beginning of The Black Incal by Jodorowsky and Moebius. The protagonist, John DiFool, was also a private eye, and the environment with flying cars and cluttered street scenes has a whiff of cyberpunk. I believe that it was this that prompted a lawsuit against Luc Besson for the Fifth Element. This mid-70's period was a real era of exploration in comics. Metal Hurlant began in '74 with Moebius at the center. His partner Druillet's Lone Sloane albums were already appearing in Bud Plant's catalog by the time Heavy Metal finally appeared. The Humanoids have stated that they got a lot of inspiration from American undergrounds, so there was some cross-pollination there. Byron Preiss started publishing things like Gray Morrow's Illustrated Zelazny and Steranko's Chandler. Roger Dean's book of Record Album art, Views, precipitated the founding of Dragon's Dream and the Underground Paper Oz led to the associated Big O, which published fantasy posters and art books by Dean and others. Dragon's Dream partnered with Heavy Metal on some of their books.There were an awful lot of fantasy and science fiction publishing attempts that were almost like ultimate fanzines. Ariel was a glossy, squarebound magazine that resembled the Ballantine fantasy art book series, with art and comics by Corben, Williamson and Frazetta along with articles and interviews. I'd throw Star Reach in there somewhere, and all of the weird graphics (and drugs) that surrounded Prog Rock. Even Michael Moorcock had his own band, the Deep Fix, and collaborated with Hawkwind. Jack Kirby did the 2001 Treasury Edition in 1976, and it was around the same time that he came across the Dargaud Druillet albums in a west coast comics shop and was impressed by them. Nothing in culture happens in total isolation and the time was ripe for transformative comics and art.
If you’re in Paris, you could visits Moebius’s store which is run by his widow. In 2019 I went to Angouleme and stayed in Paris for a bit and got to meet her and see some amazing things. I bought some cool books there too. You can get some rare prints ( I didn’t). Highly recommended.
Agree.. last year i got the oportunity to visit Moebius production and met Jean’s son, Raphael Giraud. we trade gifts, i gave them the Indonesian edition of Blueberry and they was very kindly gave me moebius 2011 exhibition poster.
This is excellent video, thank you very much on it, and I hope so that you will find time to make more on this subject. And very good point that this is published 43 years ago, 04:13 looks absolutely MIDBLOWING even today, I can not comprehend how it looked someone who see something like that for the first time in 1977.
Always get a kick out of those Moebius line-up pics (@ 2:39), and the composition in that purple desert scene (@ 4:34) blows me away. You can see the weight of that structure from how it's buried and from the thing that slammed into its left side. More Heavy Metal please! If you could dip into some Metal Hurlant too, that's be cool, but I've heard most of those stories got reprinted in Heavy Metal anyway.
So something I didn’t notice until a little into this video is how much inspiration this must have had for hayao Miyazaki, seeing the nausicaa manga and seeing his earlier movies like nausicaa and laputa its almost obvious that there’s möbius infuence
Late in life Moebius and Miyazaki became friends; there had been a lot of mutual admiration right from the start, so much that Moebius named one of his daughters Nausicaa. I think they had a joint show at a museum in Japan a few years before Moebius died. And Miyazaki's draftwork in the manga version of Nausicaa is definitely Moebius-inspired, with his reliance on crosshatching instead of zipatone for shadows and textures. There's a couple of pictures out there of them drawing each other's characters -- Moebius drew Nausicaa, and Miyazaki drew Arzach.
He was most certainly influenced by Moebius. And I guess in turn Hayao Miyazaki has also influenced Moebius. They have a great admiration for eachother.
It's great fun to watch your Videos. After this one I imagined a parallel universe, in which Dan O Bannon and Moebius did an ongoing comicbooks series.
You know, one thing that struck me watching these pages this evening is the middle/right panel where the bald man fights the squid thing - immediately brought to mind Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and the engineer fighting the big squid thing in that film. I think Ridley also mentions The Long Tomorrow as a Blade Runner influence. Great stuff!
10:22 In panel one where the woman transforms into that weird thing Dan O'Bannon had originally planned to have a speech bubble where we could read what his reaction is. But Moebius removed and curled his toes instead. If I remember correctly Moebius never told Dan O'Bannon exactly when he started working on it. He just happened to see it printed in the Heavy Metal magazine when it came out in the US. I saw some originals from this story at an exhibition 2 years ago. They were drawn in roughly the same size as the printed comic. They were incredibly sharp and precise.
There's a great interview with O'Bannon in RBCC 148 where he talks about Long Tomorrow, Dark Star, Star Wars and Alien, basically his whole career up to that point, like 1978
O'Bannon is also known for directing Return of the Living Dead, which was maybe the most high profile media that combines horror and punk .. there is a DVD that has his commentary and is worth a listen. At the time he directed ROTLD he was slated to direct Lifeforce (which he Co-wrote the screenplay for ) for Cannon films.. however Tobe Hooper ended up directing that one.
Thanks for covering this! so so good. It would be great to hear any theories or queries you guys have on the uncovered Grady's Jodorowsksy's Dune screenplay/illustrations and or the Moebius, Jodorowsky storyboards/screenplay.
I can give a little insight here on the creative network of this era. Heavy Metal wasn't really tied in closely with the American comic book market in any way. In America, Heavy Metal was its own thing in comics for a short time, but had an explosive effect. The people who initially really keyed into it were SF/fantasy fans and into progressive rock and fantasy illustration in general. Underground comics hadn't yet expanded much beyond humorous juvenile fixations at this point, and even as Heavy Metal's popularity gained, undergrounds were quickly falling away. American comics had little if anything that fit the level of refined mature take of Heavy Metal, not just in content, but how it asserted comics as a serious adult medium. Arzach alone caused a small revolution as it heightened the awareness of so many creators. It was like the light bulb was suddenly turned on and creators were like, "oh, so now we can do this?" But to go back the rock and roll tie in, you have to think where Heavy Metal sat on the magazine rack. It wasn't sitting with the comic books. People took the "Adults Only" tag seriously back then, so it sat next to the art and rock magazines, which really made sense visually too, because there was such a huge fantasy element in prog rock concepts and album covers of the time. If you look at the 70s album covers of Roger Dean, Hipgnosis, Kelly and Mouse, Frazetta, Foss, Castle, and similar artists were often being featured together in illustration books like those put out by Paper Tiger and there was a lot of cross promotion and distribution on the art side of things, and because Heavy Metal had some distance between it and traditional comics, it sort of fell in with the illustration side of things instead of the cartoonist side. Heavy Metal had a similar refined sense of SF and fantasy art illustration, and all of it seemed to feed off each other and fueled the public imagination.
I grew up in South California, South Orange County i was just a kid but loved, and still do draw. I was exposed to Zap comics in the mid 60s, if youve never heard of it do a search it was a crazy cool comic w alot of now famous artist, Zap which you could only buy if you were 18 and only get in "head shops" which were illegal shops but some how existed so of course i being only in 7th grade definitely under age, of course would walk into these quasi legal establishments to get my monthly fix of Zap. I even met Rick Griffin once he painted my childhood friend, who modeled for one of Ricks famous surf posters, Shwinn Stingray bicycle orange with flames super cool or "totally groovy man" hahaa too cool. Zap folded, fast forward, a few years later im walking to the beach and passing by a 7-11. From a distance in a sea of magazines something grabs my attention! i run inside OMG! WTF! im totally blown the fu@k away in my hand the very first Heavy Metal mag! I was hooked. I still have pretty much all of them from the 1st to about 2010 i dig through'm and read one every week. I love Moebius, Caza, Drulete prob misspelled sorry, Bilal, Bizly, Corben, many many more. One story I read the most "The Horny Goof" by Moebius its a mind blower. Heavy Metal mag definitely made a mark.
11:54 I think you mean "genre-bending". The "doll", the shoggoth that hired him who he effs, offers to "gender-bend" in the last frame of the comic at 10:17. (Full disclosure: I have the Epic imprint, and the original America HM issues) But, I get what you mean. 16 pages in the Epic.
I’m always amazed at how short these very important Moebius stories are, and how little is made of it/how it’s not mentioned. It’s almost like a multi panel painting or moode piece. Not so much a story in the classical sense.
Those mags brought back memories. I have to wonder if that scene in The Long Tomorrow where the guy had the choice of running under the rocket or get shot influenced George Miller's Mad Max. The closing scene where Max cuffed the guy to the car leaking gas, set up a lighter then gave the guy a hack saw and left him is a near identical theme. th-cam.com/video/N2x8RhadlpA/w-d-xo.html
Dan's art is hard to find, however here are some monster designs he worked on - sort of reminds me of Mimic, and Starship Troopers combined, but in the 70's - alienexplorations.blogspot.com/1975/03/they-bite-omnivore.html
All I want is Jodorosky to confirm if it's "JOD", "YOD", or "HOD" because with you, any of the 3 could be correct. I need to watch the doc again to see if you refers to himself in the third person somewhere in it.
I was a junior in art school when this came out. Heavy Metal was the best thing out there for several years until Ted White became editor, then it went right down the tubes, just disgusting.
Just looking at anything Moebius is both daunting and a master class. Heavy Metal in general, man, growing up on random superhero Marvel and DC stuff when I eventually got exposed to the old EC stuff and Heavy Metal and realizing theres a whole world of comics outside of Batman and Spider-Man was a gamechanger.
I was one of those kids in the 70s and 80s who collected Heavy Metal magazine. I probably had every issue from '77 to '90 when I stopped collecting.
I'm jealous !!!
At around the same time in Metal Hurlant was the beginning of The Black Incal by Jodorowsky and Moebius. The protagonist, John DiFool, was also a private eye, and the environment with flying cars and cluttered street scenes has a whiff of cyberpunk. I believe that it was this that prompted a lawsuit against Luc Besson for the Fifth Element.
This mid-70's period was a real era of exploration in comics. Metal Hurlant began in '74 with Moebius at the center. His partner Druillet's Lone Sloane albums were already appearing in Bud Plant's catalog by the time Heavy Metal finally appeared. The Humanoids have stated that they got a lot of inspiration from American undergrounds, so there was some cross-pollination there. Byron Preiss started publishing things like Gray Morrow's Illustrated Zelazny and Steranko's Chandler. Roger Dean's book of Record Album art, Views, precipitated the founding of Dragon's Dream and the Underground Paper Oz led to the associated Big O, which published fantasy posters and art books by Dean and others. Dragon's Dream partnered with Heavy Metal on some of their books.There were an awful lot of fantasy and science fiction publishing attempts that were almost like ultimate fanzines. Ariel was a glossy, squarebound magazine that resembled the Ballantine fantasy art book series, with art and comics by Corben, Williamson and Frazetta along with articles and interviews. I'd throw Star Reach in there somewhere, and all of the weird graphics (and drugs) that surrounded Prog Rock. Even Michael Moorcock had his own band, the Deep Fix, and collaborated with Hawkwind. Jack Kirby did the 2001 Treasury Edition in 1976, and it was around the same time that he came across the Dargaud Druillet albums in a west coast comics shop and was impressed by them. Nothing in culture happens in total isolation and the time was ripe for transformative comics and art.
wikked history lesson there man! connect the dots x
@@Scout555 : These fellows should also do a video on Steranko's Comicscene/Mediascene.
If you’re in Paris, you could visits Moebius’s store which is run by his widow. In 2019 I went to Angouleme and stayed in Paris for a bit and got to meet her and see some amazing things. I bought some cool books there too. You can get some rare prints ( I didn’t). Highly recommended.
Super jelly
Agree.. last year i got the oportunity to visit Moebius production and met Jean’s son, Raphael Giraud. we trade gifts, i gave them the Indonesian edition of Blueberry and they was very kindly gave me moebius 2011 exhibition poster.
Kayfabers, please do an analysis/tribute on Juan Gimenez! We lost him today. Also If you ever do an episode on Azpiri, I'll love to see it
Because of the Metabarons, he was one of my favorite artist. RIP
This is excellent video, thank you very much on it, and I hope so that you will find time to make more on this subject. And very good point that this is published 43 years ago, 04:13 looks absolutely MIDBLOWING even today, I can not comprehend how it looked someone who see something like that for the first time in 1977.
One of my favorite stories from Moebius. I'm still waiting for the inevitable Kayfabe treatment of Enki Bilal's work.
Always get a kick out of those Moebius line-up pics (@ 2:39), and the composition in that purple desert scene (@ 4:34) blows me away. You can see the weight of that structure from how it's buried and from the thing that slammed into its left side. More Heavy Metal please! If you could dip into some Metal Hurlant too, that's be cool, but I've heard most of those stories got reprinted in Heavy Metal anyway.
O'Bannon worked on Dark Star with John Carpenter. I think he may have worked on some Roger Corman stuff too
alien
Superb analysis, gentlemen. That is the best 16 page sci-fi story I have ever witnessed. Very awe inspiring. Thank you.
So something I didn’t notice until a little into this video is how much inspiration this must have had for hayao Miyazaki, seeing the nausicaa manga and seeing his earlier movies like nausicaa and laputa its almost obvious that there’s möbius infuence
Late in life Moebius and Miyazaki became friends; there had been a lot of mutual admiration right from the start, so much that Moebius named one of his daughters Nausicaa. I think they had a joint show at a museum in Japan a few years before Moebius died. And Miyazaki's draftwork in the manga version of Nausicaa is definitely Moebius-inspired, with his reliance on crosshatching instead of zipatone for shadows and textures.
There's a couple of pictures out there of them drawing each other's characters -- Moebius drew Nausicaa, and Miyazaki drew Arzach.
He was most certainly influenced by Moebius. And I guess in turn Hayao Miyazaki has also influenced Moebius. They have a great admiration for eachother.
It's great fun to watch your Videos. After this one I imagined a parallel universe, in which Dan O Bannon and Moebius did an ongoing comicbooks series.
You know, one thing that struck me watching these pages this evening is the middle/right panel where the bald man fights the squid thing - immediately brought to mind Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and the engineer fighting the big squid thing in that film. I think Ridley also mentions The Long Tomorrow as a Blade Runner influence. Great stuff!
Yo! Eyeball here! Thee Astronaut is a call to this, even down to the coloring. Thanks for showing off this great story. Perfect!
10:22 In panel one where the woman transforms into that weird thing Dan O'Bannon had originally planned to have a speech bubble where we could read what his reaction is. But Moebius removed and curled his toes instead. If I remember correctly Moebius never told Dan O'Bannon exactly when he started working on it. He just happened to see it printed in the Heavy Metal magazine when it came out in the US.
I saw some originals from this story at an exhibition 2 years ago. They were drawn in roughly the same size as the printed comic. They were incredibly sharp and precise.
This is awesome....thanks for introducing me to these incredible books - I'm feeling super inspired!
There's a great interview with O'Bannon in RBCC 148 where he talks about Long Tomorrow, Dark Star, Star Wars and Alien, basically his whole career up to that point, like 1978
O'Bannon is also known for directing Return of the Living Dead, which was maybe the most high profile media that combines horror and punk .. there is a DVD that has his commentary and is worth a listen. At the time he directed ROTLD he was slated to direct Lifeforce (which he Co-wrote the screenplay for ) for Cannon films.. however Tobe Hooper ended up directing that one.
Thanks for covering this! so so good. It would be great to hear any theories or queries you guys have on the uncovered Grady's Jodorowsksy's Dune screenplay/illustrations and or the Moebius, Jodorowsky storyboards/screenplay.
Same (ish) script, different artist(s)?
I can give a little insight here on the creative network of this era. Heavy Metal wasn't really tied in closely with the American comic book market in any way. In America, Heavy Metal was its own thing in comics for a short time, but had an explosive effect. The people who initially really keyed into it were SF/fantasy fans and into progressive rock and fantasy illustration in general. Underground comics hadn't yet expanded much beyond humorous juvenile fixations at this point, and even as Heavy Metal's popularity gained, undergrounds were quickly falling away. American comics had little if anything that fit the level of refined mature take of Heavy Metal, not just in content, but how it asserted comics as a serious adult medium. Arzach alone caused a small revolution as it heightened the awareness of so many creators. It was like the light bulb was suddenly turned on and creators were like, "oh, so now we can do this?" But to go back the rock and roll tie in, you have to think where Heavy Metal sat on the magazine rack. It wasn't sitting with the comic books. People took the "Adults Only" tag seriously back then, so it sat next to the art and rock magazines, which really made sense visually too, because there was such a huge fantasy element in prog rock concepts and album covers of the time. If you look at the 70s album covers of Roger Dean, Hipgnosis, Kelly and Mouse, Frazetta, Foss, Castle, and similar artists were often being featured together in illustration books like those put out by Paper Tiger and there was a lot of cross promotion and distribution on the art side of things, and because Heavy Metal had some distance between it and traditional comics, it sort of fell in with the illustration side of things instead of the cartoonist side. Heavy Metal had a similar refined sense of SF and fantasy art illustration, and all of it seemed to feed off each other and fueled the public imagination.
Who is the artist (or collective?) named Castle? Very hard to google search that one. I'd like to see their album artwork.
The pride of my library is my complete first three years collection of all Heavy Metal
Can’t wait till you fellas go over The Incal :)
So great! I hope there will be more Heavy Metal dives!!
I got to see three pages of original art for this story recently. Just gorgeous.
I grew up in South California, South Orange County i was just a kid but loved, and still do draw. I was exposed to Zap comics in the mid 60s, if youve never heard of it do a search it was a crazy cool comic w alot of now famous artist, Zap which you could only buy if you were 18 and only get in "head shops" which were illegal shops but some how existed so of course i being only in 7th grade definitely under age, of course would walk into these quasi legal establishments to get my monthly fix of Zap. I even met Rick Griffin once he painted my childhood friend, who modeled for one of Ricks famous surf posters, Shwinn Stingray bicycle orange with flames super cool or "totally groovy man" hahaa too cool. Zap folded, fast forward, a few years later im walking to the beach and passing by a 7-11. From a distance in a sea of magazines something grabs my attention! i run inside OMG! WTF! im totally blown the fu@k away in my hand the very first Heavy Metal mag! I was hooked. I still have pretty much all of them from the 1st to about 2010 i dig through'm and read one every week. I love Moebius, Caza, Drulete prob misspelled sorry, Bilal, Bizly, Corben, many many more. One story I read the most "The Horny Goof" by Moebius its a mind blower. Heavy Metal mag definitely made a mark.
I fucking love you guys. That is all.
very cool humans
If you are looking for pre-Cyberpunk, Philip K. Dick's writing is something you should look for.
a1
That looks really awseome
Legendary comix there!
11:54 I think you mean "genre-bending".
The "doll", the shoggoth that hired him who he effs, offers to "gender-bend" in the last frame of the comic at 10:17.
(Full disclosure: I have the Epic imprint, and the original America HM issues)
But, I get what you mean.
16 pages in the Epic.
Art from pages 5 and 6 from “Approaching Centauri” were cribbed for the cover of Slayer’s “Hell Awaits” album
The first story was giving me big 'I Robot' vibes (6:03). And in the second story (10:17) I get 'Face-Dancer' Dune vibes.
Jim is 100% correct - The long tomorrow is 16 pages long.
Jodorowsky's Dune is a great documentary.
I’m always amazed at how short these very important Moebius stories are, and how little is made of it/how it’s not mentioned.
It’s almost like a multi panel painting or moode piece. Not so much a story in the classical sense.
It does kind of have a secular triptych feel.
O'Bannon was an absolute ruler
Those mags brought back memories. I have to wonder if that scene in The Long Tomorrow where the guy had the choice of running under the rocket or get shot influenced George Miller's Mad Max. The closing scene where Max cuffed the guy to the car leaking gas, set up a lighter then gave the guy a hack saw and left him is a near identical theme. th-cam.com/video/N2x8RhadlpA/w-d-xo.html
Dan's art is hard to find, however here are some monster designs he worked on - sort of reminds me of Mimic, and Starship Troopers combined, but in the 70's - alienexplorations.blogspot.com/1975/03/they-bite-omnivore.html
Hello from the past
It’s Banon like Cannon
I love this shit lol
All I want is Jodorosky to confirm if it's "JOD", "YOD", or "HOD" because with you, any of the 3 could be correct. I need to watch the doc again to see if you refers to himself in the third person somewhere in it.
@pippin It would be "Hodorowski", the "ow" being read like the "ou" in "though."
i am an american and no artist impacted me the way Moebius did. noone aside Jack Kirby
Please introduce some of your followers the amazing artist Juan Gimenez a very sad lost to the art community becuase of this evil virus. RIP
I was a junior in art school when this came out. Heavy Metal was the best thing out there for several years until Ted White became editor, then it went right down the tubes, just disgusting.
Shame heavymetal ain't as great as it use to be ,,even got rid of babes on the cover