Moebius and the X-Men

One last story from the Quenched Consciousness panel at the Stumptown Comics Fest that I forgot to mention:

I had never heard this before, but Dave Scroggy spoke about how Moebius almost did an X-Men comic after Silver Surfer: Parable. He said that Chris Claremont was very eager to work with him, and that Marvel offered him a handsome amount of money to do it, but he had to decline because he had another Blueberry book to do. Blueberry is where Giraud received most of his income, and Marvel had a hard time trying to understand why he would turn down X-Men to draw a western comic. He also said that these illustrations of Marvel characters(that were turned into posters for comic shops) were done as a sort of apology on Moebius’ part for not being able to draw more comics for them.

So yeah, Moebius+Claremont+X-Men. That almost happened. 

The Quenched Consciousness Panel on Bleeding Cool

Gavin Lees writes up this very nice report of the Moebius tribute panel that Joe Keatinge and I hosted at the Stumptown Comics Festival on Sunday. Bless him for not mentioning a few technical problems we had during the screening of Moebius Redux.

As he says, we had an amazing surprise guest who agreed to take part that very morning: David Scroggy. Scroggy is currently VP of Product Development at Dark Horse Comics, and operated as Moebius’ U.S. agent through Jean-Marc Lofficier during a large part of the 80s. It was Scroggy who brokered a deal with Archie Goodwin at Marvel to release Moebius’ works through the Epic line. Not only that, but when Scroggy began working for Dark Horse in the early 90s, it was his relationship with Moebius that got them to release his works there, including the previously unseen-in-America Man From the Ciguri. It was an absolute honor to meet him, and I was humbled and amazed that he wanted to take part. He’s as kind a person as you could hope to meet, and filled with stories and insight.

Mike Allred was, as usual, exploding with positivity and appreciation when talking about his encounters with Moebius. There aren’t many people I’ve met that can talk about their inspirations in a way that inspires everyone around them, but Mike can just sort of infect you like that. He was wonderful.

Scott Allie told a great story about Moebius at a convention one year. He was at the Dark Horse booth, standing in front of a giant Hellboy poster and next to Mike Mignola. Right before Mignola was going to introduce himself, someone asked Moebius what he thought of Hellboy, to which he replied, “well, I used to like Mignola”. What followed was a very kind but precise tear down of Mignola’s newer work, directly in front of Mignola himself. Allie said he wasn’t being cruel at all, but that Mike quickly covered up his name badge with his hand and listened intently, thinking “well, this is Moebius, so he must be right’.

So yeah, I think it went pretty well. Tremendous thanks to David Scroggy, Scott Allie, and Mike Allred for taking part and reminiscing. And thanks to Joe Keatinge for moderating and putting this together with me. Additional thanks to Jason Leivian and Indigo Kelleigh for inviting me to do it. It was an absolute pleasure to be apart of.