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Lou Copeland On The Passing Of Moebius
posted March 13, 2012
Gir's passing hit me like a kidney punch, as I had no idea the man was struggling with an illness. i'd always assumed he was pretty clean living and had expected him to be churning out work well into his nineties.
In a weird bit of synchronicity, I had just received what I guess was his last major work,
Arzak -- L'Arpenteur, in the mail on Friday evening and was so captivated by it that I pulled all my other Moebius books from my shelves and spent the evening and early morning hours drinking in his greatness. There's a very good chance I was staring at his work at he exact moment of his passing. Because of this, I don't think there's any way for me to describe the effect of me waking the next afternoon to check your site and finding notification of his passing.
Part of the man's genius is that while most well informed people would state that he was a major figure in the maturation in the cartooning medium, I think it would be a challenge to describe exactly what his innovations were. It's certainly be beyond my humble abilities, (and lord knows I've tried over the past few hours). They weren't just comic strips, they weren't graphic novels... they were Moebius. To me, that's the greatest achievement an artist can make -- to create something enduring that defies classification. It's something Mr. Giraud excelled in, and if ever a man chose a suitable pen name, it was him.
I'm thankful that you were the one I got the news from, and I'm thankful for your video tribute.