Jean Giraud - Influence and Legacy

Influence and Legacy

Many artists from around the world have cited Giraud as an influence on their work. Giraud was longtime friends with manga author and anime filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. Giraud even named his daughter Nausicaä after the character in Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Asked by Giraud in an interview how he first discovered his work, Miyazaki replied:

Through Arzach, which dates from 1975, I believe. I only read it in 1980, and it was a big shock. Not only for me. All manga authors were shaken by this work. Unfortunately, when I discovered it, I already had a consolidated style so I couldn't use its influence to enrich my drawing. Even today, I think it has an awesome sense of space. I directed Nausicaä under Moebius's influence.

Pioneering cyberpunk author William Gibson said of Giraud's work 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 Long Tomorrow also came to the attention of Ridley Scott and was a key visual reference for Blade Runner.

"I consider him more important than Doré," said Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini:

He's a unique talent endowed with an extraordinary visionary imagination that's constantly renewed and never vulgar. Moebius disturbs and consoles. He has the ability to transport us into unknown worlds where we encounter unsettling characters. My admiration for him is total. I consider him a great artist, as great as Picasso and Matisse.

Following his death, Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, paid tribute on Twitter stating:

"The great Moebius died today, but the great Moebius is still alive. Your body died today, your work is more alive than ever."

Benoît Mouchart, artistic director at France's Angoulême International Comics Festival, made an assessment of his importance to the field of comics:

"France has lost one of its best known artists in the world. In Japan, Italy, in the United States he is an incredible star who influenced world comics. Moebius will remain part of the history of drawing, in the same right as Dürer or Ingres. He was an incredible producer, he said he wanted to show what eyes do not always see".

French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand said that by the simultaneous death of Giraud and Moebius, France had lost "two great artists"