In 1963, with a style that still closely resembled that of his mentor, Giraud created Fort Navajo with Belgian scriptwriter Jean-Michel Charlier. The immediate success of lead character Blueberry – a hard-nosed, cigarillo-chewing cowboy – led Giraud to create an entirely new comic, with Blueberry as its central titular character. Blueberry represented a radical departure from conventional archetypes, this was no ordinary chisel-jawed cowboy bursting through saloon doors and facing off against outlaws in tumbleweed alleys. Despite drawing heavily from American traditions and pulp fiction, Blueberry more closely resembled a European anti-hero (his appearance was based on French screen icon Jean-Paul Belmondo), capable of flawed decisions and skewed morals.

Leaving the series as publisher in 1974, Giraud sought new challenges that would allow him to explore his Moebius alter-ego. After a brief involvement in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s fabled, yet ultimately doomed, Dune project (which was set to star Orson Welles alongside Salvador Dali, with a soundtrack by Pink Floyd), Giraud co-founded Metal Hurlant (translated in English as Heavy Metal) in 1974, a magazine that in both style and substance transformed the reputation of comic books. With its large-scale, psychedelic visuals, printed on high-grade paper stock, the publication breathed new life into a genre dismissed by critics as lacking artistic credibility and otherwise dominated by cheaply produced American superhero comics. Unlike anything else at the time, Metal Hurlant’s richly layered narratives tackled adult themes, attracting wider audiences to a medium previously marketed exclusively at young adolescents.

Leaving painted scenes of the Old West behind (and with it the identity of Jean Giraud), Moebius created exotic visions of the future with a pen. These fantastical realms of imagination drew from the work of H.P Lovecraft, yet in their innovative style introduced an aesthetic style that has since been mined by Star Wars, Mad Max, Alien and Blade Runner as well as anime classics like Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988). Along with the magazine’s co-founders, Moebius helped establish Metal Hurlant as a symbol of artistic innovation, producing imagery that was not only unprecedented within the world of comics but the visual arts as a whole.

Jean Prouvé 1962 Sun Screen $16,098

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