moebius Archives - Band Of One

After reading The Incal, I knew I needed to continue down the rabbit hole and read some more of Moebius’s work. After a short search around of what was readily available with an English translation, I found The World Of Edena.

Unlike The Incal this time Moebius takes on both writing and drawing in this book. I was curious whether the story-telling would be on par, or if it would suffer. I was very impressed with the Incal, so when I say that I preferred The World Of Edena, it is not something I say lightly.

Jean Giraud (Moebius) was a ludicrously talented individual. The fact that this whole book was created by one person amazes me.

I do not often take the time to copy artists whom I admire but I felt so impressed with Moebius that I definitely would like to absorb some of his style.

I had a go at copying a few panels that I liked and I definitely learned a lot by doing this. I can still feel the influence of this practice seeping into my comics work today. If you’ve never tried a master copy, I’d highly recommend trying it to level up your artistic skills. It makes you really think about the artist’s decisions and how they might have been thinking whilst creating a particular panel.

After watching the Documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, and reading the novel Dune, I knew the next port of call down the rabbit hole was reading The Incal.

Jean Giraud aka Moebius is an artist who I’ve long admired, and yet I had never read any of his work. I think possibly the availability of translations from the French was a hurdle.

My main exposure to his art was indirectly through the Heavy Metal movie. The series of shorts in the film are mostly taken from comic series in the magazine of the same name (Metal Hurlant in French).

Harry Canyon, the story of a New York taxi driver, was based on the Moebius’s comic, The Long Tomorrow. And Taarna was based on Arzach.

That movie had a huge impact on me. There are some cool short stories in it. But mainly the visuals were something totally new to me at the time.

I suspect I heard the name Moebius in the DVD special features. There was a making of documentary, before the days of the Internet this was a source of valuable insights. There was a period of time where I consumed making of’s and audio commentaries hungry for information. Now I guess it is podcasts!

At the end of Jodorowsky’s Dune they mention that all of the pre-production work for the abandoned Dune movie, they eventually re-purposed and put into the comic book The Incal.

The book is written by Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius. It is a Sci-Fi tour de force with so many interesting ideas crammed into its pages. Both philosophical conceptual ideas from Jodo as well as incredible genre defining visual ideas from Moebius.

After reading, I felt like it was one of the greatest graphic novels I had ever read. The last time I felt so overwhelmed by a comic book was probably after reading Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.