The Comics Journal

IV.

Through the second half of the ’90s and the first years of the present decade Giraud was on the ascendant. His major work of this period was his first independent Blueberry story after Charlier’s death in 1989, “Mr. Blueberry” (1995-2005). Our hero arrives at the town of Tombstone in the days leading up to the showdown at the OK Corral, only to be shot in the back immediately and spend the rest of the story bedridden in a room at the town saloon, reading Moby-Dick. Here he reminisces about his first meeting, as a youth, with the Apache chief Geronimo. Interviewed by a hack writer from the East Coast, who has come in search of the Wild West, he describes the legendary Apache as his “red whale,” while a myth is in the making outside their windows. In other words, an elaborate conglomeration of clichés in service of what essentially is a rather flimsy story offering little insight into the myths it purports to probe. Sumptuously executed and packed to the gills with playful intertextual references, its very life on the page becomes its point. A delightful folly. Very “Moebius.”

In terms of work actually signed “Moebius,” these years were very slim pickings. Slowly, however, and perhaps fueled by the inspired work he was doing on Blueberry, he was rediscovering a vitality of vision and a liveliness of line in a number of self-published, largely sketchbook-based comics. The first where things started clicking is 40 days dans le désert B (40 Days in the Desert B, 1999). Seventy individual, thematically connected pen drawings are strung together to form a vague narrative. A kind of widescreen production of R. Crumb’s classic “719th Meditation of Mr. Natural” (1970), it describes an extended vision of creation and death experienced by a lone figure — garbed in the characteristic Moebius pointy hood — seated in the desert. Like a lot of what came before, the work still suffers from a slightly haughty pretension, suggesting profundity in what seems essentially superficial, but highly imaginative visual ideas. What is remarkable, however, is the development it marks in the artist’s approach toward a clean yet textured idiom, synthesizing the serenity of his ’80s and ’90s work and the organics of his underground roots.

The theme of the desert as a kind of Locus Amoenus whence springs creation has been a constant in both Giraud’s and Moebius’ work since the beginning. It is a manifestation of the momentous experience of first visiting the deserts of Mexico as a young man in 1955. Through the series as a whole, Blueberry probably spends more page time in the desert than anywhere else, and it is no coincidence that the landscape of the Garage is largely desert. The Desert B is the “Désert bis,” or the “B-Side Desert,” another concept developed by the artist as a means of self-examination. It is also the setting of his introspective sketchbook series Inside Moebius, of which he has published five volumes so far (2000-2008). Combining loose drawing and rich coloring, they are improvisational comics in which he plays big-foot cartoon versions of himself at different stages in his life off the main characters of his oeuvre — Blueberry, Arzach, the Major, Malvina, Stel & Atan, Geronimo and others.

It is based around the kind of exploratory template used in the Garage, where anything can happen. Executed swiftly, it downplays the kind of visual discovery central to most of his previous work in favor of character-based humor and occasional detours into personal or political reflection. Osama bin Laden, for example, plays an important role and is alternately confronted with Arzach — who actually talks! — and Geronimo. At one point — much to his horror — he is turned into a woman and therefore decides to cover himself up in one of these typically pointy hoods. Then he sits there, in the desert, a nexus of nihilism rather than insight. “Moebius” himself experiences literal flights of fancy, Crumb-esque episodes of sexual tension and sequences of infantile regression, all the while whimsically referring to important moments in the creator’s life without revealing much to the reader.

While highly self-indulgent and probably of interest near-exclusively to the dedicated Moebius fan, these books nevertheless exhibit an infectious exuberance — an exuberance that I am pleased to say also marks his recent and rather triumphant return to the Garage. Chasseur Déprime (a wordplay on “Depressed Hunter” and “Bounty Hunter”) was released last year as the first of a new series dealing with the Garage. In contrast to the Ciguri storyline, which it seems to jettison almost entirely, it takes the Garage not as a set “universe” but rather a set of rather fuzzily defined concepts that act as creative catalysts to their creator. The approach is not the same as the original story, but that is part of the point. The plotting is less evidently improvised and deals not so much with a developing narrative as a series of variations on an idea and an interconnected cluster of motifs.

The preamble finds the Major in the pueblo of Chatalong, somewhere in the desert of the second level of the Garage. He accidentally overhears two or three strangers discussing a contract to be put on his head. Recognizing that they are familiar only with the clean-shaven, suit-wearing version from the end of the original, as well as the Ciguri story, and do not recognize his iconic helmeted, mustachioed appearance, the Major addresses himself to them and offers to take out the contract. Arriving in Armjourth to meet his contact, he encounters an ‘overturner.’ Of the dominatrix type so typical in Moebius’ work, she offers to overturn his mind. He accepts. The central part of the story, thus, is a series of nested dream sequences, in large part laid out in full-page tableaux, in which the Major finds himself alternately in the desert and a Kafkaesque art gallery run by the Overturner, experiencing continual menacing transformations, enmeshed in throbbing organic patterns with crystalline skulls emerging in increasing profusion. Toward the end, he meets his aforementioned clean-shaven self, who offers to show him the way out.

Much of the imagery was established in 40 days dans le désert B, but Moebius here adds to the mix a series of motifs derived from Pre-Columbian art, some of it drawn scratchily with what looks like a Rotring pen. These marks, soaking into the paper, constitute a compellingly tactile contrast to the typically cool runnings of the rest of the penwork. The desert scenes offer gloriously textured juxtaposition to the sterile, ruled architecture of the gallery. Emphasizing not only the dreamlike quality of the narrative itself, but also its status as construct, Moebius demonstratively disrupts consistency between panels, changing the appearance of both characters and settings in a manner worthy of George Herriman. Notoriously having long been unable to preserve continuity in Blueberry, here he makes of this a virtue, creating an ever-shifting world on paper.

As is the case with the symbology of the original Garage, the imagery here is suggestive rather than prescriptive. Where he there employed it in the service of youthful discovery of possibility, Moebius this time has donned his pith helmet to probe the fault lines of old age. The repetitive dream threatens an abysmal loss of self in the creative impulse — a loss we might understand as the desert Moebius has been roaming these last decades and from which he has now marvelously returned, but ultimately and more importantly, the kind of loss we all fear and need to negotiate in our own lives.

Current editions of the works mentioned: Le Garage Hermétique, Les Humanoïdes associés, 2006; 40 Days Dans le Desert B, Éditions Stardom, 1999; Inside Moebius Vols. 1-5, Éditions Stardom, 2000-2008; Chasseur Déprime, Éditions Stardom, 2008. The quotations are taken from Numa Sadoul, Moebius, Casterman, 1991, Moebius Comics #1, Caliber Comics, 1996 & Hasko Bauman (director), Moebius Redux, Germany 2007. The Hermetic Garage was originally serialized in the American Heavy Metal in the late ’70s. It was republished by Marvel/Epic in garishly colored form in Moebius 3: The Airtight Garage, 1987 and Moebius’ Airtight Garage #1-4 in 1993. The spin-off series was published by Marvel in 1990 as The Elsewhere Prince #1-6. The Man from the Ciguri was published by Dark Horse in 1996.

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