Editing Jean Giraud (section)

==Early life==
Jean Giraud was born in [[Nogent-sur-Marne]], Val-de-Marne, in the suburbs of Paris, on 8 May 1938,<ref name=CBG1285>''[[Comics Buyer's Guide]]'' #1485; 3 May 2002; Page 29</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=De Weyer|first1=Geert|title=100 stripklassiekers die niet in je boekenkast mogen ontbreken|year=2008|publisher=Atlas|location=[[Amsterdam]] / [[Antwerp]]|language=nl|isbn=978-90-450-0996-4|page=215}}</ref> as the only child to Raymond Giraud, an insurance agent, and Pauline Vinchon, who had worked at the agency.<ref name="whoswho">{{cite web|title=Biographie Mœbius|url=https://www.whoswho.fr/decede/biographie-m%C5%93bius_42760|website=Whoswho.fr|language=fr}}</ref> When he was three years old, his parents divorced and he was subsequently raised by mainly his grandparents, who were living in the neighboring municipality of [[Fontenay-sous-Bois]] (much later, when he was an acclaimed artist, Giraud returned to live in the municipality in the mid-1970s, but was unable to buy his grandparents' erstwhile house<ref name=entre>Giraud has discussed his early life at length throughout the interview book ''[[#Sources|Moebius: Entretiens avec Numa Sadoul]]''. In the book, his mother Pauline is also featured in her only known interview, relating events surrounding Giraud's earliest years, such as the family's headlong flight from the German invaders during the tumultuous 1940 [[Blitzkrieg]] months, being bombed by [[Stuka]]s along the way. (pp. 146–147). Whereas the relationship with his mother had been mended, Giraud also divulged that he had no memories of his absentee father Raymond, before the age of 15. (pp. 26–27)</ref>). The rupture between mother and father created a lasting trauma that he explained lay at the heart of his choice of separate pen names.<ref name="Booker"/> A somewhat sickly and introverted child at first, young Giraud found solace after [[World War II]] in a small theater, located on a corner in the street where his mother lived, which concurrently provided an escape from the dreary atmosphere in postwar reconstruction-era France.<ref>[[#CITEREFde BreeFrederiks1982|CITEREFde BreeFrederiks1982, 1982, p. 13]]</ref> Playing an abundance of American [[B movie|B-movie]] [[Westerns]], Giraud, frequenting the theater there as often as he was able to, developed a passion for the genre, as did so many other European boys his age in those times.<ref name=entre/>

Around ages 9–10, Giraud started to draw Western comics while enrolled by his single mother as a stop-gap measure in the Saint-Nicolas [[boarding school]] in [[Issy-les-Moulineaux]] for two years (and where he became acquainted with Belgian comic magazines such as ''[[Spirou (magazine)|Spirou]]'' and ''[[Tintin (magazine)|Tintin]]''), much to the amusement of his schoolmates.<ref name = "Moliterni">{{ill|Moliterni, Claude|fr|Claude Moliterni}}. "Interview met Giraud, tekenaar van Blueberry", ''Stripschrift'', [[Zeist]]:Vonk, issue 39/40, March/April 1972, pp. 12-17, 39 {{in lang|nl}}; translated from the French original, published in ''Phénix'', Paris:SRP Éditeur, issue 14, 1970/Q4.</ref> In 1954, at age 16,<ref name=biohp>{{Cite web|title=page-Biographie|website= moebius.fr|date=5 January 2011|url=http://www.moebius.fr/page%2DBiographie|access-date=3 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160903124325/http://www.moebius.fr/page-Biographie|archive-date=3 September 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref> he began his only technical training at the [[École Duperré|École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré]], where he started producing Western comics, though these did not sit well with his conventional teachers.<ref>''Blueberry L'integrale 1'', Paris: Dargaud 2012, p. 6, {{ISBN|9782205071238}}; As in many other countries at the time, comics were considered by the conservative establishment as a perfidious influence on their youths, and the medium still had decades to go before it attained the revered status in French culture as "{{ill|Le Neuvième Art|fr|Classification des arts}}" (the 9th art)</ref> At the college, he befriended other future comic artists [[Jean-Claude Mézières]] and {{ill|Pat Mallet|fr}}. With Mézières in particular, in no small part due to their shared passion for science fiction, Westerns, and the [[American frontier|Far West]], Giraud developed a close, lifelong friendship,<ref>[[#Sadoul|Sadoul, 1991, pp. 150-154]]</ref> calling him "life's continuing adventure" in later life.<ref>[[#CITEREFBosser2005|CITEREFBosser2005, 2005, p. 65]]</ref> In 1956, he left art school without graduating to visit his mother, who had married a Mexican in [[Mexico]], and stayed there for nine months.

The experience of the Mexican desert, in particular its endless blue skies and unending flat plains, now seeing and experiencing for himself the vistas that had enthralled him so much when watching Westerns on the silver screen only a few years earlier, left an everlasting, "''quelque chose qui m'a littéralement craqué l'âme''" ("something which literally cracked open my soul"),<ref name="redux">{{youTube|jNas99oEXBU|Moebius Redux: A Life in Pictures 2007}}</ref><!--at 7:5--> enduring impression on him, easily recognizable in almost all of his later seminal works.<ref name="redux"/> After his return to France, he started to work as a full-time [[tenure]]d artist for Catholic publisher {{ill|Fleurus presse|fr}},<ref>{{cite web|title=Qui sommes-nous ?|url=https://www.fleuruspresse.com/page/qui-sommes-nous|website=FleurusPresse.com|language=french}}</ref> to whom he was introduced by Mézières, who had shortly before found employment at the publisher.<ref name="IntroKing"/><ref name = "Moliterni"/> In 1959–1960, he was slated for military service in, firstly the [[French occupation zone]] of Germany, and subsequently [[Algeria]],<ref name="Lambiek">{{cite web|title=Jean Giraud|url =http://lambiek.net/artists/g/giraud.htm|work=Comiclopedia|publisher=[[Lambiek]]}}</ref> in the throes of the vicious [[Algerian War]] at the time. Fortunately for him, however, he somehow managed to escape frontline duty as he &ndash; being the only service man available at the time with a graphics background &ndash; served out his military obligations being set to work as illustrator on the army magazine ''5/5 Forces Françaises'', besides being assigned to logistic duties. Algeria was Giraud's second acquaintance with other, more exotic cultures, and like he did in Mexico, he soaked in the experience, which made another indelible impression on the young man born as a suburban city boy, leaving its traces in his later comics, especially those created as Mœbius.<ref name=entre/>