Write up on Valérian and Laureline

Literature Review

Originally serialised in 1967, most of the book occurs in the future of 1986, accessed from even further ahead in time, the 28^th century, when the Terran Galactic Empire operates a Spatio Temporal Service, for which Valerian and Laureline are agents. They’re tasked with ensuring that no-one goes back in time to alter the future, which is complicated by the period from 1986 until the 24^th century being dangerous territory about which knowledge is limited due to lack of archive material. It’s known a hydrogen bomb destroyed the Arctic icecap in 1986, and this is where the dangerous Xombol has headed. First Valerian and later Laureline are transported back to a world of disaster unsure of what Xombul plans.

By later standards the art of Jean-Claude Mézières is cluttered, and his admiration for the work of Lucky Luke‘s Morris is very clear, but he’s also very imaginative, and already knows how to use a meticulously detailed view as a quiet moment to vary the pace of a story. Like Morris, he places cartooned figures over sketched, but gloriously detailed backgrounds, and peppers his work with caricatures, here casting Xombul’s captured scientist as Jerry Lewis’ Nutty Professor. His action sequences are kinetic blurs, with the passage of a hovercraft rendered in especially spectacular fashion.

Beyond Blake and Mortimer there was no great tradition of science fiction in European comics before Valerian, and Christin wholeheartedly embraced the culture whereas Edgar Jacobs sidelined it. The City of Shifting Waters is an imaginative look at a post-apocalyptic society, the cover depicting a flooded and almost evacuated New York, and while the later books would show a greater social emphasis, Christin is already giving considerable thought to the dressing that surrounds his plot. This is all the more remarkable for Valerian being only his second comic strip. On the other hand, what was imaginative in 1967 has now been seen countless times, and a scripting mistake is that Christin underlines everything. Better is to come, and the next book is The Empire of a Thousand Planets. Both are also provided as volume one of Valerian: The Complete Collection.

The French science fantasy comic series Valerian and Laureline was first published in 1967 in Pilote magazine. It is about the adventures of a spatio-temporal agent with dark hair and his redheaded female colleague. The series had influences of classic literary science fiction and was a mix of time-travel and space opera plots.

In the world of comics and pop culture of Europe, this was a landmark comic series. It also had an influence on other media such as science fiction films. They included The Fifth Element and Star Wars.

About the main characters

1. Valerian

Valerian travels with Laureline through space and time in the universe. He is from the 28th century born on planet Earth in Galaxity. It is the capital of the Terran Galactic Empire. In the year 2713, he joins the Spatio-Temporal Service. A classical hero, Valerian is strong, kind, and brave.

His training leads him to think that Galaxity is always right. As a result, he follows his superiors’ orders even if they’re against his morals. He does show some reluctance while following these orders. Although the name ‘Valerian’ has a Latin origin, it is believed to have come from Eastern Europe.

This character was created more as a reaction to the popular comic book characters of those times. They were mostly fearless boy-scouts or American superheroes.

2. Laureline

Laureline has a unique sex appeal that combines determination, superior intelligence, and independence. She is a strong French peasant girl from the 11th century. In the debut release Bad Dreams, she rescues her colleague Valerian from the Arelaune forest. However, he is forced to bring Laureline back to Galaxity with him. This happens after she discovers accidentally that he is a time-traveler.

During her time in Galaxity, she receives the Spatio-Temporal Agent training. Upon the completion of this training, she becomes the partner of Valerian. She usually sat in the background in the early stories while Valerian saved the day. With the progress of the series, her position changed. Her rebellious nature came to the fore in Welcome to Alflolol.

3. Mr Albert

Mr Albert is a retired gentleman living in the suburbs of Paris. He is the contact of Galaxity on the 20th-century Earth. Mr Albert has many contacts in the scientific as well as government circles. He also maintains contacts with several individuals whose expertise lie outside the mainstream fields. Mr Albert uses his carrier pigeons for sending messages to some of his contacts.

Always preferring to take his time to act on certain things, he is quite unlike Valerian. He doesn’t get involved in the thick of the action and likes to enjoy the finer things of life. Some of these things are fine wines and gourmet cuisine. Mr Albert first made his appearance in the volume titled Metro Chatelet, Direction Cassiopeia.

4. The Shingouz

These short-furred, brown creatures are aliens. They resemble the flightless birds, but have snouts instead of beaks. Shingouz have a preference for strong alcoholic beverages owing to their high degree of alcohol tolerance. They belong to an extremely capitalist society and always seek a profit from everything they do.

Valerian and Laureline strike up a relationship with three Shingouz. These three alien creatures are especially fond of Laureline. She uses this for her own benefit and strikes some favorable deals with them. The Shingouz made their first appearance in Ambassador of the Shadows.

Valerian and Laureline travel in their Millennium Falcon-like spaceship to the center of an Empire, that is ruled by an evil helmeted priest from some enlightened order. The agents are captured and brought to his temple, which looks like Jabba’s palace. Valerian gets imprisoned in what looks like a block of carbonite, and Laureline ends up in palace party clothes. They escape, gather a rebel fleet and finally confront the priest, who turns out to have a connection to Earth’s past, and a burned face underneath his helmet.

The Land Without Stars (1972) is a very unsubtle metaphor about the battle between the sexes that I enjoyed more than I want to admit. Valerian and Laureline are stranded in a hollow planet, in which two cities are fighting an endless war. One city is a matriarchy and men do all the work, including being sent into war, and the other city is a patriarchy and women do all the work, including being sent into war. Our heroes split up, work their way up into the confidence of the ruling queen and king of the cities, then they both kidnap the queen and king to bring them together, and the two rulers fall in love. The romantic tension between Valerian and Laureline is also stronger here and made precious by them being separated on these missions, and the hollow planet is visualised neatly by the artist.

As science fiction stories I found these comics unremarkable. There’s nothing much wrong with them, yet neither are they especially witty or clever. Although the third story shows hints of something more interesting. A lot happens in them – Valerian and Laureline each have their own adventures and those always come together in a successful cooperation, and it is good that the stories make room for both of these characters to play important roles, but the stories are so plot-focused that they never move beyond a pulp adventure tone. They solve the problems, defeat the antagonists and go back home happy and ready for the next job. A pathos is missing to make an emotional impression on me. I did enjoy each album more than the one before, and I enjoyed the worldbuilding a lot and I heard that that only gets better as the series goes on. I might try a few more of these

The series is about two spatio-temporal agents, Valerian and Laureline. They belong to Galaxity, the capital of Earth in the 28th century. Their most important task is to make sure that no one uses time travel to change the course of history, but also for Earth to establish contact with new civilizations. To help them with these tasks they are in control of a saucer-shaped astroship that can jump in both space and time, sort of like teleporting. The technology in the series is much closer to Star Wars than Star Trek; overly detailed and dirty, sometimes even breaking down. Taking care of their duty usually turns out to be a complicated matter that brings them on an adventurous and meandering path, typically with a lot of bizarre beings and a constant sense of wonder. The series is very imaginative and still have awesome science fiction ideas I have yet to see anywhere else.

Writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières originally created the French series in 1967 and kept it running until 2010, creating some 21 novels. The stories were a bit cliche and naive in the beginning, but as more novels came out the themes became much more sophisticated. Especially the relationship between Valerian and Laureline evolves as he becomes more anti-heroic and insecure while she grows more obstinate and feministic. The stories themselves also get increasingly experimental while never losing the epic feel and the fascinating sense of wonder. At least until the city books.

An example of a quarrel between Valerian and Laureline. That is, usually it’s always Laureline getting mad at Valerian.

So what is it with me and those city books?

Well, chronologically the novels more or less begin in The City of Shifting Waters, Empire of a Thousand Planets, World Without Stars and Welcome to Alflolol, with some cliche good-and-evil adventure, relatively simple diplomatic stories, and that great sense of wonder. It’s not entirely without a feeling of watching something out of the Flash Gordon multiverse. In Birds of the Master, the duo is stranded and then enslaved and terrified by birds of madness – a bleak but fascinating tale.

This is followed by Ambassador of the Shadows which is probably my favorite novel in the entire series. Valerian and Laureline visits Point Central, a vast space station that acts as a meeting place for all the races of the cosmos. Here, Valerian and an ambassador are kidnapped, forcing Laureline to go searching for them. Her adventures through the enormous space station is among the most fascinating pieces of science fiction I have ever read. Just take a look at this:

Page 4 in “Ambassador of the Shadows” where we see the magnificent Point Central close up.

The series continues on strongly with On the False Earths, where Valerian is put through humiliating deaths in bizarre recreations of Earth history. At this point, it’s clear that the creators of the series wanted to make the story even more advanced. I had a hard time understanding it when I first read it as a child. The next novel, Heroes of the Equinox, feels like some sort of parody on the superhero theme, with Valerian taking part in an uneven race against three powerful champions.

And then the two city books arrived – Métro Châtelet, Direction Cassiopeia, followed by Brooklyn Station, Terminus Cosmos. The first couple of times I read these, I didn’t really like them. Valerian stranded on Earth in the 80’s with headaches, constantly belittled by Laureline in their clairvoyant radio conversations. Laureline searching for hints to help Valerian find monsters out of time felt a wee bit too intellectual for my liking. But as time went by, I grew to like it for what it was.

Page 21 in “Brooklyn Station, Terminus Cosmos” where Valerian tries to eliminate a monstrous bird.

And then something happened. Something bad.

From The Ghosts of Inverloch and onward, the series completely lost its magic. From being a groundbreaking science fiction series copied and envied by movies and books throughout time, it turned into nothing but a nostalgic family reunion project. Valerian and Laureline constantly runs into former “friends” – some which really should have been left behind in their original stories – and the stories themselves also felt almost nonsensical. This is the line of novels that proves to me that everyone loses their mojo at one point. Paul McCartney lost it. Stevie Wonder lost it.