The work of the com­ic artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Moe­bius (or, more styl­ish­ly, Mœbius), has often appeared on Open Cul­ture over the years, but even if you’ve nev­er seen it here, you know it. An appren­tice­ship under the Bel­gian com­ic artist Joseph “Jijé” Gillain, whom he idol­ized, helped Giraud — who had not yet become Moe­bius — to refine his style. It was with the launch of the comics-anthol­o­gy mag­a­zine Métal Hurlant in 1974, lat­er repack­aged in the Unit­ed States as Heavy Met­al, that Moe­bius’ work found its way to a much wider pub­lic. Moe­bius him­self lat­er took on Oto­mo as one of his own influ­ences, and in trib­ute to Miyaza­ki, named his daugh­ter Nau­si­caa. For Jean Giraud, inspi­ra­tion was­n’t a one-way street; it was more like a Möbius strip.