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Le Major – Major Fatal: Part 4

Le Major (2011)
Moebius Productions
11 x 15.8cm, 154 pages

Le Major (The Major) is the fourth and final book of the Major Fatal saga and one of the last published works by Moebius before his sad passing a year later. It is preceded by Le Chasseur Déprime (The Hunter’s Depression), L’Homme du Ciguri (The Man from the Ciguri) and of course Le Garage Hermétique (The Airtight Garage).

Within Le Major we find a pair of desert dwellers, deep in conversation, postulating grand philosophical and theological questions to a monolithic adobe structure which curiously houses Major Grubert inside. Le Major feels at home in the surreal, infinite expanse of Desert “B” first discovered in 40 Days Dans Le Désert B (40 Days In The Desert B) and also further explored in the 6 volume, part autobiographical, part stream of consciousness series Inside Moebius.

Le Major delves further into Moebius’ artistic arsenal to focus solely on improvisation to tell the story. Consisting of work he drew in the same notebook between 1997 to 2009, Moebius masterfully transmutes fleeting glimpses in his mind’s eye into fully fleshed out illustrations on page, without prior pencils and using only ink.

Le Major

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Le Chasseur Déprime – Major Fatal: Part 3

Le Chasseur Déprime (2008)
Stardom/Moebius Production

24 x 32cm, 58 pages

Le Chasseur Déprime (The Hunter’s Depression) is a continuation of Moebius’ L’Homme du Ciguri (The Man from the Ciguri), itself a followup to it’s progenitor Le Garage Hermétique (The Airtight Garage).

In Le Chasseur Déprime, we find Major Grubert walking aimlessly through the busy market stalls of Armjourth and notice that something is not quite right with the Major. It soon becomes clear from his morose disposition that the Major is suffering internally from some unseen personal crisis (his own “black dog”) and even grows tired of his creation: the Garage. Urged by a mysterious encounter, the Major finds himself traveling by gondola to the outskirts of Armjourth to find the Astroport where he meets inside Madame Van Peebles, someone he hopes to seek therapy from for his depression.

This is a more introspective and mature work than the previous Major Fatal books in the series and the style is more reminiscent to Moebius’ wordless, dreamlike masterpiece 40 Days Dans Le Désert B (40 Days In The Desert B) released in 1999. Le Chasseur Déprime, is also one of Moebius’ latter works that unfortunately is not available in English (at the time of writing but perhaps in the future…).

Le Chasseur Déprime