European Comic Art

When Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières penned the inaugural story of the science fiction comic series Valérian et Laureline in 1967, they did not expect the series to continue for four decades nor to create the transnational, transmedial impact that it did, from France to the USA – and even Japan. Valérian et Laureline was launched in the second half of the 1960s, a tumultuous time in many Western nations, with major social changes such as Civil Rights legislation and women entering the workplace as never before, but also a time of significant technological advances, notably the space race and the rapid implementation of computing devices. Within the first volume alone, readers of Valérian et Laureline witness these societal upheavals in action with signs of nuclear annihilation, environmental catastrophe, workers’ guilds and novel depictions of multicultural societies akin to the diverse cast of Star Trek, which debuted on American television screens in 1966. The television series’ speculative setting in a distant future was nonetheless firmly anchored in contemporary social and political preoccupations and was groundbreaking in the ways in which it brought subtle political commentary to ‘the ultimate mainstream cultural platform, network television’. This was, then, a pivotal time for SF, reflected in the critical acclaim afforded to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). This film represented a turning point in SF cinema and amply demonstrated that the genre had come of age. It is within wider societal events and also in the context of the increasing acceptance of visual SF as both philosophical and popular that Christin and Mézières's comic series should be appreciated. As SF broadened its scope beyond the human impact of techno-scientific change, this also allowed other culturally specific traditions that engage with the fantastic to flourish, experiment and capture a greater readership.

Published amid post-war shifts in the science fiction (SF) genre, bande dessinée and French society, the French comics Valérian et Laureline emerge as a pivotal work. Written by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières after their time in the American West, the first album (1967–1971) blends nostalgic, American-style space operas with progressive sociopolitical themes of 1960s counterculture. Tracing the changing definitions and public perceptions of both SF and comics, this article suggests that the series opens up new possibilities for visual SF storytelling – especially, but not exclusively, in France. Highlighting speculations surrounding Valérian et Laureline's visual influence on George Lucas's Star Wars (1977), the article concludes that the series’ inception and publication foster a transhistorical and transnational reflection on SF.

This article argues that numerous characteristics of Valérian et Laureline derive from its original context of publication in Pilote and the ways in which Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézière negotiated the norms and constraints of the magazine. By examining the other recurring comics published at the same time as Valérian in Pilote, it seeks to show that the series was conceived as an original way to fill an identified gap in the magazine's generic system, yet opted for stylistic and narrative choices fully compatible with the tacit assumptions regarding Pilote content. The article further highlights the magazine's fascination with technology, and the space race in particular. It argues that Valérian benefited from this enthusiasm, but was also one of the first sites in the magazine to articulate a critical discourse about it.

This article studies how the main protagonists of the French comic book series Valérian et Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières have been developed over the forty years of the series, as characters but also as the foundation of a complex science fiction universe. It offers a striking example of a kind of co-evolution between the innovative drive of science fictional narratives, both on an ontological – Darko Suvin's novum – and on a narratological level, and the constant reinvention of the main characters, whose traits and relationship are at once echoed and remodelled with each new album.

This article looks at the first three stories of Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières Valérian and focuses on the ways in which the series, from its inception, both used and subverted contemporary speculative, graphic and generic tropes. The character of Xombul, a James Bondesque villain, is used as a case study to demonstrate the playful ways in which the creators were employing recognisable types only to confound readers’ expectations. This camp character, bent on cosmic domination and destruction, is abruptly killed off and the series never again features a recurring antagonist. At the same time, Xombul stands to critique certain facets of the reach of the futuristic apparent utopia of Galaxity and consequently prepares the reader to treat the Empire's ‘civilising mission’ with a degree of suspicion.

In this interview, television producer and polymath Peter Kessler reflects on the origins of his love of comics and his developing critical awareness of the artistic dimensions of the medium, which led to one of the first studies of a comics series to be published in the UK, his guide to Astérix. He recounts his association with the Lakes Comics Festival, where, in a productive collaboration, he brought an innovative approach to events, and lifts the veil on the process that enabled comics to breach the walls of the University of Oxford. He shares his views on the role of comics in secondary education, and on transmedial adaptation, and offers an analytical take on the creative resources that are peculiar to comics.

Bande dessinée, 1964–2024, exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2024

Joann Sfar: La Vie dessinée, exhibition at the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, 2024.

Clémentine Deroudille, Thomas Ragon and Paul Salmona, eds, Joann Sfar: La Vie dessinée (Paris: MahJ/Dargaud, 2023). 224 pages. ISBN: 9782205211191 (€35).