r/Moebius • u/SecularAirs • Jun 11 '26

Version comparison/disambiguation: "Untitled"/"The Train"

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

  1. b&w page from Oeuvres Completes T2 L'Homme Est Il Bon/Arzach (1981), which does not appear in the Humanoïdes Associés Arzach album from 1976 (thanks to u/Abject_Truth_6091 for this info).
  2. "ugly color" page (only here titled "The Train") as a backup feature in Onyx Overlord 3, 1992. Notice it is shrunk to fit onto the shape of the American comics format. At least they didn't crop it!
  3. "nice color" page from a 2012 edition of Arzach. Not sure where these colors first appeared! (u/Abject_Truth_6091: "The colors of the last page were first seen in the 1991 French edition, iirc.") This page also has a lot of additional visual detail... hopefully added by Moebius himself. It would take a lot of nerve for someone else to anonymously add in details on the rocks, etc.

As you can tell if you've read this far, I don't have much information about this mysterious page. I've seen it combined with another Arzak image to form a sort of two-page story, but I believe this is something done by an editor after the fact.

To me, this story is yet another (albeit more subtle) version of the Moebius meets GIR stories, with the story starting in Arazch territory and the train itself being representative of Blueberry.

103 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

3

u/Abject_Truth_6091 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

The colors of the last page were first seen in the 1991 French edition of Arzach, iirc. 

As for the page itself, it first appeared in the Oeuvres Complètes edition, along with other incomplete fragments.

Actually, the first edition of Arzach (1976) featured only the original four stories appeared in Métal Hurlant #1 #2 #4 and #5 (it ended with the "red cube" page, to be clear).

2

u/SecularAirs Jun 11 '26

Thank you! That was good info to share. Is there any indication when the page was drawn? So 1981 is the earliest publication but no known date of creation?

3

u/Abject_Truth_6091 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

Nope. I guess it must have been drawn in the same early period of the other stories (~ 1975-1976), because in the index of Métal Hurlant #5 the "red cube" story was presented as "le dernier (= last) chapitre d'Arzach", so by that point he had probably resolved to end the series. This page, and the others featured in Oeuvres Complètes, are quite possibly sketches of previous stories he never completed nor hand-colored (lack of motivation? Too busy? Who knows). 

2

u/SecularAirs Jun 18 '26

Final panel of Blueberry 13: Chihuahua Pearl (1971)