Oh no.
This hits me more than any famous person death since Frank Zappa's... mainly because Moebius was still churning out incredible work that was still breaking new ground, work that was always one step ahead of that of the younger generations who are following him. As with Crumb, I was up till this moment eagerly anticipating his latest work, but now the flow has been bitterly cut off. I was feeling down today too, and then I saw this thread... **** IT!!
Ralph was older, I was prepared for it and I haven't been following his late career so much, but with Moebius I was complacently taking it for granted that he had another ten years left... and another ten books yet to draw...
Plus he always looked so vital and cool. He looked cooler in his late 60s than he did in his early 30s, so there was an illusion of immortality there too. It was like if he got cooler-looking the older he got, maybe he could even cheat death!!
He was a pioneer of sex and violence in comics, and clearly one of the most astonishing futurists of all time, but in later years there was this positive-mystical side to his work, which like Kubrick's 2001, was so good for the souls of 'mysticism'-hungry atheists such as myself, and it's the future development of this side of his work that we will now tragically have to live without. At times it was almost as if he were in touch with something... and I don't mean the wacko gurus he followed occasionally, lol... no, his work often appeared to be channelled from some benevolent higher dimension... It's strange, you probably couldn't put a hair between some of his 'cosmic' ideas and junk New Age cults and philosophies, but when expressed through his pen and his drawing hand those ideas become sublimely inviting, even to the most despairing cynic. In later years, he always advised artists not to dwell solely on the darkness, but to create serene light too - advice I have been unable to follow, but with the passing of this master I'm tempted to try, so sad is the new darker world we find ourselves in today.
Well, I'll shut up now and just let some serene light shine: