That's all post-Charlier aside from the La Piste des Navajos, which I believe left English speaking fans with an unresolved cliffhanger due to it never being translated into English. I've only read the Epic collections of the Charlier/Giraud albums, so I don't know how true this is, but people say Giraud's writing isn't that great on the later stories. 

One of my circle of comic kin, the organizer of several of our local cons, is a big Moebius fan. He's followed the Blueberry situation over the years, waiting for an edition to go to print in the US, and keeps telling me the scuttlebutt he hears about it, so this is all hearsay, but this is what I was told.

The rights to the Blueberry stuff is separate from the solo Moebius stuff which is all separate from the stuff Moebius did with Jodo. You have to negotiate three separate deals if you want access to all of it. This is a different situation than it was in the 80s when Marvel/Epic produced the line of Moebius volumes. So currently Humanoids has the English language rights to the Moebius/Jodo material, Dark Horse to the solo Moebius stuff, and currently no one has the English language rights to the Blueberry stuff. There have been 2 publishers who have tried in the last 10 years, neither went to print. The first was about 10 years ago (not sure of the publisher, may have been Top Shelf/IDW). They had the rights, made an announcement at one of those Diamond retailer conferences of their plans, had their reps reach out to retailers and Diamond, determined their wasn't going to be enough initial preorders for them to even break even on the deal, cancelled their plans and let the rights lapse. The second publisher (who he refrained from naming but dropped hint or two) was in negotiations for the rights when the pandemic hit, and the kerfuffle in the comic industry that caused led to them abandoning their efforts to secure the rights.

But the sense he gets from the people he knows at publishers is that there doesn't seem to be enough interest in the US market fo it to get a print run on the first volume big enough to break even based on what the rightsholders want to charge for the rights to the material, and orders on volumes after the first tend to drop in the US by a magnitude of 33-50% per volume (see DC cancelling several trade series like Spectre after 2 volumes because orders weren't enough), so the hope for volumes beyond the first to be viable was doubtful. And that if there is going to be a US market edition, it would likely have to be a massively expensive and crowd-funded edition for it to be even a break-even proposition for a US publisher, which is a non-starter for the rights holders, who would only accept deal if it involved distribution through the direct market and book trade, so there's an impasse on such a project coming to fruition in a manner that is financially viable for a US publisher and acceptable to the rights holders. But every time there's a nugget of interest that he hears about, he lets me know, usually in the form of I wouldn't pay inflated prices for the Blueberry books just yet, something is in the works. But it's been over 2 years since I heard anything of a nibble from him.

Again, this is all hearsay and speculation based on that hearsay, and my friend has not been as active in the comics field the past couple of years as he's become more involved in coaching soccer for his kids and running the travel team they are on in addition to his day job at the university, and so had relied more on his comic business' partners and employees to do a lot of the networking for their cons securing guests and such, so the info could also be very much out of date.

I keep hoping, as I would love to get some Blueberry volumes in an accessible format rather than trying to hunt down (and pay high prices for) out of print volumes. But understanding the way the rights are parsed out because of co-creators on some of the projects, I'm not holding my breath. Humanoids has a deal in place with Jodo, so they get a large library beyond just the Incal stuff (Metabarons, Technopriests, etc.) to broaden the appeal and make the deal worthwhile. Dark Horse's deal is a continuation of the deals they had to use the Moebius stuff they published in Cheval Noir and the Moebius GNs in the mid-90s, and they've got a lot of that stuff already prepped for print so their production costs to get it to market are a little lower, making it easier to get margins that work for them to make it a profitable venture. The Blueberry rights don't have either of those factors attached to them to make it work for a US publisher. If someone were to do an English language version, I'd put Titan (a UK not a US publisher) as the most likely candidate, as they have a track record of producing English translations of material for both the US and UK markets (such as the current Elric stuff produced for the French market) and have a system in place to make it viable for them, but going back to rumors and hearsay, they may have been the publisher trying to secure the rights when the pandemic hit and the breakdown of those negotiations may have left them cold on the project. But only the rights holders and potential publishing partners or licensees know for certain, and until such a time as a deal is made, we will likely never know for certain.

But now I need to go take a shower because I feel too much like RJ of BC and need to get the rumor mongering stank off.

-M

Thanks for the info 👍🏼 I haven't seen as many interesting releases from Titan/Forbidden Planet as I used to... would be lovely for someone like them to step up! One of the various other EU rights holders could also do it, but their prices for the quality offered can be scary sometimes compared to what we're accustomed to in the English language market.

That explains why the writer of that webpage said six books needed translating, only to then write a list of 7! I'd been wondering what that was about.