The Long Tomorrow, by Moebius

“The Long Tomorrow” is the title of a short story comic written by Dan O’Bannon in 1975, and illustrated by Moebius. In his introduction to the French hardcover graphic story collection “The Long Tomorrow”, Moebius wrote:

I drew “The Long Tomorrow” in 1975, while I worked with Alexandro Jodorowsky on a film adaption of “Dune”. Originally Douglas Trumbull was to do the special effects, but that was not to be so Jodorowsky hired Dan O’Bannon to replace him. Dan came to Paris. Bearded, dressed in a wild style, the typical Californian post-hippie. His real work would begin at the time of shooting, on the models, on the hardware props. As we were still in the stage of preparations and concepts, there was almost nothing to do and he was bored stiff. To kill time, he drew. Dan is best known as a script writer, but is an excellent cartoonist. If he had wished, he could have been a professional graphic artist. One day, he showed me what he was drawing. It was the story board of ‘The Long Tomorrow’. A classic police story, but situated in the future. I was enthusiastic. When Europeans try this kind of parody, it is never entirely satisfactory, the French are too French, the Italians are too Italian … so, under my nose was a pastiche that was more original than the originals. A believer in parody, Dan continued that tradition. As the story was very strong, I immediately asked if he would allow me to play around graphically, with complete freedom, without conventional pyrotechnics, to refocus on the floating point of view. Pete Club’s costume, for example, was almost ridiculous, far from the traditional raincoat of Bogart. It was the same for most of the visual elements. I scrupulously followed Dan’s story. One day I wish we could publish our two versions side by side. As the strip has pleased everyone, I asked Dan about a sequel, but it did not get his attention, so was simply an adventure I never designed.

The storytelling of “The Long Tomorrow” is inspired by film noir and hardboiled crime fiction, but the story is set in a distant, science fiction future, making it one of the first true cyberpunk stories. Pioneering cyberpunk author William Gibson said of “The Long Tomorrow”:

So it’s entirely fair to say, and I’ve said it before, that the way Neuromancer-the-novel “looks” was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in ‘Heavy Metal’. I assume that this must also be true of John Carpenter’s ‘Escape from New York’, Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner'”, and all other artefacts of the style sometimes dubbed ‘cyberpunk’. Those French guys, they got their end in early.

The comic came to the attention of Ridley Scott and was a key visual reference for “Blade Runner”. The main character has the key fashion adopted by “the Prodigy” for their song “Firestarter”. George Lucas directly copied the launchpad sentinel for the look of the probe droid in “The Empire Strikes Back”, completely preserving Moebius’ original design. The reference to Ridley Scott and George Lucas is documented in the Foreword passage in “The Long Tomorrow”; in fact, so strong is the stylistic influence on “Blade Runner” that it is hard not to see anything else when reading this graphic novel. Source: Wikipedia.

“The Long Tomorrow”, by Jean Giraud (Moebius), which inspired the visual of the movie “Blade Runner”, directed by Ridley Scott. Enjoy.

R.I.P.: Jean Giraud, Moebius

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (born 8 May 1938; died 10 March 2012) was a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius, and to a lesser extent Gir, the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist’s paintings. He died on March 10th 2012 at age 73 in Paris victim of cancer.

Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, 8 May 1938 – 10 March 2012

Life and career

Jean Giraud was born in Nogent-sur-Marne, in the suburbs of Paris, in 1938. At age 16, he began his only technical training at the Arts Appliqués. At 18, Giraud was drawing his own comic strip, “Frank et Jeremie” for the magazine Far West. In 1961, Giraud became an apprentice of Jijé, one of the leading comic artists in Europe of the time, and collaborated on an album of “Jerry Spring”.

In 1962 Giraud and writer Jean-Michel Charlier started the comic strip “Fort Navajo” for “Pilote”. It was a great hit and continued uninterrupted until 1974. The Lieutenant Blueberry character, created by Giraud and Charlier for Fort Navajo, quickly became its most popular character, and his adventures as told in the spin-off Western serial “Blueberry”, are possibly Giraud’s best known work in his native France before his later collaborations with Alejandro Jodorowsky. Giraud’s prestige in France – where comics are held in high artistic regard – is enormous; In 1988 Moebius was chosen, among 11 other winners of the prestigious Grand Prix of the Angoulême Festival, to illustrate a postage stamp set issued on the theme of communication.

The Moebius pseudonym, which Giraud came to use for his science fiction and fantasy work, was born in 1963. In a satire magazine called “Hara-Kiri”, Moebius did 21 strips in 1963–64 and then disappeared for almost a decade. In 1975 “Métal Hurlant” (a magazine which he co-created) revived the pseudonym. Moebius’ famous serial “The Airtight Garage” and his groundbreaking “Arzach” both began in “Métal Hurlant”.

Moebius has contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science fiction films, include “Alien” (1979), “The Time Masters” (1982), “Tron” (1982), “Masters of the Universe” (1987), “Willow” (1988) and “The Abyss” (1989). In 1988 Moebius worked on the American comic character The Silver Surfer with Stan Lee for a special two-part limited series. Giraud also happens to be a friend of manga author and anime filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. From December 2004 to March 2005, the two of them shared an exhibition at La Monnaie in Paris which showcased work by both artists.

From 2000 to 2010, Moebius created and published his series “Inside Moebius” (its title is in English though the books are in French), six hardcover volumes totaling 700 pages. In these books he appears in cartoon form as both creator and protagonist, trapped within the story alongside his younger self and several longtime characters such as Blueberry, Arzak (the latest re-spelling of the “Arzach” character’s name), Major Grubert (from “The Airtight Garage”), and others. Moebius subsequently decided to revive the Arzak character in an elaborate new adventure series, the first volume of which, “Arzak L’Arpenteur”, appeared in 2010. He also began new works in the “Airtight Garage” series with a volume entitled “Le Chasseur Deprime”.

SOURCE:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud
Quenched Consciousness: http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com/
Official Site: http://www.moebius.fr/

SEE ALSO IN SEARCH OF MOEBIUS, A DOCUMENTARY IN 3 PARTS:
PART 1/3: http://dai.ly/hjH0rS
PART 2/3: http://dai.ly/fl2gp6
PART 3/3: http://dai.ly/fbCprZ

SEE THE ART OF MOEBIUS, THE LONG TOMORROW, WHICH INFLUENCED THE VISUAL OF THE MOTION PICTURE BLADE RUNNER, DIRECTED BY RIDLEY SCOTT IN 1982: Clicking Here.

IMAGE GALLERY: