Moebius: 40 Days in the Desert B
May 7, 2010Manga is not an isolated phenomenon. Authors like Tezuka, Tatsumi and Taniguchi – all of which are amongst my favourites – were influenced by authors from far overseas. In Tezuka’s case, artists from the United States had a tremendous influence on his stylistic idiom. Taniguchi on the other hand, was influenced more by the Franco-Belgian school of comic strips, or bande dessinée.
One of the greatest artists in Europe’s bande dessinée is Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius. You can watch a nice documentary about his work on Google video. Moebius’ art is as original as it is stunningly beautiful. He is a master of form and composition, and his drawings can breathe movement like no other. He is as much a author of sequential art is he is an artist that is at home in galleries and museums.
One of his works that is relatively little known (but closest to my heart) is the text-free tale ‘40 days dans le désert B‘, here offered as 40 days in the desert B. This short piece features all that is dear to me in Moebius: incredible line-art, fantastic imagery, dream-like and poetic scenes and the ever-present themes of rebirth and transformation. I don’t begin to think that I understand what this little gem is all about, and I fear that nothing short of trepanning and unhealthy amounts of fasting would bring me any closer. But I don’t mind. I revel in the sheer madness of it all; the stilled movement of otherworldly vistas. Part dream, part hallucinogenic mind-fuck; part art book, part comic strip: this is one little gem that I am glad not to have missed out of. I hope that some of you would at the very least take a look at it, and maybe check out some more of Moebius’ work, if you didn’t know him already. And if you did, I hope you’ve discovered something new.
For this release, I tried to clean and improve some scans that I found floating around (by I don’t know who) and scanned the cover anew. I’ve got a shitty scanner, so don’t hold that against me. I hope at least some of you like this. Let me know if you did.
Download: Mediafire | FileFactory | MegaUpload
You can find more great works by Moebius in this MediaFire folder.
Thanks for 40 Days, I have never come across it before it certainly is rather strange. Moebius is very impressive and talented.
Nice!
Any chance you could provide a link to File Factory?
Yes I can, hold on. (Isn’t MediaFire working for you?)
FileFactory
MegaUpload
Wow! His drawings are amassing.
Will have to look into other of his works.
Start here.
Is there a 40 Days in the Desert A?
Yes, there is. You may even have heard of it.
Also, Moebius may be referring to his trip to the Mexican desert, made when he was younger. It made such an impression on him, that deserts have been a recurring theme in his work ever since.
Indescribably beautiful — and great quality scans to boot. Thanks for the sweet Mediafire links!
Thank you so much for your outstanding work.
Scans are perfect!
Lovely
Totally awesome ! Great on scanning work.
Great works on scanning (and translating i pressume?). Thanks for sharing this with us
Thank you so much! Must have been a lot of work. I love Moebius so I’m happy that you did this! Thanks!