Moebius

[Chris]

Is Mœbius the most under appreciated graphic artist of all time? I grew up reading - or more precisely, absorbing his amazing artwork - in magazines like Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated. Later I picked up Arzach and Moebius 3: The Airtight Garage and other stunning works of wonder and imagination.

[Antaeus]

He is very well known in Europe and was considered as one of the best artists.

I better like his Giraud work (Blueberry), but the Moebius work is also very good e.g. The Incal.

There are a lot of excellent European artists who are almost unknown in USA, but very well known in Europe. E.g. Franquin who also is considered as one of the best artists ever.

[Dominick]

I doubt Moebius is under-appreciated. He's mostly out of print in English because of estate and copyright issues, not because there isn't an appreciation of or demand for his work. Heck, there's an online petition going on right now to try to convince the rights holders to licence his work for North America again, as little (if anything) has been available here since (IIRC) the 1990s. Oddly enough, I saw a copy of issue 1 of the 1992 North American Airtight Garage comic book reprint mini-series in a second-hand store today, for a premium price.

[Sérgio]

Yeah, he's a lot better known in Europe than in the US or other places. Different comics cultures I guess...

But it's also true that people who knows their comics in the US tend to appreciate Moebius, I'm talking about cartoonist and comics critics. There was a lot of talk about him when he died last year.

I really love his work, especially The Incal and The Airtight Garage. His short stories tend to be really good too.

[Paul]

He did gain a bit of fame in North America when the first Alien movie came out.
I think that European artists are beginning to be more and more known on this side of the pond. Wether it be for Graphic Novels such as Asterix and Tintin, where the subject matter seems to be better known than their creators or Moebius/Giraud and Druillet for their talent and name appeal.
Also, the fact that Graphic Novels are now mostly printed with low runs is more appealing to publishers, as before a "comic" could pretty much sell in the hundreds of thousands, now a Graphic Novel is considered a "hit" if it sells 5000.
Also, thank gadzooks for "independent" publishers such as Dark Horse for exposing such artists more and more to the north american public.
I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that had Dark Horse not published Blacksad, I probably would never have given it a chance.

[Antaeus]

In France we still see a print run of half a million copies for the best selling album (XIII)
http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/co...

Some years ago the new Blake & Mortimer sold 600,000 copies in France alone.

[Paul]

Antaeus wrote: "In France we still see a print run of half a million copies for the best selling album (XIII)
http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/co...

Some years ..."

Étant québécois, j'ai aussi l'avantage d'avoir accès à plusieurs bédées que la plupart des autres nord-américain n'ont pas le privilège d'avoir. De plus, vivant dans une ville prédomminament francophone, la bibliothèque garde beacoup plus de bédées franco qu'anglo... donc ça fait moins mal au porte-feuille :-)

[Antaeus]

Paul, I do not speak French, I got the meaning via Google Translate. I come from Denmark.
Yes, these years you can buy a lot of the classic French comic 'gold' in large complete collections. We got a lot of the stuff in Denmark, but only few of them as the very nice complete collections.

[Paul]

sorry, I said...

Being a québécois francophone, I also have the advantage to have access to many european bande dessinées which most of north america is not privy to. Plus, living in a predominately french city, the local library has way more french graphic novels than english ones, so my wallet doesn't suffer as much on that side, but I still spend WAY too much on american graphic novels.

[Antaeus]

I'm not so much in to graphic novels, I'm more in to what I will define as comics, especially the classic French/Belgian and American comics. It seems that in US they now call everything GN. We still distinct GN from comic in Denmark.

[Antaeus]

I don't read Manga, but Dragon Ball (1984-95) has sold more than 230 million copies in the world and it is only the second best selling Manga. The best selling is Eiichiro Odas One Piece.

So GN/comics can still sell (espcially in France and Japan).