In his youth, Giraud had been a passionate fan of American
Westerns and
Blueberry has its roots in his earlier
Western-themed works such as the
Frank et Jeremie shorts, which were drawn for
Far West magazine when he was only 18 – also having been his first sales as free-lancer – and the by
Joseph "Jijé" Gillain heavily inspired Western short stories he created for the magazines from French publisher (his first professional tenured employment as comic artist in the period 1956–1958), in particular the series of short Western comics featuring the same protagonist Art Howell which can be considered as Giraud's
de facto first realistic Western series (and thus a precursor to
Blueberry), as he himself did in effect, since he, save the first one, endowed these stories with the subtitle "
Un aventure d'Art Howell". This was followed by his collaboration with Jijé himself on an episode of the latter's
Jerry Spring series in 1960, which appeared in the
Belgian comics magazine
Spirou ("", issues 1192 – 1213, 1961), aside from his subsequent Western contributions to Benoit Gillian's (son of Jijé) short-lived comic magazine
Bonux-Boy (1960/61). Directly before he started his apprenticeship at Jijé, Jean Giraud had already approached Jean-Michel Charlier on his own accord, asking him if he was interested in writing scripts for a new western series for publication in
Pilote, the just by Charlier co-launched legendary French comic magazine. Charlier refused on that occasion, claiming he never felt much empathy for the genre. Biographer though, has noted that Charlier, when he felt he was preaching to the choir, had the tendency to "take liberties" with actual events for dramatic effect. Charlier had in effect already written several Westerns, both comics and illustrated short prose stories, in the period 1949-1959 for various previous magazines. One such short entailed the
text comic "
Cochise" in
Jeannot magazine, July 1957, dealing with the historical "
Bascom Affair", which six years later would become the apotheosis of the first
Blueberry story, "Fort Navajo". Furthermore, Charlier had already visited the South-West of the United States in 1960, resulting in several Native-American themed educational
Pilote editorials. In 1962, the magazine sent Charlier on a reporting assignment around the world for its editorials, and one of his last 1963 ports of call was
Edwards Airforce Base in the
Mojave Desert, California. He took the opportunity to (re-)discover the American West, returning to France with a strong urge to write a western. In his stead, Jijé proposed his protégé Giraud as the artist.
Original publications in French :
note: English titles in parentheses where they exist and when first mentioned, original titles only where none are available Blueberry was first published in the October 31, 1963 issue of
Pilote magazine – hence Charlier's corresponding October 30 birth-date for his fictional character, when the magazine was printed and ready for dissemination. Initially titled "Fort Navajo", the story grew into 46 pages over the following issues. In this series Blueberry – whose physical appearance was inspired by French actor
Jean-Paul Belmondo – was only one of many protagonists; the series was originally intended to be an assemble narrative, but quickly gravitated towards Blueberry as the central and primary character, even though the series' (sub-)title
Fort Navajo, une Aventure du Lieutenant Blueberry was maintained for a decade by original publisher
Dargaud for the numerous reprint, and international, runs, before the "Fort Navajo" (sub-)moniker was finally dropped in 1973 with the book publication of "L'homme qui valait 500 000 $" ("The Half-a-Million Dollar Man"). Charlier came up with the name during his American trip: "When I was traveling throughout the West, I was accompanied by a fellow journalist who was just in love with blueberry jam, so much in love, in fact, that I had nicknamed him 'Blueberry'. When I began to create the new series, and everything started to fall into place, I decided to reuse my friend's nickname, because I liked it and thought it was funny. [...] I had no idea that he would prove so popular that he would eventually take over the entire series, and later we would be stuck with that silly name!" In stark contrast, one of the other intended major characters of the
Fort Navajo series had been Blueberry's friend and colleague
lieutenant Graig, who was very much a classic Charlier comics hero, law abiding, a stickler for rules and regulations, unquestioning in his blind obedience to, and acceptance of, authority, and so on. Charlier had apparently expected the presence of the Blueberry character in his creation to be of a transient nature, as he represented everything that Charlier was personally opposed to in private life, quite strongly so according to biographer Ratier. Due to the fact that Blueberry became the most popular character so early on in the
Fort Navajo story-arc, Charlier was forced to do an about-face and started to write out the other main characters, including lieutenant Graig, he had in place in order to make room for Blueberry. However, in one instance that had an unexpected side effect; when Charlier killed off the Native-American
lieutenant Crowe in the fifth and last installment of the story-arc, "La piste des Navajos" ("Trail of the Navajo"), the editorial offices of
Pilote received many angry letters from readers accusing Charlier of murdering a sympathetic protagonist. Taken aback, Charlier later stated: "It was too late to do anything about it, it was done. A strange experience, Giraud in particular took it very hard". Still, while all characters slated for prominence were written out, Blueberry excepted, one major, recurrent secondary character was written in over the course of the story arc in "Le cavalier perdu" ("Mission to Mexico"), Blueberry's friend and sidekick Jimmy McClure. Actually, and by his own admission, Charlier had originally written McClure as a temporary, minor background character, but Giraud was so taken with the character that he asked Charlier to expand his role in the series, and which stands out as the earliest known instance of Giraud exercising influence on the scripts of his senior colleague. In post-war Europe, it has been tradition to release comics in "pre-publication" as serialized magazine episodes, before publication as a comic book, or rather
comic album (in North-American understanding though, "
graphic novel" is the more applicable terminology in this case, particularly where the physical properties of the book format are concerned, the distinction being otherwise a non-issue in native France), typically with a one to two year lag. In French,
(Young) Blueberry has firstly seen serialized pre-publication in
Pilote (issue 210, 31 October 1963 – issue 720, 23 August 1973) and ''
(issue 1, 1 July 1969 – issue 9, 19 October 1970) from publisher Dargaud, the parent and main publisher of Blueberry
, with Giraud frequently creating original Blueberry
art for the magazine covers and illustrations for editorials, aside from creating on occasion summarizing, introduction plates, none of which reprinted in the original book editions. Nonetheless, much of this material did find its way in later reprint variations, particularly in the editorials of the 2012-2019 main series anthology, or omnibus, collection – invariably called "integral(e)s" in the respective languages of mainland Europe – of parent publisher Dargaud, and in those of their licensees such as Egmont for their earlier German/Danish/Norwegian 2006-2017 all''-series integral edition collection The first (French)
Blueberry comic album, "Fort Navajo", was released in September 1965 and originally appeared as the 17th (and last) volume of the
La Collection Pilote series. Actually, this collection had been an initiative of Charlier himself in his function as publishing co-editor, and the 17 titles in the collection were in effect Dargaud's first comic album releases, and an influential release at that. In order to give these releases a more "mature" image, the books were from the start executed as hard cover editions. Favorably received and though not being the first, the hard cover format became the norm in France definitively, where henceforth all comic albums were executed in the format – becoming indeed generally accepted as a mature part of French culture eventually – whereas the vast majority of the other European countries continued to employ the soft cover format for decades to come, somewhat reflecting the status comic books held in their respective societies at the time. These included for the time being French-Belgium as well, Charlier's native country, where the exact same collection was concurrently licensed to, and released by
Le Lombard, albeit as soft cover only. Charlier's initiative was not entirely devoid of a healthy dose of self-interest, as over half the releases in the collection, were, aside from
Blueberry, titles from other comic series he had co-created. After "Fort Navajo", the collection was suspended and each comic hero hitherto featured therein, spun off in book series of their own, including
Blueberry or rather
Fort Navajo, une Aventure du Lieutenant Blueberry as it was then still coined. After Dargaud had lost publishing rights for over a decade for new
Blueberry titles to firstly German publisher and subsequently to Belgian publisher , as a result from a conflict with the creators over
Blueberry royalties, the series has seen, predominantly one-time only, French pre-publication in such comic magazines as
Métal Hurlant, ''
L'Écho des savanes and . Other European countries followed the same template with local magazines. However, the format, for decades a staple in Europe and shaping entire generations of comic readers, went out of vogue in the late 1980s/early 1990s and the vast majority of European comic magazines have since then become defunct by the mid-1990s, including those from Belgium, the country were the phenomenon was born in the late 1930s. Ironically, while "Le bout de la piste" ("The End of the Trail") and "Arizona Love" became main series titles to see serialized pre-publication elsewhere, neither were serialized as such in France itself, where "La tribu fantôme" ("The Ghost Tribe") had previously become the last Blueberry
title pre-published as such in L'Écho des savanes
. Henceforth, new Blueberry
titles were until 1997 directly released in album format, starting with the 1990 La Jeunesse de Blueberry
(Young Blueberry
) title, "Le raid infernal". Any subsequent French magazine, or newspaper serialized publication occurred after
the initial book release while Blueberry
was housed at Novedi and its successor, Swiss publisher , and which had actually already included "Angel Face" in Nouveau Tintin, and "La dernière carte" ("The Last Card") in Spirou'' previously, both having been serialized after their respective book releases. After Charlier had died on 10 July 1989, Giraud, aside from completing "Arizona Love" on his own, wrote and drew five albums, from "Mister Blueberry" to "Dust" (constituting the
OK Corral story arc), until his own death in 2012. Additionally, Giraud also scripted the intermezzo series
Marshal Blueberry (1991-2000), but had no creative input for the
La Jeunesse de Blueberry prequel series, after the first three, original volumes. By the time Giraud embarked on the
OK Corral cycle, publishing rights had returned to Dargaud, and that publisher decided to revitalize the magazine serialized pre-publication format as part of their marketing effort on behalf of
Blueberrys return (see
below), albeit with a twist; As Dargaud no longer had a comic magazine of their own (
Pilote had become defunct in 1989), it was decided to farm out pre-publication to parties who showed the most interest, resulting in that
Blueberry titles in that cycle became serialized in different publications, not all necessarily comic-related by origin. The summer of 1997 saw the serialization of "Ombres sur Tombstone" in the French daily
newspaper Le Monde, followed by the pre-publication of "Géronimo l'Apache" in the monthly '''' comic magazine, directly before the album release in October 1999 as part of Dargaud's substantial marketing campaign for the album. The next title, "OK Corral", was published in a similar manner in the summer of 2003 in the "L'ExpressMag" appendix of the non-comic weekly
news magazine ''
L'Express''. The mere fact that serious newspapers and magazines were by then vying for the opportunity to run
Blueberry in their publications first (aside from the above-mentioned publications, the newspaper
France-Soir had already run the first two outings of the revitalized
La Jeunesse de Blueberry series in 1985 and 1987 – see
below), was testament to the status
Blueberry and its creator(s) had by then attained in Francophone Europe.
Royalties conflict (1974–1979) With the growing popularity of
Blueberry came the increasing disenchantment over financial remunerations of the series. Already in 1974, Charlier made his displeasure known in this regard, when he had "Angel Face" pre-published in
Nouveau Tintin of industry competitor Le Lombard, the first time a
Blueberry adventure was not serialized in
Pilote – nor would it ever be again in hindsight. The magazine was forced to drop the announcement page it had prepared for the story. Unfazed, Dargaud founder and owner
Georges Dargaud, unwilling to give in, countered by having the book released before
Nouveau Tintin had even had the chance to run the story. Then Giraud left on his own accord. While Charlier had no influence on this whatsoever, it did serve a purpose as far as he was concerned. Giraud had left
Blueberry on a cliff-hanger with "Angel Face", resulting in an insatiable demand for more, putting the pressure on Dargaud. Whenever Georges Dargaud asked Charlier for a next
Blueberry adventure, repeatedly, Charlier was now able to respond that he was "devoid of inspiration". As a matter of fact, Giraud was dying to leave
Pilote and
Blueberry, partly because he was tired of the stifling publication pressure he was under in order to produce the series, partly because of the royalties conflict, but
mostly because he wanted to further explore and develop his artistic "Mœbius" alter ego. For Giraud the conflict was actually a godsend: "At that moment Charlier and I also had a financial conflict with Dargaud which came at the exact right time, because it provided me with an alibi [to leave]". The latter reason for him to leave, took on an urgency after
Alejandro Jodorowsky, impressed by his
Blueberry art, had already invited Giraud to come over to
Los Angeles to work as concept designer and storyboard artist on
his Dune movie project earlier that year, constituting the first Jodorowsky/Mœbius collaboration. Very eager to return to Los Angeles as Jodorowsky requested his presence again, Giraud – who had returned to France for his other work during one of the lulls in the
Dune production – greatly accelerated his work on "Angel Face", then underway, breaking his "absolute record speed-drawing", as he had coined it, and sheared off weeks from its originally intended completion date. Giraud in overdrive was so fast that he even overtook Charlier's script pages (Charlier habitually fed his artists piecemeal with script pages, usually a couple at the time), forcing him to write ten pages of the story on his own, as Charlier was at that time on documentary assignment in the United States for French television. Upon his return, Charlier took one look at the pages completed in his absence, and continued where Giraud had left off without further much ado. Charlier himself had actually already left Dargaud in 1972, because he additionally felt ill at ease with the editorial modernization of
Pilote, which resulted from the 1968 revolt at the editorial offices staged by key artists, chief among them Giraud (see also: "
Giraud on his part in the uprising at Pilote"). Though Charlier continued to provide his younger colleague with scripts (but not his other artists), he started working as documentary maker for French television. It was while he was working on two documentaries on the
Mexican Revolution that he gained inspiration for his below-mentioned
Les Gringos Western comic series, which started its run in 1979 at Koralle. It was the first time that Giraud wrote for
Blueberry by himself, and was, considering Charlier's easy acceptance of Giraud's writing, also testament to the close, and trusting working relationship both men had cultivated by that time. Incidentally, Giraud intimated that the deteriorating circumstances at
Pilote had already left its mark on him before he left: "The story was started in 1972/73 but remained shelved until 1975 [sic.]. Yet, I think one can not discern its difficult birth; there are good scenes, pages I really poured heart and soul into. It is true that [the art for] "Le hors-la-loi" ("The Outlaw") had been quite weak, but "Angel Face" made up for it". Five years later, Giraud was ready to return to
Blueberry, at long last feeling the urge again to do so, but
not into the employ of
Pilote/Dargaud, as he had formally terminated his position in 1974 with no intention whatsoever to return, instead plying his
Blueberry trade as a
freelancer: "Publishers were waving with those fat checks, so we started again. But it is no longer the same. I won't be taken in by
Blueberry anymore!", referring to the first half of the 1970s when he felt smothered by his co-creation. Yet, the whole business surrounding
Blueberry residuals itself remained unresolved, and in order to drive home the point the pe-publication of the eagerly awaited "Nez Cassé" ("Broken Nose") story was farmed out to
Métal Hurlant magazine (published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés, co-founded by Giraud in 1974, and in the US released as
Heavy Metal in the mid-1970s, though the story was not run in the American version), instead of
Pilote. That Charlier was able to repeat this ploy after "Angel Face" stemmed from the proviso he had built in when he signed over the publication, and copyrights of his
syndication agency EdiFrance/EdiPresse – co-established in 1955 with
Victor Hubinon,
Albert Uderzo, and
René Goscinny for the express purpose to syndicate their own and other artist's comic creations – to Dargaud in 1960. On that occasion Charlier, owning a law degree, stipulated an exemption clause for magazine (pre-)publications of his own (co-)creations. Though never intended as such, the hitherto dormant exemption clause now served him well in his conflict with Dargaud, without having to fear for any legal ramifications on Dargaud's part. Yet, Georges Dargaud refused to take the bait and the creators subsequently put forward the
Jim Cutlass western comic as a last ditch effort to spell out to Dargaud that the creators had other options. Dargaud still would not budge. It was then that it became clear to Charlier, that he was left with no other option than to leave, and this he did taking all his other co-creations with him, to wit
Redbeard and
Tanguy et Laverdure, which, while not as popular as
Blueberry, were steady money making properties for Dargaud nonetheless. It did not pay off however, as the holding company already pulled the plug in 1980, leaving
Blueberry and the others quite unexpectedly without a publishing home. It were not only the
Blueberry creators that were left in a pickle, as Koralle had managed to convince other well known Franco-Belgian comic artists to switch sides. Aside from Giraud's old mentor Jijé (who, having abandoned his own
Jerry Spring Western comic, was now penciling Charlier's revitalized
Redbeard and
Tanguy et Laverdure), these predominantly concerned artists from publishing house Le Lombard. The most prominent of the latter was
Hermann Huppen with his new post-apocalyptic Western
Jeremiah for which he had abandoned that other famed 1970s Franco-Belgian Western, ''
(written by Greg), second only in renown after Blueberry
at the time. Tapping into his substantial social Franco-Belgian comic network, Charlier found Jacques de Kezel – a highly influential behind-the-scenes figure of the Belgian comics world at those times, and who had actually gathered the stable of artists for Koralle – willing for Axel Springer to pass the torch to. As a token of goodwill, a relieved Springer, as they now could turn over the current contractual obligations without much further ado, even allowed the French-language version of Zack
, Super As'', to run for a few issues longer in order to allow as many series as possible to complete their magazine run, which included "La longue marche". De Kezel's new publishing house "Les Nouvelles Editions Internationales S.A." (Novedi) was established in November 1980 with its seat in Brussels, Belgium. Part of their strategy was to forego on a magazine of their own and instead release titles directly in album format, as it was noticed that the serialized comic magazine format had already started to wane in Europe as a format (and actually one of the main reasons for Axel Springer to pull the plug on Koralle), resulting in the advantage of not having to incur the expenses of maintaining magazine editorial offices. Any still existing comic magazine elsewhere, willing to publish serialized comic series after the initial book releases, was merely considered an added bonus. Still, it took some time for the new publisher to get up and running, and some sort of stop-gap resolution had to be found for the intervening 1979-1980 period in order to secure income for the stable of comic artists. On recommendation of Charlier, who has had previous dealings with the publisher, the catalog was legally, but temporarily, housed at the French publishing house of the Hachette group, who for the occasion established the equally temporary EDI-3-BD imprint, though making use of Koralle's infrastructure – allowed to continue to exist for the time being by Axel Springer – in regard to printing and distribution. As impromptu publisher, EDI-3-BD published around two dozen album titles, including "La longue marche", before turning the copyrights of these over to Novedi, which started publishing themselves in 1981. EDI-3-BD published their books for Belgium and the Netherlands themselves, but farmed out licenses for other countries, including France somewhat surprisingly, where Giraud's former alma mater and Hachette competitor Fleurus firstly became the album publisher for "La longue marche". After Novedi had become operational, the business model was adopted by them and it was decided to continue with Giraud's other alma mater Hachette for France with the subsequent titles in the
Blueberry (and other) series in recognition of the help Édi-Monde had provided. Hachette incidentally, later acquired a special, one-time-only license from Dargaud to reissue the entirety of the
Blueberry series in 2013-2014 as the 52 volume
La Collection Blueberry anthology, each volume augmented with a six-page illustrated editorial. For a decade
Blueberry resided in calm waters at Novedi. The 1980s saw three additions to the main series (completing the
Rehabilitation story arc) as well as four new titles in the newly created
La Jeunesse de Blueberry series. Nevertheless, despite the two
Blueberry incarnations and
Jeremiah being the top selling series for the publisher, it appeared that the financial base was too narrow for even a publisher the modest size of Novedi, as the publisher went out of business in 1990, after having published approximately 120 album titles, and despite having taken over the book publications for France themselves as well in the latter half of the decade. It again left
Blueberry and the others without a publishing home.
Death of a creator (1989) On 10 July 1989, Jean-Michel Charlier died from a heart condition after a short illness. By all accounts Charlier had been a
workaholic throughout his career, working simultaneously on as much as a dozen projects at any given time, steadily increasing his workload as he grew older. His heart condition had already troubled him in his later years and his death, while sudden, was not entirely a surprise. Charlier's penchant for hard work increasingly became a concern for Giraud when he visited his longtime co-worker six months before his death: "He was a work bulimic! There were always seven to eight scenarios underway. His life was a true path of self-destruction. You should have seen him working at his desk! Six months before his passing, I advised him to slow down. Very artistically, he replied:
No, I have chosen this!" Charlier, having been of a previous generation, conservative in nature and wary of science fiction in general, had never understood what his younger colleague tried to achieve as "Mœbius". Nonetheless, he never tried to hinder Giraud in the least, as he understood that an artist of Giraud's caliber needed a "mental shower" from time to time. Furthermore, Charlier was very appreciative of the graphic innovations Giraud ported over from his work as "Mœbius" into the mainstream
Blueberry series, most specifically "Nez Cassé", making him "one of the all-time greatest artists in the comic medium", as Charlier himself worded it in 1982. Artist , who was taken on by Giraud in 1980 for the inks of "La longue marche" ("The Long March") painted a slightly different picture though. Already recognizing that the two men were living in different worlds, he noted that Charlier was not pleased with Giraud taking on an assistant, afraid that it might have been a prelude to him leaving the series in order to pursue his "experimentations" as Mœbius further. Even Giraud was in later life led to believe that Charlier apparently "detested" his other work, looking upon it as something akin to "treason", though his personal experiences with the author was that he had kept an "open mind" in this regard, at least in his case. While Charlier was willing to overlook Giraud's wanderings in his case only, he was otherwise of the firm conviction that artists, especially his own, should totally and wholeheartedly devote themselves to their craft – as Charlier always had considered the comic medium – but which was somewhat incongruous on his part as he himself was habitually engaged in several divergent projects at any given time. Charlier has cited the
Blueberry titles "La mine de l'allemand perdu" ("The Lost Dutchman's Mine") through "L'homme qui valait 500 000 $" ("The Half-a-Million Dollar Man") as his favorites for their "potency", both story and artwise, the latter making him the co-winner of his 1973 American
Shazam award. The script being one-thirds ready at the time of Charlier's passing, the completion of "Arizona Love" was postponed as Giraud needed time to come to terms with that fact. Due to his intimate twenty-five year familiarity with both the series and its writer, it was a foregone conclusion that Giraud would from then on take on the scripting of the main series as well, especially since it was already agreed upon in the "contracts signed with Jean-Michel" that "the survivor would take over the series". The by Giraud rejected pages were published as a bonus in the 1995 deluxe limited edition of "Mister Blueberry", a joint publication of Dargaud and Giraud's publishing house Stardom. Stunned by the sudden death of his longtime co-worker, it took Giraud nearly five years before he could bring himself to embark on
Blueberry again as artist, after completing "Arizona Love". Giraud stated that the series had lost its "father", and that the "mother needed time to mourn". and partly because his marriage to his first wife Claudine was in the early stages of falling apart at the time. Charlier Jr. approached
Fabrice Giger, who had bought the by Giraud co-founded publisher previously in early 1989, but did not choose for that publishing house eventually, but rather go with Giger's original, founding publishing house, Alpen Publishers, the latter had set up in 1988 in Switzerland – even though comic artists themselves, due to the close entanglement of Alpen and Humanoïdes, always referred to Alpen as "Humanos" (
see quote boxes below). It turned out that Philippe was actually picking up where his father had left off. Around the time he had established Alpen and unbeknownst to Giraud, Giger was already approached by Charlier Sr. in 1988. The veteran Charlier had already sensed the writings on the wall at Novedi and discussed plans with Giger to have
all his comic creations moved over to the new publisher, arguably the very reason for the then 23-year old Giger to set up Alpen in the first place, and had to this end already arranged his old friend from his
Pilote days to be hired as editor-in-chief at the new publisher, incidentally in the process doing exactly what his son would later accuse Giraud/Novedi of. Giger disclosed in 2008 that it was on the occasion of his subsequent dealings with Philippe that the "JMC Aventures" foundation was established, intended to safeguard the commercial and artistic legacy of Charlier's body of work. Giger stated: "After the death of Jean-Michel, a project was born between his son, Philippe, his mother, and us, to create a structure dedicated to the continuation of the series co-created by Charlier, JMC Aventures. We were shareholders with the Charlier family", confirming the preliminary dealings with the author in his final year. who had successfully taken Giger and Charlier Jr. to court. though Giger himself became successful with Humanoïdes, expanding into the United States as "Humanoids Publishing Ltd." in 1999, in the process reissuing much of Giraud's "Mœbius" science fiction work. As Belgian publisher Dupuis had already shown interest, when they serialized "La dernière carte" in their
Spirou magazine in 1983, Charlier Jr. now decided to try his luck at that publishing house in 1992, as Hermann had already done previously with his
Jeremiah for that matter. While
Jeremiah has remained with Dupuis ever since, for again unknown reasons the cooperation with
Blueberry did not seem to pan out either. Even though Dupuis did reissue all the
(Young) Blueberry titles of the EDI-3-BD/Novedi era (but none from Alpen Publishers, or indeed any of the other Charlier creations) under its own imprint in their "Repérages" collection, no new titles were released during the equally short 1992-1993 tenure of
Blueberry at that publisher.
Return to the parent publisher (1993–present) Tiring of Giraud's inaction, Philippe Charlier ultimately took matters into his own hand, and had all his father's co-creations return to parent publisher Dargaud at the end of 1993 without apparent objections from Giraud (though he had stipulated an exemption for non-comic
Blueberry art, produced either on personal title and/or for his own publishing houses
Gentiane/Aedena, Starwatcher Graphics, and Stardom –
see below), and it is there where
Blueberry has remained ever since. The for Dargaud joyous occasion of now having acquired the copyrights of
all Blueberry comic incarnations, was reason enough to ask Giraud – now serving as the sole main series artist – to embark on a new story-arc, which eventually resulted in the
OK Corral cycle, the last one of the main series as it turned out to be. How thrilled Dargaud was to have reacquired
Blueberry was amply demonstrated – aside from their decision to revitalize the serialized pre-publication format for
Blueberry as already mentioned – in the 2000 documentary
Mister Gir & Mike S. Blueberry made on the occasion of the release of "Geronimo l'Apache", in which instances were shown of the considerable marketing efforts the publisher undertook in order to promote the new album – the documentary therefore itself one such instance – among others by having many Parisian metro stations plastered with huge
Blueberry posters. Aside from this, Dargaud made use of the opportunity to clean up the by then muddied release chronology, by formalizing the establishment of the three series and restarting the album numbering for each in reprint runs. Concurrently, all international licenses were renegotiated. Apart from foreign language publishers and constituting a break in tradition, Dargaud also started to occasionally farm out special, one-time only, series licenses to other Francophone publishers, which besides the aforementioned 2013/14 with editorial pages enhanced all-series "La Collection Blueberry" from Hachette, already included the French book club ''
for its 2003 main series releases. Another Francophone publisher who was granted a special license for the main series only was the French-Belgian newspaper Le Soir who released its "Blueberry Intégrale" in two editions, the fifteen-volume edition of 2009, and the sixteen-volume edition of 2015. Like the France Loisirs'' release, each volume, save three in the end, collected two of the original albums and was only offered to newspaper readers and subscribers. The three single album volumes (No's 8, 15 and 16) were augmented with new
Blueberry art, featured in a separate section and separately negotiated for with Giraud's own publisher, Mœbius Production. Nor were the one-time only special licenses limited to Francophone publishers alone; twice Italian
La Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper acquired one as well for their 2014/16 overall genre 90-volume softcover "Collana Western" (encompassing 51 titles of the three
Blueberry series), and their 2022/23
Blueberry-specific 54-volume hardcover followup "Collana Blueberry" releases – though in both cases lacking the editorials. A similar license has followed suit when one was extended to Spanish publisher
Planeta DeAgostini, in conjuncture with
partwork specialist , for their 2017/19 54-volume "Blueberry Edición Coleccionista", very similar in concept to the earlier Hachette collection, but with the editorials written by
Spanish comics author/historian Jorge Garcia. In a very rare case of cross-fertilization, Altaya started in 2021 to release an into French translated version of the "Edición Coleccionista" on the French home market as the "Edition Collector", at a time when reprint runs of individual titles were all but terminated on the home market for reasons explained
below. Jean-Michel Charlier has never witnessed the return of his creations to the parent publisher, nor has he ever mended fences with George Dargaud – for whose publishing house Charlier had made signature contributions after all – and who followed Charlier in death almost to the day one year later on July 18, 1990. To a large extent the publication wanderings of
Blueberry has been mirrored in other European countries as well, particularly in Germany (where the era was referred to as "Der 'heimatlose' Blueberry" – "The 'homeless' Blueberry") and the Scandinavian countries (the Danes referring to the era as "Blueberrys Lange March" – "Blueberry's Long March"), where every publisher change was followed suit by similar changes among local publishers in those territories as well. How confusing this era had been, was exemplified by the aforementioned "La longue marche" title, which has been released in French by no less than six publishers in the time period 1980–2003, or even seven, if one is to include the
Super As serialized magazine publication as well. Though the 2007 "Apaches" title became the last in the main
Blueberry series, as creating comics became increasingly difficult for Giraud because his eyesight started to fail him in his last years, he did continue to create single-piece
Blueberry art on larger canvases on either commission basis (such as for the aforementioned
Le Soir editions) or under the aegis of Mœbius Production until his own death in 2012, much of which sold for considerable prices from 2005 onward, alongside older original
Blueberry art Giraud still had in his possession, in specialized comic auctions at such auction houses like
Artcurial,
Hôtel Drouot and Millon & Associés.
The commemorative omnibus collection series (2012–2019) Shortly after Jean Giraud had died on 10 March 2012 as well, Dargaud embarked in November that year on the release of the
Blueberry main series 9-volume "Intégrale" anthology/omnibus collection, completed in December 2019. Launched in 2019, the German and Danish editions were remarkable in this respect in that these countries had already seen their aforementioned and relatively recent 2006-2011/17 Egmont omnibus editions (which had themselves already been quite elaborate as well), constituting an enduring testament to the continuing popularity of Giraud's
Blueberry in those countries, Germany in particular. It turned out a half year later that such a collection had already been in the works in conjuncture with Giraud himself prior to his death, but not as a general release as eventually realized, but rather as a to 10–12,000 copies one-time-only limited "collector's edition" Francophone market exclusive. As Dargaud deputy manager Philippe Ostermann had explained in the quote box on the right, an economic necessity for a general intégrale release had not yet materialized by the time Giraud died. After Giraud's death though and pursuant securing the blessings of both his and Charlier's heirs, it was decided with the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the series in mind to turn the project into a general release after all, Though similarly executed, it was not released as part of 2012 intégrale series, but rather as a stand-alone, or Hors Séries (HS – "outside the series"), release. Furthermore, it also lacked any editorials – which ironically made the earlier corresponding Egmont release from 2006 the superior one, as that volume did feature editorials.
English translations The first known English translation of
Blueberry was that of the first title "Fort Navajo", and appeared 18 months after its original 1963 French magazine publication and before its first album publication in September 1965. The first outing in the series was serialized in syndication through Charlier's own EdiFrance/EdiPresse agency (albeit on behalf of his employer Dargaud and the only
Blueberry title known to have been disseminated in this manner outside Francophone Europe, Spain and Portugal) under its original title in the weekly British comic magazine
Valiant, starting its edited and truncated black and white run in issue 15 May 1965 through issue 21 August 1965, fifteen issues in total. Together with the near-simultaneous and similar publication of the story in Dutch (in full and in color in
Fix en Fox magazine, issues 26-41, 1965), both actually stand out as the first known non-French publications of
Blueberry, or of any other work by Giraud (but not Charlier) for that matter. However, the growing popularity of the comic elsewhere in Europe from 1967 onward The first four English album translations of Blueberry comics were published in Europe for release in the UK in the late seventies by Danish/British joint venture Egmont/
Methuen, when Egmont, holding an international license at the time, was in the process of releasing the series on a wider, international scale, for Germany and the Scandinavian countries in particular. While Egmont completed the publication of the then existing series in whole for the latter two language areas, publication of the English titles already ceased after volume 4. Parent publisher Dargaud had planned to reissue these titles and more in translation for the North-American market in 1982/83 through their short-lived Dargaud International Publishing, Ltd. Canadian branch, but of these, only one was eventually released. That then unnoticed title, "The Man with the Silver Star", has, despite the fact that Giraud's art style had by now fully blossomed into his distinctive own, not been included in later North American collections, resulting in the album becoming an expensive rarity. Since then better marketed English translations were published by other companies which included
Marvel Comics (under its
Epic imprint),
Comcat,
Mojo Press and
Dark Horse Comics, resulting in all kinds of formats and quality—from b/w,
American comic book sized budget collections to full color European graphic novel style albums with many extras. Actually this was the first time
Blueberry was published under Giraud's
pseudonym, Moebius. As
Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier, the translator couple for
all these editions, related: "This is quite ironic because Giraud first coined the 'Moebius' pseudonym precisely because he wanted to keep his two bodies of work separate. Yet, the artist recognizes the fact that he has now become better known in this country under his '
nom-de-plume' and this is his way of making it official!" All Giraud/Moebius titles were released by Epic in a for the US relatively modest print run of 20.000 copies per title. To make the project as economically viable as possible, it was decided to collect two of the original
Blueberry titles in one book, to justify the by Americans perceived high price of around US$13, which, excepting the first two titles of the "Iron Horse" story-arc, made the Epic releases in essence "intégrales" themselves. Giraud conceded that the
Blueberry series, due to the sharply diminished interest in the
Western genre in the country at the time and contrary to his similarly released Sci-Fi and fantasy work as Mœbius by Epic, were very slow sellers in the US, though the entire printing did manage to eventually sell out over the years. In addition to citing the Americans' complete and absolute obsession with the "
Superhero" genres, Giraud has also remarked a few years later, "One cannot say that the results were all that convincing. Jean-Marc Lofficier did of course a fine job in convincing Marvel to reissue
Blueberry in the States, but it was above all a matter of prestige. In hindsight, I think today that it might have stood a better chance if the
Blueberry plates had seen daily publication in the pages of the
Herald Tribune or
Los Angeles Times, which is of course a perfectly utopian notion. The recognition of all the work signed with "Mœbius" on the other hand, is total." It was for Epic that Giraud created new
Blueberry book cover art (which he had only done once previously for the first four German album releases by Koralle, nor would he ever again), and to the chagrin of parent publisher Dargaud this art – as is indeed all outside the main comics proper
Blueberry art, such as magazine covers, art portfolios, posters and the like, that Giraud created in this period of time for Koralle, Les Humanoïdes Associés, as well as his own publishing houses Gentiane, Starwatcher Graphics, Stardom and the subsequent Moebius Production remain outside the legal purview of Dargaud, even after they had reacquired the
Blueberry copyrights in 1993. In practice this means that Dargaud can not use this art at will for their own later publications, such as the 2012 anthology releases,). For the album Giraud created new pages and panels to improve the flow of the story, and as such the album is readable as a stand-alone prequel title. Notable are the new, last two pages which shows Blueberry leaving his first Far West posting, while wearing the outfit, he is first seen in, in "Fort Navajo", his second posting, providing a seamless continuity (even though Giraud
had made a continuity error as one of the panels featured a tombstone engraved with 1881, the year in which the
OK Corral story arc, centered around the historical "
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" incident, was set). While the French themselves consider the album outside the main series ("Hors-Séries", the "HS" or "0"-volume) due to the prequel nature of the album story, it is otherwise universally considered part of the main series as volume 29 in other countries. • 3
IPC Magazines did not employ numbering for their magazine publications at the time, including
Valiant. with European comics, including
Blueberry, as recent
Pingo Magazine "special edition" additions of interest. German and English are chosen as
lingua franca for the (print-on-demand-only) albums, but are exclusively sold on an extremely limited basis through some online, museum, and art bookstores in a few selected western European cities with the single New York City, US, bookstore
Printed Matter, Inc., as the only one located in an English-language territory. • 6 While it is above stated by Lofficier that
Blueberry is not about a handsome cowboy who "rides into town, saves the ranch, becomes the new sheriff and marries the schoolmarm", the sixth, stand-alone title "The Man with the Silver Star" is ironically exactly that. Moreover, the story was clearly a take on
Howard Hawk's classic 1959 Western
Rio Bravo, a circumstance not lost on the passionate Western fan Giraud, who confronted Charlier with the similarities: "I have never understood why Charlier has written it. I talked to him about it, but it seemed he was not aware of it; he has never been one for cinema. He must have had unconsciously remembered the movie, and apparently completely suppressed the memory of it. You know, these things happen, and one can not automatically assume plagiarism. As the theme of
Rio Bravo is so incredibly strong, it is hard to forget, even if you have forgotten the movie itself". Giraud paid homage to the movie by having the main cast appear in a few background cameos. The assertions of Giraud notwithstanding, the potential for plagiarism allegations explained why this title was left out by Epic for their series publication, despite the already mentioned fact that Giraud's art style was by now fully his own. Still, "The Man with the Silver Star" has remained the only
Blueberry title purely patterned after the template as set by the classic American Western genre. • 7 As the title already suggested, "The Lost Dutchman's Mine" was a take on the real world "
Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine legend", and in the original publications the Lückner and "Prosit" characters were from
Prussia as specifically intended by Charlier, and as indicated by the "Allemand" (French for "German") reference in the French album title, therefore adhering to the actual legend in this respect. Translator Lofficier chose the for Americans familiar-sounding name of the real legend as title for the American book release, but changed the characters to being denizens from the
Netherlands, in the process changing the original expletives from German to Dutch in his translations, aside from altering the German name spellings accordingly. Though Lofficier, married to a US citizen, had worked for decades in the US in the publishing world, acquiring an excellent knowledge of American English and idiom, he had made a mistake when he interpreted the moniker "
Dutch" as currently –
and originally – understood, too literally – as in from/of the Netherlands. Being of French descent, Lofficier had not realized that in the United States of the mid-to-late 19th century, the expression "Dutch" has had a different meaning (Charlier, who
was aware of this, had by that time already died, and thus unable to set Lofficier straight), as it was by Americans invariably employed to refer to people and language of
German descent/origin, due to the massive influx of German speaking immigrants in that period of time. These immigrants referred to themselves as "Deutch" in their own language, and the phonetic similarity is the more commonly accepted rationale for the phenomenon, and it was not until the turn of the century that "Dutch" regained its original meaning. The phenomenon has not applied for Canada. • 8 In the case of Epic's "Chihuahua Pearl", "Ballad for a Coffin", "Angel Face", "The Ghost Tribe", and "The End of the Trail" book releases,
Titan Books has issued the same, virtually identical books (save for the ISBNs and publisher's logo) for the UK market, with a few months delay. The other Epic
Blueberry titles only saw a US release, the Titan editions thereby becoming the last British
Blueberry publications. These editions were released in a relatively modest print run of 6.000 copies per title, as Giraud himself has divulged, though he has added: "Mind you, British readers were delighted; As a matter of fact, they adore [continental] European comics, which we had not quite recognized over here [France] at the time...". • 9 "Le hors-la-loi" literally translates as "'The one outside the law", in meaning exactly the same as "L'outlaw". France however, is one of the few remaining European countries where the use of
anglicisms is actively discouraged
and combated by cultural authorities, resulting in the use of the more laborious expression as the album title. • 10 Volumes 19-21 were in France and French-Belgium simultaneously released by two different publishers, albeit under the same ISBN. The French publisher is listed first. • 11 After Blueberry's rehabilitation in "Le bout de la piste", Charlier had planned to have him return to the US Army as captain, heading a unit of
Apache Scouts. After Charlier's death, Giraud became of different mind when he embarked on the
OK Corral story arc, turning the hero in to a loafing civilian, because of his new-found wealth and spending his days with poker, as he felt that it would have been too illogical and too implausible for Blueberry to return to the very same organization that had caused him so much grief and injustice. – which was actually set directly after the events depicted in "Arizona Love", though that title was
not included in the anthology. As the title already implied, the book was coined after the actual, so-called "
Confederate gold myth". When introduced at the April 1996
WonderCon, copies sold at the convention came with a separate
ex-libris, some of which signed by the artist. A staple in the European comic scene as a collector's item, it was not recognized as such by contemporary American buyers who were at the time utterly unfamiliar with the phenomenon. As the ex-libris featured blown-up interior art instead of original art, many of them mistook it, the unsigned ones in particular, as a discardable commercial insert, something American (magazine) readers were
very much familiar with. As a result, only a handful of copies of the ex-libris have survived, becoming therefore very rare collectibles, prized by European collectors in particular. • 13 There is a chronology gap of eight years between "Arizona Love" and "Mister Blueberry", which was specifically intended by Giraud: "
Mister Blueberry takes place eight years later, which leaves room for further romantic speculations. Surely, many readers will ask themselves, what Blueberry has been up to in the intervening time". Yet, what the creators had overlooked however, was that they had made a continuity error, by placing the events in "Arizona Love" in 1889 in the opening panel, whereas Giraud clearly had meant 1873, amply demonstrated by him correcting the year in "Three Black Birds". In later reprints corrected to "late 1872", the original year mentioning had European fans initially and erroneously assuming that "Arizona Love" was the first part of the
OK Corral story arc. • 14 When Giraud was preparing to embark on the
Mister Blueberry cycle at the start of 1995, he was fully intent on making it a new spin-off series, akin to the
Young Blueberry or
Marshal Blueberry series, and not as a continuation of the main series. He stated at the time, "I am preparing a Blueberry as follow-up to the Fort Navajo adventures, but which will constitute a new series: "Mister Blueberry". In effect, Blueberry is no longer in the army, he isn't even a lieutenant anymore. It is quite logical for the series to change its title..." Nonetheless, publisher Dargaud adamantly refused to go along with Giraud's intent, and published the first story as volume 24 of the main series. In hindsight however, this turned out to be unexpectedly fortuitous for Giraud, as it legally prevented Charlier heir Philippe, who became opposed to the story cycle, to
exercise a publication veto.
Non-English translations Since its inception, the series has steadily gained a large following in Europe, and has, in part or in whole, been extensively translated in both serialized and album versions into multiple languages aside from English, to wit,
Spanish (both Spain proper and the Americas),
Portuguese (including
Brazil),
Italian,
German,
Dutch,
Swedish,
Danish,
Norwegian,
Polish,
Finnish,
Serbo-Croatian,
Hungarian,
Greek,
Icelandic,
Turkish,
Tamil,
Indonesian and, more recently,
Japanese with even more recent additions in
Chinese. At least one title – "L'homme à l'étoile d'argent" – is known to have seen a relatively recent translation in
Arabic in the Egyptian weekly comic magazine
New Magic Carpet (بساط الريح الجديدة), issues 1–11, 2009. In Spanish and Portuguese
Blueberry has seen (licensed) publications by local publishers in the Americas, as it has in the former Yugoslavia after its disintegration into its constituent parts. In the European Union, in case of trans-border language areas, it has become customary from the mid-1980s onward, to have publishing rights reside with one publisher only. Like it was in native France, most countries have seen
Blueberry pre-published in magazine serials. The Portuguese 1969 "Fort Navajo" publication from Editorial Íbis is the earliest known instance of a
Blueberry title to be released directly as album, without prior serialized magazine pre-publication, contrary to the 1965 French and 1968 Spanish album releases, the three of them – all executed in the hard cover format incidentally, save for the French-Belgian Le Lombard release – becoming the only available album versions of the story until 1974. Album publication of "Fort Navajo", because Charlier had chosen to disseminate the title outside the French, Spanish and Portuguese language areas in
magazine syndication, has posed problems for publishers in other language countries, especially in Germany and north-west Europe, when
Blueberry broke out in popularity in the late 1960s–early 1970s, well before the syndication term was to expire in 1974. It is not known why Charlier had chosen this format for "Fort Navajo", as the US derived syndication format was by that time already well on its way out for European comics, after the relative immediate post-war paper shortage was no longer an issue. Since "Fort Navajo" was the first part of a five album story arc, this caused continuity, or rather chronology problems as publishers were not yet able to publish the album in their countries. The respective publishers all went about the conundrum in their own way; in Germany the story was first re-serialized as a magazine publication, before continuing with the album releases of the subsequent titles; in the Netherlands and Flanders it was decided to push ahead with album publication regardless of "Fort Navajo", and in the Scandinavian countries it was decided to forego on the publication of the first five titles altogether for the time being, instead opting to start album publication with volume six, "L'homme à l'étoile d'argent", leaving publication of the first five titles for a future point in time. No matter what solution was chosen, it became one of the reasons for the messed up album release chronologies for those countries (only aggravated by both the later addition of
Young, and
Marshal Blueberry album titles as well as the aforementioned publishing wanderings), confusing readership, especially in Germany. It was Finnish publisher
Sanoma that became the first publisher able to release the first other language album edition of the title in 1974, directly after the syndication term had expired, as "Navaho: Väijytys Punaisessa laaksossa" (, notice the Finnish adherence to the originally intended series name, by now dropped by the parent publisher), that country's first
Blueberry album publication, thereby avoiding the conundrum. Nor had the conundrum been an issue for the UK, as album publication only started in 1977. There actually had been two other countries, Italy and the former Yugoslavia, where
Blueberry had also enjoyed an early breakout success prior to the expiration of the syndication term, each seeing its own early release of "Fort Navajo" in its totality, to wit the respective 1967
Classici Audacia issue 42 from
Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, and the 1972
Stripoteka-Panorama issue 60 from NIP Forum publications. However, both publications were legally and technically (newsstand) magazine publications and not bonafide comic albums, and resorted therefore under the magazine syndication regime. In the United States, California based distributor Public Square Books (currently known as Zócalo Public Square) imported
Blueberry albums from Spanish publisher
Norma Editorial, S.A. on behalf of the Spanish speaking part of the country. Having done so in the first half of the 2000s, these albums were endowed with American ISBNs in the form of a bar code sticker, simply put over the Spanish ISBN. For example, "Arizona Love" originally carried the Spanish , but once imported in the US, received the new, American . Latino-Americans therefore, have been afforded the opportunity to enjoy the then entirety of the
Blueberry series (including the spin-offs), contrary to their English speaking counterparts. Apart from Europe, the Americas, Japan, Indonesia and China, the series (or parts thereof) has been translated on the Indian subcontinent in
Mizo by Mahlua of Cydit Communications, operating out of Aizawl, and in Tamil. It is in the latter language in particular, spoken in the south-eastern part of India,
Tamil Nadu, and on the island state of
Sri Lanka, that the
Blueberry saga has amassed a large fanbase and where he is dubbed "Captain Tiger" (கேப்டன் டைகர்). All three series (save
Young Blueberry by Corteggiani/Blanc-Dumont – see
below) have been published by Prakash Publishers under their own "
Lion, Muthu Comics" imprints. In April 2015, an exclusive collectors edition was published in Tamil, collecting
Blueberry titles 13 through 22 – with "Arizona Love" added in first time Tamil translation – in one 540-page album. Considered a milestone release in the entire Indian comics history, as well as one of the biggest collector editions of
Blueberry comics worldwide, it had already been surpassed by the time of its release by an even more massive, entire main series – save "Apaches" – single album original language anthology of 1456 pages by parent publisher Dargaud in the previous year. ==Prequel, intermezzo, and sequel sub-series==