It has been 55 years since a comic series began that has since told amazing stories and made history: “Valérian”, drawn by Jean-Claude Mézières, written by Pierre Christin. In Germany, this science fiction saga only got to know you six years later, in 1973 in the now legendary but long-dead “Zack-Magazine”, but in this country you were decades ahead of France in another matter: the series title was in German "Valerian and Veronique" from the beginning, because what distinguished the plot was an unusually strong woman as the second main character. This demonstrative appreciation of her role was only reproduced in French in 2007, when "Valérian" was renamed "Valérian et Laureline" (the latter is Veronique's French name) for her fortieth birthday.Belated Feminism.
Andrew Plathaus
Responsible editor for literature and literary life.
Follow I follow
That was not the fault of the two authors.
Mézières, born in 1938, put his drawing skills, trained in advertising illustrations, at the service of the scenarios of the Christian of the same age and consequently created a comic heroine from his emancipated Laureline whose advantages were not limited to appearance as was previously the case.
If there had already been the "Bechdel Test" for sexism in popular narrative forms, named after the American comic artist Alison Bechdel, "Valérian" would not have done well because there was no other important woman besides Laureline, but she had something to say, and the beautiful Valérian listened to her attentively.
Laureline was the first serious European comic book heroine to be taken seriously.
And Mézières the first serious European science fiction comic artist, years before Moebius, who owes him a great deal, above all the architectural visions of cities and the vegetal proliferation of foreign worlds. Both were close friends and in the 1970s they drove each other to graphic heights that anticipated everything that defines our idea of
space operas
today . Coming out of the first French cinema release of Star Wars in 1977, Mézières reportedly said, "You could call it a 'Valérian' adaptation." He was right, and George Lucas has the influence of French sci-fi comics on his cycle also never denied.
Other cinematic successes in Mézières optics were "Blade Runner" and "The Fifth Element".
Mézières worked on the latter, and twenty years later the director Luc Besson thanked him by actually filming “Valérian” – unfortunately a financial failure, although one had hoped for a whole cinema saga.
Twenty-two albums offered enough material for it;
the last one came out in 2013: “Souvenirs de Futurs”, and that too would have been a great title for everything we owe to Mézières.
He died on Monday night, eighty-three years old, but eternally young as a visionary.