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Jean-Claude Mézières (1938 – 2022), here in a picture from 1984
Photo:
AFP
Today it was announced that the great comic artist Jean-Claude Mézières died on January 13, he was 83 years old.
Mézières died in his apartment in Paris' 13th arrondissement;
one floor above is his studio.
A laboratory of the future.
As a German publisher, I was allowed to oversee his work in the 1980s and 1990s, and we had a close friendship for many years.
Mézières' comic albums have taken me on adventurous journeys, guided by an untamed imagination to the end.
He created 22 »Valerian« albums up to 2010.
They are masterpieces of modern European comics.
His artistic beginnings: a story that can actually only be invented.
It begins one night during the final skirmishes between German and Allied troops in Paris.
And it ends in a far distant future.
Two boys, one six years old, the other not quite yet, were among those who sought shelter from the shells in the basement of a house in Saint-Mandé, an eastern suburb, in August 1944.
Jean-Claude Mézières, the younger of the two, whiles away the uncertainty of waiting by drawing pictures on the floor with chalk. Pierre Christin, the other, is entranced by his contemporary's drawings.
Then the war will be over, times will improve, the young will grow up.
Drawing remains Jean-Claude's passion, in 1953 he begins training at the Institute for Applied Arts in Paris.
He wants to become a comic artist and published his first short stories while he was still studying.
After military service, another adventure lures him: he sets off for America to work as a cowboy there.
Pierre Christin has since taken on a teaching position at the University of Utah.
The friends meet again in Salt Lake City in 1965.
Together they go in search of Hollywood's Wild West and undertake tours through the desert landscapes of the USA.
You are fascinated by jazz and American literature.
And they talk about the future.
Mézières talks about his comic book ambitions and suggests that Christin write the stories.
He's skeptical, he doesn't even know how it works.
"It doesn't have to be anything complicated," says Mézières.
"Just write whatever comes to your mind."
While they were still in the USA, their first stories together appeared in the French comic magazine »Pilote«, which had been founded a few years earlier.
Its editor-in-chief René Goscinny quickly recognized Mézières' talent and encouraged the young draftsman.
After his return to France he will contribute his own series.
Mézières would love to draw a western, but it's already in the magazine.
So it becomes science fiction, also a genre of infinite spaces.
French readers are just beginning to discover it.
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Mézières with its famous heroic couple Valerian and Veronique
Photo:
Herve BRUHAT / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
»Valérian« begins in »Pilote« at the end of 1967 and soon leads the two space-time agents Valerian and Veronique – one of the first emancipated heroines in the comic cosmos – from the future of the late 28th century to planet Earth in 1986, in which New York has just sunk under enormous floods.
More adventures follow, in which Mézières creates exotic worlds in dazzling colors with his drawing pen and turns space into a playground for the most bizarre characters.
George Lucas in particular is impressed and uses a number of ideas from "Valerian" for "Star Wars" without being asked.
Luc Besson, who grew up with »Valerian«, is also one of the admirers of the series. In 1991 he hired Mézières for the storyboard and scene designs for »The Fifth Element«. "If you're making a science fiction film, why not do a ›Valerian‹ right away?" Mézières asked the director at the time. In 2017 the time has come: »Valerian – The City of a Thousand Planets« will be the most complex and expensive European film production to date. The film didn't do very well, but I didn't think that had anything to do with Mézières' templates. Personally, I thought the film was great.
Mézières was no less fascinated by the medium of film than by comics, but he also had reservations: "Movies are always about a lot of money, and everyone thinks they can talk you into it," he once said.
»If you make comics, on the other hand, it costs almost nothing.
So most of the time people leave you alone«.