Black Thursday
Black Thursday is a story drawn during the early days of Metal Hurlant. It shows the influences of two of my favorite SF authors: Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick. Their themes are intermingled and condensed in two pages, full of elucubrations and graphic tricks. It is really a failed attempt at doing a “chic” SF story, which is okay because I believe now that it is that very failure which prevents those two pages from looking old-fashioned and helps them retain their freshness
Fantasy and SF, like comics, were accepted earlier in Europe as a valid form of expression. When I look at the history of the genre, I see a garden. It began in a very small fashion, with a few, very beautiful flowers— Jules Verne, H.G. Wells— then it bloomed. Now, it looks like an incredibly beautiful jungle! And I eat the fruits of that garden, I do my best to be part of it.
In our century, imagination bloomed because everything else bloomed too: technology, science, human rights, the quality of life. We live in a period of incredible wealth, in all fields, and if sometimes we can have the feeling that something’s bad, it’s only because we’ve learned to recognize it that way. Before, we accepted things as normal that now we consider bad. For example, a couple of centuries ago, a government killing three thousand people because they asked for their rights would have been deemed normal, or ordinary. Now, we know it’s not.
I never give the keys to my stories. My stories are not like a box of spaghetti, they don’t come with the instructions on them on how long you must put them in boiling water before you eat. I deliberately never help anyone, because if I do that, I feel I’m undercutting the pleasure of the reader, his freedom to find in my story what HE finds interesting. Besides, if I’m so proud of my work, it must be allowed to stand alone. I must tell the reader: “I’ve done my part, now it’s your turn to be creative!”
However, we artists can only go so far as the people can follow us. We are not alone, we are part of the system. We can take risks, but if you want to go to the peak of your consciousness, you may very well find yourself alone. Even if you know how to translate what you saw, maybe only ten people will be able to understand what you tell. But, if you have faith in your vision, and retell it again and again, you will start noticing that, after a time, more people will begin to catch up with you. I certainly found that with my stories. It is a little bit the same in science and technology: a discovery begins with a scientist alone in his laboratory; then ten years later, everybody has “it” in their living rooms.
—Moebius, from Moebius 7: The Goddess (Marvel/Epic, 1990)
