He is a comic book legend who has bowed out.
The father of Valérian and Laureline Jean-Claude Mézières, co-creator of the famous saga, died on the night of Saturday to Sunday, announced his publisher Dargaud to AFP.
"The name of Mézières is first associated with the characters of Valérian and Laureline, of which he was the co-creator and which he drew for more than 50 years alongside his screenwriter and childhood friend, Pierre Christin
", recalls the editor.
Appeared in Pilote magazine in 1967, Valérian and Laureline are two space-time agents who live in the future, in Galaxity.
Their adventures spanned 22 albums, the last of which
L'OuvreTemps
was released in 2010. During their space adventures, the duo lost their planet and sought to rejoin their time.
To do this, they had to obtain the OpenTime, a metaphor for Pandora's box.
Read also
Valérian
: Christin and Mézières talk about Luc Besson's crazy project
With this high point, Jean-Claude Mézières and his accomplice Pierre Christin wanted to “
close the loop in an elegant way, while we are still in good shape. Valérian is a great space opera whose ferment is finally the couple of Valérian and Laureline
”, they confided at the time to
Figaro
. The temptation to return to it had pushed the accomplices to finally design a special album The future is advanced. The second and last volume was released in 2019. Jean-Claude Mézières admitted certain signs of weakness that he feared so much. "I have less and less (...) grace, spontaneity," he pointed to BFMTV.
Their emblematic tandem had the right to a film adaptation under the leadership of Luc Besson, with Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne.
But their Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets had not found the expected public and critical success.
This failure had further weakened the studio of the director of
Big Blue
, EuropaCorp.
Read alsoLuc Besson: “
Valérian
is not an American blockbuster”
The cinema, great vampire
However, Jean-Claude Mézières influenced many authors after him. From George Lucas and his
Star Wars
to James Cameron and
Avatar.
“From
The Empire of a Thousand Planets
to
Welcome to Alflolol, remarked Mézières,
we have become accustomed to cinema, this great vampire, borrowing from us our themes and the imagery of the future that we have put in place over the past forty years
.
But we will say that it is the price of success. »
The native of Saint-Mandé also worked in illustration, photography, cinema, notably on
The Fifth Element
by Luc Besson, and television.
"His high standards, his energy, his strong personality, his benevolence, his simplicity, his joie de vivre, his curiosity, made him a precious and deeply endearing being"
, commented Dargaud.
