So I've noticed a lot of collected hardcover versions of Moebius's work coming out here finally in the US over the past couple of years.

Given the amount of work he has out there under Moebius as well as his other aliases what do any fans recommend as a good starting point?

Well, I assume you're interested in Moebius more than Gir/Giraud.

See, he did a lot of things for other scenarists. The Incal series is written by Jodorowsky. Still, it's super-Moebius-esque, especially in design.

You can go more pure Moebius with the Edena series, with started as a Citroen commercial, and evolved to a weird Incal-esque story. But it's 100% pure Moebius poetry. And some parts (like "Les réparateurs", "La planète Encore", are pure Moebius poetic randomness : stunning beauty not taking itself seriously).

I have a fondness, though, for the less serious stuff by Moebius, pure delirium, like the Garage Hermétique and the major Grubert (Major Fatal), or Arzach. It's completely silly, absurdist, and all over the place. It's just a ride that feels completely improvised, representative of his "doodles on a notepad's margins" mindset. But epic.

I love short stories like Total Seal (also known as Free Fall), or The Eyes of The Cat (the latter with Jodorowsky again). Pretty haunting.

And you should give a try to the animated movie Time Masters. I watched it dozens of time, since childhood. The animation is crap, but the music and drawing are superb, and the story is very cool (much better, in my eyes, than the Stephan Wul novel it was adapted from).

And if you want to try something completely different (in a realistic and overly-detailled style), there's the huge Blueberry saga, under the name of Gir or Giraud. It's old school french comics, it has aged more than Moebius' work, it's a very intricate and sadistic story by Charlier, and I love it. And it's so fun to imagine that the pen is held by the same guy who drew the Incal...

But yeah, maybe l'Incal is the most classic.

I would recommend to start with L'Incal as well.

I'm not picky about which place to start in terms of his aliases. I just noticed the collected hardcovers of the Moebius work here which are nicely made and reasonably priced. There may also be collections of his other work - I'm not sure.

There was a time when you'd have to sell a kidney and hire a private detective to hunt down anything of his to read here in the U.S. It's only, maybe in the recent past, this has started to turn around.

Time Masters looks like a great discovery. Too bad it's out of print on dvd here but at least it's up on Youtube. You just sent me down a rabbit hole, googling things for an hour because looking at the trailer it reminded me of something I remember watching as a kid on Nickelodeon that was unlike everything else at the time (in terms of design). Turns out, it was a French series called Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. I have no idea if it's any good to someone over the age of 6 or 7 (whatever I was at the time) but it seems to have a strong dose of surreal french fantasy flavor to it.

Arzach is available as an ebook which is better than nothing but it's a shame it's not also offered as a collected hardback because a lot of images I see spotlighted when talking about his work (here) seems to come from it. Blueberry has an english version.

I wish overall there were more French/European comics on offer in the U.S. It's a bit bizarre to me that there are so many French titles that get translated to German, Spanish, or other languages but never English (and given so many Europeans speak English already I would think it would offer more sales potential) but - oh well c'est la vie.

The thing with his aliases is that they are really like different authors, drawing different things in very different styles. Someone can easily love Gir and hate Moebius or the other way round. And Moebius is mostly known for his Moebius work (that's why he's seldom referred to by his heal name).

Time Masters is a great film, because it's Moebius + René Laloux, who was a great french animator (you can check his works with Caza and with Topor... but don't get me started on Topor, it's a rabbit hole that dwarves Moebius's). Long ago, when I had a youtube channel, I had put online his wonderful adaptation of Yourcenar's story, "How wang-fu was saved". If you can find it somewhere, it's really worth its 20 minutes or so. But anyway, back to Moeb'.

I had never made the connexion between Moebius and Les Mondes Engloutis ("The submerged/swallowed worlds", as it was known in France). I wasn't too fond of the designs of this cartoon (adored the french title song, though [you had same music in english, I notice]), but it's true that its kind of universe feels, in retrospect, influenced by Moebius' brand of imagination. Maybe it's just a cultural thing, but I don't rule out a direct effect of his influence on french scifi iconography. When you'll be done with it, you may want to investigate Enki Bilal's comics (his Nikopol trilogy, etc). It's darker and more gritty, but it's immensely rich and influencial aswell. Avoid his films, though. Bunker Palace Hotel is an absolute masterpiece, but all the rest are terrible failures.

And yeah, national barriers are weird. The US were saturated by a style of comics (superheroes) that had very few equivalents in Europe (by Europe I mostly mean French/Belgian comics), where heroes were more relatable (just people, no powers) and less "chestpounding" if I may say. More humourous (in tone and style), less self-seriously epic, and, when heroical, more focused on achievements owed to wit, courage, "purity of heart", than brute force. It's a completely different atmosphere. Even when comics became gritty and violent, they were often about the vulnerability of the heroes. I always felt they were aimed at completely different publics.

But another exemple of these random barriers are the difficulty to find british series (IT Crowd, Spaced, etc) in France, while they are widely published and translated in Germany. Such things really baffle me. On the other hand, it's sometimes nice to have to dig a bit to find remote gems, legitimately popular in their own countries. How nice it is to kick a door open on a new universe. It allows us to stagger our discoveries along our life, and keep some marvels fresh and untouched for later.

So, yeah, have a pleasant dive into all that.

Great to see another fan of European comics. Maybe you can help me? Many years ago I saw a sci-fi comic, I still try to find again. I´m pretty sure it is from one of the better known illustrators. Unfortunately, the only thing I clearly remember was the cover or maybe one of the inner pages. It shows a guy, maybe an astronaut, who (violently) transforms into a big caterpillar. I think it was one of those "colonize a planet and meet a gruesome fate" tales. IIRC the story took place on a jungle planet, and there might be another astronaut in the background also turned into a caterpillar. There were tentacles coming out of their mouth.

Do you by any chance know this comic book?

Unfortunately no. My knowledge outside of the "childish" classics à la Lucky Luke, Tintin, Smurfs, Asterix, Spirou, etc, is actually limited.

What you describe could very easily be an Enki Bilal story, he had excellent short freaky tales about astronauts on weird planets. Very dark, gruesome humour. But I haven't read all of it. It would just... fit. Maybe google images from "exterminateur 17" and "mémoires d'outre-espace" to see if the graphic style corresponds.

Moebius has some Bilal-esque space tales too (such as "Is man good?"), but he's most often too abstract and light-hearted for that.

No other ideas, sorry.

Enki Bilal was my first guess too. I will check his works again. Maybe I missed some of them. Thank you.

On the subject, given that all the best works of Moebius have already been recommended, I would like to link the kickstarter of the video game Aquamarine, which according to the developers themselves is inspired by the works of the great French artist. I hope that it will be successful and that the game will arrive on GOG!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moebial/aquamarine-a-sci-fi-exploration-game-in-a-hand-dra

Bumpin´. Please support the game.

For all who are interested in similar looking games, check out and [url=https://www.gog.com/game/deep_sky_derelicts]Deep Sky Derelicts.

EDIT: Links not working. The other game is Sable. Google it.