Valérian and Laureline

thumb|285px|Creators of Valérian and Laureline: Eveline Tranlé (colorist), Pierre Christin (writer), Jean-Claude Mézières (illustrator)

Valérian and Laureline (), originally titled Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent () and also commonly known as Valérian, is a French science fiction comics series, created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières. It was first published in Pilote magazine in 1967; the final installment was published in 2010. All of the Valérian stories have been collected in comic album format, comprising some twenty-one volumes plus a short story collection and an encyclopedia.

The series focuses on the adventures of the dark-haired Valérian, a spatio-temporal agent, and his redheaded female colleague, Laureline, as they travel the universe through space and time. Valérian is a classical hero, kind, strong and brave, who follows the orders of his superiors even if he feels, deep down, that it is the wrong thing to do. On the other hand, his partner Laureline combines her superior intelligence, determination and independence with sex appeal. Influenced by classic literary science fiction, the series mixes space opera with time travel plots. Christin's scripts are noted for their humour, complexity and strongly humanist and left-wing liberal political ideas while Mézières's art is characterized by its vivid depictions of the alien worlds and species Valérian and Laureline encounter on their adventures. The series is considered a landmark in European comics and pop culture, and influenced other media as well; traces of its concepts, storylines and designs can be found in science fiction films such as Star Wars and The Fifth Element.

Many of the stories have been translated into several languages, including English. The series has received recognition through a number of prestigious awards, including the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême. An animated television series, Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline, was released in 2007, and a feature film directed by Luc Besson, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, was released in 2017.

Concept and setting

The original setting for the series was the 28th century. Humanity has discovered the means of travelling instantaneously through time and space. The capital of Earth, Galaxity, is the centre of the vast Terran Galactic Empire. Earth itself has become a virtual utopia with most of the population living a life of leisure in a virtual reality dream-state ruled by the benign Technocrats of the First Circle. The Spatio-Temporal Service protects the planets of the Terran Empire and guards against temporal paradoxes caused by rogue time-travellers. Valérian and Laureline are two such spatio-temporal agents.

However, since the end of the story The Wrath of Hypsis (Les Foudres d'Hypsis), in which Galaxity disappears from space-time as a result of a temporal paradox, the pair have become freelance trouble-shooters travelling through space and time offering their services to anyone willing to hire them while also searching for their lost home.

In the first two albums Valérian travels through time in a two-seater device, the XB27, which transports him to the various relay stations that Galaxity has hidden throughout time (e.g. in Les Mauvais Rêves (Bad Dreams) the relay is hidden below a tavern). In subsequent stories Valérian and Laureline use the saucer-shaped Astroship XB982, which made its debut appearance in 1969 in the short story The Great Collector (Le Grand Collectionneur). The astroship is able to travel anywhere using a spatio-temporal jump, a sort of hyperspace drive enabling near-instant transportation anywhere in space and time.

The initial albums were generally straightforward good versus evil adventure stories. However, thanks to Pierre Christin's interest in politics, sociology, and ethnology, as the series progressed the situations typically arose from misunderstandings or ideological differences between various groups that could be resolved through reason and perseverance. The core theme of the stories is an optimistic liberal humanism: the adventures are not about defeating enemies but about exploring, facing challenges, and celebrating diversity.

Another concept that developed was Galaxity as a proxy for Western democracy; contrary to its benign self-image it is actually imperialist and prone to a corrupt real-politik. Other themes include:

Natural simplicity as superior to technological complexity.
Distrust of power and the suppression of individuality. although its origin is Latin, from valere ("to be strong"). Valérian was created by Mézières and Christin as a reaction to the fearless boy-scout (e.g. The Adventures of Tintin) and American superhero characters that were prevalent in comics available in France at the time. Instead they sought to devise a "banal character" with "no extraordinary means of action".

She also has a certain affinity for animals such as the Alflololian Goumon in Welcome to Alflolol, the Grumpy Converter from Bluxte, first seen in Ambassador of the Shadows, and the Tüm Tüm (de Lüm) and the Tchoung-Tracer, both introduced in On the Frontiers (Sur les Frontières).

The name "Laureline" was invented by Mézières and Christin who were seeking a name that would sound "medieval" and "soft". Laureline was initially created just for the first story, Bad Dreams, but recognising that they had a female character who was different from the bimbo types common to comics of the time, Mézières and Christin fell for her and, in response to positive reader feedback, retained her for the subsequent stories. He is a retired gentleman who drives an obsolete Renault 4CV and lives in the suburbs of Paris, France. He maintains a wide range of contacts in government and scientific circles as well as with many experts in fields outside the mainstream such as ufology, telepathy, and sorcery. He is also a pigeon fancier and uses his carrier pigeons to relay messages between some of his contacts. Unlike Valérian he tries to avoid getting involved in the thick of the action and never acts impulsively, always preferring to take his time about things. He enjoys the finer things in life: gourmet cuisine, fine wines and likes to take things easy.

The character of Albert is partially influenced by that of August Faust, the main character in the strip The Extraordinary and Troubling Adventure of Mr August Faust (L'extraordinaire et Troublante Aventure de M. August Faust), written by Fred and drawn by Mézières in 1967.

In the feature film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the Shingouz are replaced with the similar negotiating species Dogan Daguis.

Origins

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Childhood friends Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin had previously collaborated on the comic strip Le Rhum du Punch (Rum Punch) in 1966 while both were living and working in the United States. However, contemporary reviews of the early stories by Jean-Pierre Andrevon describe the books as "Forestian". Mézières and Christin were also heavily influenced by literary science fiction such as that by Isaac Asimov (especially The End of Eternity),

Christin has also cited the whodunit genre—notably novels by Georges Simenon and Ed McBain—as an influence on Valérian since they taught him, as a writer, that all characters in a narrative must be seen to have motivations. The success of these strips would eventually lead to the creation of Métal Hurlant, the highly influential French comics magazine dedicated to science fiction. The influence of Valérian has been noticed in such strips as ' (by Víctor Mora and Carlos Giménez) and Gigantik (by Mora and José Maria Cardona). Sometimes the impact of Valérian has gone beyond mere influence; following a complaint by Mézières, the artist Angus McKie admitted that several panels of his strip So Beautiful and So Dangerous were copied from Ambassador of the Shadows. film critic 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's response upon seeing Star Wars was that he was "dazzled, jealous ... and furious!". As a riposte, Mézières 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 in his library.

Jean-Claude Mézières himself has worked as a concept artist on a number of science fiction film projects. The first of these was in 1984 for director Jeremy Kagan who was attempting to adapt René Barjavel's novel La Nuit des temps (The Ice People). The film was never made. This was followed, in 1985, by a proposed adaptation of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's novel Hard to Be a God for director Peter Fleischmann. This film was eventually finished in 1989 though Mézières's concepts for the film were barely used. The art Mézières produced for both projects was later published in Mézières Extras. Mézières sent a copy of the album to Besson who was inspired to change the background of Korben Dallas, the lead character of The Fifth Element, from a worker in a rocketship factory to that of a taxi driver who flies his cab around a Rubanis-inspired futuristic New York City. Mézières produced further concept drawings for Besson, including flying taxi cabs. He also re-used certain aspects of the design of the space liner seen in the 1988 Valérian album On the Frontiers for the Fhloston Paradise liner seen in second half of the film. The Fifth Element was finally completed and released in 1997. The importance of the four classical elements to the film is similar to the significance the elements have in the two-part Valérian story Métro Châtelet, Direction Cassiopeia and Brooklyn Station, Terminus Cosmos. However, Besson has claimed that he first came up with the idea for the film at the age of 16 which would pre-date the publication of these two albums.

Gary Numan used the name Valerian early in his career.

Awards

Valérian and its creators have also received recognition through a number of prestigious awards. Most notably, in 1984, Jean-Claude Mézières was honoured with the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême for his comics work, including Valérian. Mézières and Christin also received a European Science Fiction Society award for Valérian in 1987 and the album Hostages of the Ultralum (Otages de l'Ultralum) won a Tournesal award, given to the comic that best reflects the ideals of the Green Party, at the 1997 Angoulême International Comics Festival. The encyclopedia of the alien creatures found in the Valérian universe Les Habitants du Ciel: Atlas Cosmique de Valérian et Laureline (The Inhabitants of the Sky: The Cosmic Atlas of Valerian and Laureline) received a special mention by the jury at the 1992 Angoulême International Comics Festival in the Prix Jeunesse 9–12 ans (Youth Prize 9–12 years) category.

Valérian has also been nominated for a Haxtur Award in 1995 for The Circles of Power and for a Harvey Award in 2005 for The New Future Trilogy, an English-language compilation of three of the albums.

Publication history

Original publication

Valérian first appeared on 9 November 1967 in issue #420 of the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote, and every Valérian story from Bad Dreams to The Wrath of Hypsis was initially serialised in Pilote. The second Valérian story, The City of Shifting Waters (La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes), was the first to be collected in graphic novel album format by Dargaud. Since On the Frontiers, every Valérian story has debuted in album format. Seven short stories were also published in the digest-sized Super Pocket Pilote in 1969 and 1970 and later collected in Across the Pathways of Space (Par Les Chemins De l’Espace) in 1997. The series was originally published under the title Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent. However, with the publication of The Order of the Stones in 2007, the series now goes under the title Valérian and Laureline.

On 22 January 2010, the last album, L'OuvreTemps (The Time Opener), was published. With this album the authors concluded the entire comic series with the intention to prevent the series from becoming weak, or staggering behind newer comics. However, Christin has written a 270-page Valérian and Laureline novel, Valérian et Laureline: Lininil a disparu (Valérian and Laureline: Lininil Has Disappeared), and indicated that Valérian and Laureline will continue to live on in a yet unspecified form.

English translations

The first Valérian album to be translated into English was Ambassador of the Shadows which was serialised across four issues of the magazine Heavy Metal in 1981 (Volume 4, Number 10 (January 1981) to Volume 5, Number 1 (April 1981)).

Ambassador of the Shadows was later republished in English in album format as were World Without Stars, Welcome to Alflolol and Heroes of the Equinox by the short-lived Dargaud-USA and Dargaud-Canada between 1981 and 1984 and in the United Kingdom by Hodder-Dargaud in 1984 and 1985.

In November 2004, iBooks published Valérian: The New Future Trilogy, collecting the albums On the Frontiers, The Living Weapons and The Circles of Power in one volume reduced to standard American graphic novel size. These were the only Valérian stories iBooks published and the company has since declared bankruptcy.

Since July 2010, UK publisher Cinebook has been publishing English language editions of Valérian. These began at a rate of one volume every six months. However, as the cinematic release of Luc Besson's film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets approached, the rate increased to one every three months. Twenty-two volumes had been published by the end of 2017. Pursuant the individual softcover title releases, the publisher announced in December 2016 a complete hardcover book series, aka "Intégrales", of Valérian, slated to launch in 2017 as Valerian - The Complete Collection. Completed in 2018, each outing in the seven-volume series collects 3-4 titles of the original individual book releases. An international effort, Cinebook's release was, save for the language, identical to the ones concurrently released in French, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil only), and Standard Chinese.

In other languages

Many of the Valérian stories have, be it in part or in whole as a series, been translated from their original French into several other languages besides English, including German (as Valerian und Veronique), Dutch (as Ravian: Tijd/ruimte-agent), the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish) (as Linda og/och Valentin), Finnish (as Valerian ja Laureline and previously as Avaruusagentti Valerianin seikkailuja), Spanish, Portuguese (as Valérian, agente espácio-temporal), Serbian (as Valerijan), Italian, Turkish, Polish, Indonesian and Standard Chinese.

An animated series entitled Time Jam: Valerian and Laureline made its debut on France 3 in France on 20 October 2007. In total, forty 26-minute episodes have been made. The series is a Franco–Japanese co-production, directed by Philippe Vidal.

The scripts were written by a French team under the supervision of Peter Berts; while Charles Vaucelles was responsible for the realisation of the characters and Vincent Momméja was responsible for the design of the locations and spacecraft. Three trailers were released to promote the series: the first on 24 April 2006, the second on 10 October 2006 and the third on 30 August 2007.

The series differs from the original comics in that Valerian comes from the year 2417, instead of 2720, and meets Laureline in the year 912 instead of 1000. Whereas in the comics Valerian takes Laureline back to the 28th century without any trouble, in the animated series this results in Earth disappearing from the Solar System.

According to Animation World Network, "Time Jam - Valerian & Laureline sets out to answer the question: Where on Earth has Earth gone? Valerian and Laureline, our two young heroes, seem to be the only representatives of the human race in the unsafe galaxy where the nightmarish Vlagos are conspiring to control the world. Sent out on an assignment by the head of STS (the Spatial-Temporal Service), Valerian and Laureline discover the existence of a time-portal, a mysterious phenomenon, which may hold the key to the recovery of Earth. The series from Dargaud Marina mixes 2D and CGI animation with an anime touch". The series has also been sold to Belgium, Spain, Israel and Morocco. The film was shot in January 2016 and stars Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne. It was released on 21 July 2017.

Notes

Sources

Valérian publications in Pilote at BDoubliées

External links

Jean-Claude Mézières official website
Valérian entry on Cool French Comics
Valérian et Laureline fan site
Valerian@uBC at Fumetti.com
Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline official series blog
Valérian et Laureline animated series official site
Valerian & Laureline Series official website
Valerian & Laureline episodes on VALERIAN & LAURELINE ENGLISH OFFICIAL
Valérian: Spaceships, Simulacra and Star Wars
Valerian. Storie di un futuro amico at "Spigoli&Culture spigol@ture"