Jean-Claude Mézières (; 23 September 1938 – 23 January 2022) was a French comics artist and illustrator. Born in Paris and raised in nearby Saint-Mandé, he was introduced to drawing by his elder brother and influenced by comics artists such as Hergé, Andre Franquin and Morris and later by Jijé and Jack Davis. Educated at the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art, he worked upon graduation as an illustrator for books and magazines as well as in advertising. A lifelong interest in the Wild West led him to travel to the United States in 1965 in search of adventure as a cowboy, an experience that would prove influential on his later work.

Returning to France, Mézières teamed up with his childhood friend, Pierre Christin, to create Valérian and Laureline, the popular, long-running science fiction comics series for which he is best known and which influenced many science fiction and fantasy films, including Star Wars. Mézières contributed as a conceptual designer on several motion picture projects, most notably the 1997 Luc Besson film, The Fifth Element, as well as continuing to work as an illustrator for newspapers, magazines and in advertising. He also taught courses on the production of comics at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis.

Mézières received international recognition through numerous awards, most notably the 1984 Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême.

Biography

Early life and career

Raised in the Saint-Mandé area in the suburbs of Paris, Jean-Claude Mézières met his friend and frequent collaborator Pierre Christin at the age of two in an air-raid shelter during World War II. He was first inspired to draw by the influence of his elder brother who, aged fourteen, had a drawing published in the magazine OK. Mézières' initial inspiration came from such OK strips as Arys Buck by Uderzo, Kaza the Martian by Kline and Crochemaille by Erik. At the age of sixteen, he had attempted to travel to Mexico with Jean Giraud, whose mother lived there, but was prevented by his parents.

Mézières' experiences in the United States have provided the inspiration for several magazine articles published in Pilote, Tintin, and GEO magazines as well as two books – Olivier chez les cow-boys (Olivier with the Cowboys), a children's book written by Pierre Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières about a visit Christin's son Olivier paid to the ranch Mézières worked on in Utah and Adieu, rêve américain... (Farewell, American dreams...), again written by Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières, a nostalgic look back at their time in the United States.

Valérian

On his return from the United States, Mézières visited the offices of Pilote magazine to see René Goscinny and Jean-Michel Charlier. Goscinny put him to work on L'extraordinaire et Troublante Aventure de Mr. August Faust (The Extraordinary and Troubling Adventure of Mr August Faust), written by Fred. This would be the first serialised strip that Mézières would work on. Due to the lack of artistic freedom he was given (because Fred's script came with all the strip panels already blocked out), Mézières found this a difficult assignment.

The first Valérian adventure, Les Mauvais Rêves (Bad Dreams) appeared in Pilote in 1967, with the first installment of the story published on 9 November in issue 420, and ran for fifteen issues, concluding in issue 434 on 15 February 1968. Bad Dreams shares an artistic style similar to that of Mézières and Christin's earlier collaborations for Pilote, with influences from Franquin, Morris and Mad magazine artist Jack Davis. Also introduced in this story was Laureline, a peasant girl from the Middle Ages. Originally intended to appear in only one story, the popular reaction to the character meant that she was retained for subsequent stories and she has since become elevated to the main star of the series.

Bad Dreams was followed by La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes (The City of Moving Waters) and its sequel Terre en Flammes (Earth in Flames) in 1968 and 1969 respectively. Jean-Pierre Andrevon best sums up Mézières' style at this time in his 1970 review of the story where he describes Valérian as a "kind of Lucky Luke of space-time". the last album, L'Ouvre Temps, was published in January 2010. It is one of publisher Dargaud's top five best-selling comics series.

Work in film and television

Mézières was always as interested in the cinema as he was in drawing. In 1957, he began work with Jean Giraud on creating an animated Western. Dissatisfied with the results, the project was abandoned after 45 seconds of animation had been completed. The same year he shot a short, ten-minute, 8 mm film, La vie d'un Rêve (Life is a Dream), with Pierre Christin.

thumb|250px|right|Concept art created by Mézières for Peter Fleischmann's Hard to be a God

In October 1985, Mézières was contacted by the German director Peter Fleischmann who proposed to adapt Russians Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's 1964 novel Hard to Be a God into a film. This was to be the first major German-Soviet co-production. Mézières travelled to Moscow to join the production team and also to Uzbekistan where it was proposed to shoot the film. Travelling from there to Munich, he produced several concept drawings and paintings over a three-month period before the project was suspended due to funding difficulties. At this point Mézières left the production and returned to France. Filming was eventually scheduled to begin in April 1986 in Kyiv and Mézières re-joined the production, creating storyboards for some scenes. However, at this time the Chernobyl disaster occurred only 100 km from Kyiv and production was again halted. The film was eventually finished in 1989, but Mézières' concepts were barely used. Again, many of Mézières' designs were later published in Les Extras de Mézières.

Other works

thumb|150px|left|Art created by Mézières for a France-Rail advertising campaign

At the same time as he was working on Valérian and various film and television projects, Mézières also worked extensively producing illustrations and comic strips for magazines and newspapers such as Pilote, Métal Hurlant and Le Monde, as well as covers for books and art for advertising campaigns.

Another collaboration with Christin was Canal Choc, a series of four albums about a television news team investigating strange phenomena. Mézières did not draw these albums but supervised a team of artists including Philippe Aymond and Hugues Labiano.

Death

Mézières died on 23 January 2022, at the age of 83.

Legacy

thumb|Jean-Claude Mézières in February 2007

Mézières' arrival on the French comics scene with Valérian was contemporaneous with the debuts of other notable French science-fiction strips including Luc Orient by Greg and Eddy Paape and Lone Sloane by Philippe Druillet. The success of these strips eventually led to the creation of Métal Hurlant, the highly influential French comics magazine dedicated to science fiction. Mézières' influence has been noticed in such strips as ' (by Víctor Mora and Carlos Giménez) and Gigantik (by Mora and José Maria Cardona). Jean-Philippe Guerand and the newspaper Libération, have noted certain similarities between the Valérian albums and the Star Wars film series. Both series are noted for the "lived-in" look given to their various settings and for the diverse alien creatures they feature. Mézières' response upon seeing Star Wars was that he was "dazzled, jealous... and furious!". As a riposte, he produced an illustration for Pilote magazine in 1983 depicting the Star Wars characters Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa meeting Valérian and Laureline in a bar surrounded by a bestiary of alien creatures typical of that seen in both series. "Fancy meeting you here!" says Leia. "Oh, we've been hanging around here for a long time!" retorts Laureline. Mézières has since been informed that Doug Chiang, design director on The Phantom Menace, kept a set of Valérian albums and Les Extras de Mézières in his library.

  • 1987: Winner, with Pierre Christin, European Science Fiction Society award for Valérian
  • 1992: Special mention by the jury, with Pierre Christin, Prix Jeunesse 9–12 ans (Youth Prize 9–12 years), at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, for Les Habitants du Ciel, an encyclopaedia of the alien creatures that have appeared in the Valérian series
  • 1995: Nominated, with Pierre Christin, for the Haxtur Award for Best Short Comic Strip, at the Salón Internacional del Cómic del Principado de Asturias (International Comics Convention of the Principality of Asturia, Spain), for the Valérian album The Circles of Power
  • 1997: Winner, with Pierre Christin, Tournesol Award given to the comic that best reflects the ideals of the French Green Party, for the Valérian album Hostages of the Ultralum
  • 2018: Max & Moritz Prize from Comic-Salon Erlangen (Germany) for Special Prize for outstanding life's work

Selected publications

  • The Valérian and Laureline (1967–2019) – drawn by Mézières, written by Pierre Christin. The classic comic strip series depicting the adventures of spatio-temporal agent Valérian and his feisty redhead companion, Laureline, as they travel through space and time is Mézières' most widely known and best-selling work. With the exception of the short stories originally published in the digest-sized Super Pocket Pilote spin-off publication of Pilote, all albums have been translated into English.
  • Mon Amérique à moi (My Very Own America) (1974) – an 8-page autobiographical strip, first published in Pilote, recounting Mézières' time in America in the mid-1960s.
  • An English translation was published in black and white in 1996 as a part of European Readings of American Popular Culture an academic publication edited by John Dean and Jean-Paul Gabillet.
  • Mezi avant Mézières (1981) – a collection of Mézières' early work for magazines such as Pilote.
  • Mézières et Christin avec... (1983) – compilation of early work, including the first publication of the Valérian story Bad Dreams in an album as well as Mon Amérique à moi and the strips Mézières produced for Métal Hurlant.
  • Lady Polaris (1987) – an illustrated novel written by Pierre Christin, set against the backdrop of the great seaports of Europe, about the mysterious sinking of the cargo vessel, the Lady Polaris.
  • Les Extras de Mézières (Mézières' Extras) (1995) – a miscellaneous collection of works Mézières produced in the 1980s and early 1990s. Includes examples of Mézières' advertising work as well as concept designs for film projects.
  • Les Extras de Mézières No. 2: Mon Cinquieme Element (Mézières' Extras No. 2: My Fifth Element) (1998) – a collection of the concept drawings Mézières produced for the film The Fifth Element.
  • Adieu rêve américain (Farewell American Dreams) – part of the Correspondences de Pierre Christin series. Mézières and Christin reminisce about their American adventures.

References

  • Jean-Claude Mézières official site
  • Mézières biography on Lambiek Comiclopedia