Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, aka Gir, aka Moebius

8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012

Take a look through the career of the grand master here. You’ll never be forgotten, Jean.

SERGIO TOPPI 1932-2012

Word is getting around that the great Sergio Toppi has died. He was one of my heroes, and a true genius of the medium. His approaches to inking and composition especially, are unparalleled. I love how much emotion and age he can convey with how he inks fabric and rock, and how much I think of their past when I look at them. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t look at his work for insight into my own. I’m going to miss him.

Some slight good news is that three of his books are due to be published in the United States this year, from Archaia: new editions of Sharaz-De and Scenes from the Bible in October, as well as The Collector in December.

Also: Here’s a full strip from him, called Little Big Horn

Farewell, Sergio.

A scene from Crimson Tide(1995), where a fight breaks out over whether Jack Kirby or Moebius does a better Silver Surfer comic. It’s been long rumored that Quentin Tarantino ghost-wrote this scene, but here Moebius himself says it all came from Tony Scott, who died today.

TOR: issue 1, B-side

Here’s a final Kubert post: a 5 page silent short, Food Chain, that bookends this issue.

TOR: issue 1, part 3/3

TOR: issue 1, part 2/3

TOR: issue 1, part 1/3

Today I want to take a break from Moebius to pay tribute to the great Joe Kubert, who died yesterday. Above is the work that I’ve lived with the longest: Marvel/Epic’s 4 issue TOR miniseries from 1993. This was my first major longform exposure to Kubert, which is probably why it’s my favorite. I think I was 12 when I picked up this first issue, that age when a comic with brutal fights and a naked woman felt incredibly scandalous, like I was getting away with something by owning it. It was also one of my earliest exposures to the type if material that I would find in Heavy Metal years later(some of his silent shorts have a pretty hefty Arzach feel to them). 

TOR was created by Kubert in 1953, and he’s said that it was his response to the Korean War, observing that man’s primordial, bestial nature is still too dominant in society. Tor was portrayed as pretty much the first man with a sense of heroism, which basically means he gets to defend creatures and people in need by fighting crazy dinosaurs and rival tribes.

TOR, issues 1-4, were published by Marvel/Epic in 1993. I picked it up as a kid, really just because there was a guy that looked like Tarzan fighting dinosaurs in it. It’s huge-scale savage barbarian stuff, all meat and bone physicality(with stereotypes aplenty, like a pre-historic damsel in distress). Looking back on it, the thing that sticks out to me now is how much I love the colors, which were done by Kubert as well.

So 2012 has now taken both Moebius and Joe Kubert. Kubert was a hero of mine long before I had the chance to discover Moebius, and I used to dream about going to New Jersey to attend The Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Art. My heart goes out to Adam, Andy, and the rest of the Kubert family.

Here’s an episode of the French program Tac Au Tac where Moebius, Joe Kubert, and Neal Adams get together for a freestyle drawing session in New York, 1972.