Valerian and Laureline v19 At the Edge of the Great Void cover detail

Valerian and Laureline: A Pipeline Portal

In 2017, I focused this website on European comics. One of the series that I started on was “Valerian and Laureline.” I had two reasons for this series, in particular.

First, I hadn’t read it before so it was all new to me.

Second, there was a big budget summer tent pole movie scheduled to come out six months later.  Wouldn’t it be great to read the series before seeing the movie?

Imagine, also, what a boost it would be to the popularity of the site when all those new fans came pouring in after the wild success of the movie!

Not everything in life goes according to plan…

I enjoyed reading and then talking about the book, though, so there’s that.

Valerian and Laureline: In the Beginning…

The series began with a very Monster of the Week kind of vibe to it.  Each book was standalone. They were true science fiction tales with messages, whether big or small.  Valerian and Laureline would end up on a different planet or location in each book and have to fight to survive and get out of there.  The aliens were voluminous and well designed.

The first book was rough.  It was way overwritten, which is something I think Pierre Christin picked up on right away, because things only got better after that first mistake.

From there, the daring pair found themselves on locations that featured men versus woman, an all-knowing entity keeping the local populating in check through fear, a diplomatic crisis on a space station, a planet of superheroes, and more.

These are my favorite of the books.  If you’re a first time reader, starting with “Ambassador of the Shadows” or, if you’re a big superhero fan, “Heroes of the Equinox” is the way to go.  The movie that came out that summer may have been titled more like “The Empire of a Thousand Planets,” but was based most closely on “Ambassador of the Shadows.”       

Valerian and Laureline v1 The City of Shifting Waters cover
Valerian and Laureline: The Land Without Stars cover
Valeria and Laureline v5: Birds of the Master cover
Valerian and Laureline v7 On the False Earths cover detail
Valerian 9 Heroes of the Equinox cover

Here Comes the Continuity

This is where the book starts to implement more continuity. It begins with a two part adventure.  It’s starting to set up a lot of the characters and places that will pay off in the final run of the series in the next part.

These aren’t bad books, by any stretch of the imagination.  I loved “Hostages of Ultralum” and “The Circles of Power,” for two examples.  Most of these books are still standalone adventures, complete stories in one book. But they’re starting to fit into a bigger narrative now.

The covers also look very blue:

Valerian and Laureline v9 Chatelet Station Destination Cassiopeia cover
Valerian v10: Brooklyn Line Terminus Cosmos cover

Valerian and Laureline v11: Ghosts of Interloch cover
v12 The Wrath of Hypsis cover image
Valerian and Laureline v13 On the Frontiers cover image
Valerian v15 The Living Weapons cover
Valerian and Laureline The Circles of Power v15 cover
Valerian t16 Hostages of Ultralum cover
valerian v18 cover In Uncertain Times

The Fight to the Finish

The last three books in the series compose one big adventure.  This is where everything — everything — going back to the very first story get tied together.  Christin pulls out all the stops and brings back as many characters as he needs to.  This is about the missing Earth and finding it, with a big bang of a finish that provoked some controversy of its own.

Valerian and Laureline v19 At the Edge of the Great Void cover by Jean Claude Mezieres
Valerian v20 Order of the Stones cover by Jean Claude Mezieres and E. Tranle
Valerian and Laureline v21 The Time Opener cover by Mezieres

The Second Ending

They just couldn’t leave well enough alone…

In 2013 and 2018, Christin and Mezieres came back for a pair of books that consisted mostly of short stories to fill in gaps or tell stories of alternate realities.  They kept the purity of the original 21 volumes intact as a distinct story, but added some filler material.

And then, at the end of “The Future is Waiting,” they wrote themselves a new ending.

Theoretically, these are now the “final” books in the series, and they leave a clear path for new creators to continue with the characters, if they so wish.

Valerian and Laureline v22: Memories of the Future cover by Mezieres
Valerian and Laureline v23: The Future is Waiting cover

The Others

This is the miscellaneous section, for reasons that should become obvious as I go over them:

Volume 0 "Bad Dreams" in French cover

“Les Mauvais Rêves” (“Bad Dreams”) is the short story that started everything.  It came out years before the first volume, was drawn in a different style, and never made it into an album on its own.  It’s the origin story of the series, telling the tale of when Valerian met Laureline on earth in the distant past.

While they never found away to pad it out to make an album on its own, an English translation of the story does appear in the first “Complete Collection” volume.  It collects the first three albums as well as this story.

It’s somewhat amusing to see Mezieres drawing in a style for the story that’s much closer to Franquin’s than his own.

“Shingouzlooz Inc.” is a “Valerian and Laureline” tale by Wilfrid Lupano and Mathieu Lauffray that stands on its own.  It doesn’t directly tie into the normal continuity of the series.  It’s a visually powerful outing by Laufrray with a fun story from Lupano.

There is another book in this vein that Manu Larcenet did. It’s not available in English as of the time of this writing. I hope someone translates that eventually…




The Complete Collected Editions

Cinebook is collecting the entire series into a set of hardcover books, each containing three volumes from the series, in order.

The first book contains books 1 and 2, along with the “Bad Dreams” (technically, volume 0) and some extra story pages.  Given that these books started coming out in time for the movie, there’s a feature interview with Luc Besson to go along with the comics.

Subsequent volumes contain more text pages, including biographies of Christin and Mezieres.

I love the covers on this series.  They’re well designed and keep a consistent color scheme.  Plus, they just look cool. Mezieres’ painted work is always a treat. 

Seven volumes are out so far. I presume there’s an eighth and final edition expected in the first half of 2020.

(Click on the covers to buy a book on Amazon. Yes, these are Affiliate links.  Won’t cost you any extra, but helps to keep the lights on around here.)

Valerian Complete v1
Valerian Complete v2 by Cinebook
Valerian Complete v3 by Cinebook
Valerian Complete v4 by Cinebook
Valerian Complete v5 by Cinebook
Valerian Complete v6 by Cinebook
Valerian Complete v7 by Cinebook

The 2017 Movie:Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Luc Besson, director of “The Fifth Element,” seemed like a natural to make the movie.  (Jean Claude Mezieres even worked on that movie.)  Plus, he’s French and a lifelong fan of the series.  There was a very good chance that the movie wouldn’t stink.

I mean, just check out the initial trailer. It’s pretty cool:

I even made a brief return to ComicBookResources.com CBR.com to write a couple of articles marking the occasion of the movie’s release. One gives you the background you need to know going into the movie, while the other gave my reading suggestions for what I thought you might enjoy if you were new to the series.

The movie was savaged that summer when it opened.  The negative commentary started with the trailers. People went in looking to hate it, and they did.

While it’s not a perfect movie, I thought it was a good movie.  I even went so far as to make the case that it’s better than “Star Wars: A New Hope.” People love whiney Luke, but they couldn’t stand understated Valerian?  That’s silly.

Valerian and Laureline movie promo shot

I wrote a review of the movie after I finally saw it, late in its run in August.

“Valerian” is a part of that cultural difference. If you’re at all familiar with the comic series, you’ll feel right at home with the movie. It has similar proportions of character-based versus environment-based storytelling. If you’re looking for a Hollywood blockbuster, you’ll still get about 80% of the way there. So I’m stuck with thinking the failure of this movie commercially has more to do with people’s pre-conceived notions about the film than what is actually up there on the screen.

I wrote an essay on the reasons why I thought the movie didn’t succeed in America, while it did great in Europe, particularly Germany and France, not to mention China.  I also did a video version of that essay, as I was making videos for YouTube at that time.  Looking back on it now, I really like the opening to this video.  I laughed at it all over again.

The Franchise’s Film Future?

Luc Besson has said he would love to do a sequel, and has already written it.  I could have sworn I read somewhere that the second movie’s budget would be considerably smaller, but I can’t find a link for that now.

However, the negative reaction to this movie combined with his own personal issues means that we’ll likely never get that movie.

Maybe in ten years, someone will decide to reboot the franchise and give it another go? There’s so much great material to pull from that it seems a shame to give up on it so soon.