Valerian and Laureline v20: âThe Order of the Stonesâ
Artist: Jean-Claude Mezieres
Colorist: E. Tranle
Lettering: Design Amorandi
Translator: Jerome Saincantin
Published by: Dargaud/Cinebook
Number of Pages: 50
Original Publication: 2007
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Hunh. So, that happenedâŚ
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What Just Happened, Exactly?
Beats me.
Hereâs what Iâm guessing: Christin and Mezieres came back together to create one final Valerian story arc to finish the series. Â They knew it would take three books to finish it. Â They knew they wanted to bring back lots of characters from previous volumes. Â They knew they wanted it to include some BIG DAMNED IDEAS. Â And given the history of the series and the expectations theyâve created from previous much-beloved stories, they felt this one had to go out with a bang. It would have to involve plots and double-crossing and questionable characters and new nearly-cosmic notions.
Iâm not a cosmic comic kind of guy.
What you get from mixing that all together is a book like this one: a muddled mess where everyone seems to be making things up as they go along, where a simple idea to get the two main characters to the deus ex machine of the entire series is expanded to fill 48 pages, by splitting the story up into at least four different points of view.
In short, you get a book that has a few strong moments, but drowns itself in self-referential stuff that youâd have to be a series expert to get, while piling on new things left and right in vague hand-wavey ways.
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What Is the Story?
Laureline and Valerian make it into The Great Void. Â The new bad guys â giant stone monoliths named Wolochs who may have been behind previous bad things in the series, too! â attack and strand them there. Â The get out. Â They go back. Â The Big Bad Guys subcontract out their dirty work to three prior villains of the series, who take particular glee in hunting down earthâs favorite and most resilient children.
But are the subcontracted bad guys in over their heads? Â Are Valerian and Laureline just walking into their trap? Â Is anyone chasing after what they truly want to find? Does any of this matter when thereâs a â wait for it! â Time Opener involved? But, wait, we canât get to the Time Opener yet. Itâs right there, but itâs displaced from time and space or something, so weâll have to get to it in the next and final volume.
Laureline has a plan. Â Valerian is now completely a buffoon, and Laurelineâs brains are the only thing keeping him and their mission alive. Â (In the next volume, by the way, the roles partially reverse. Valerian becomes the put-together one with a master plan, while Laureline is left behind.)
Donât ask what her plan is, though. Thatâs what volume 21 is all about.
Oh, and lots of people die, including one gruesomely just barely off-panel, but in a way that youâd never know it was him. Â Just a disembodied arm. Â Mezieres prides himself on his direction, but that bit feel like a major oversight.
Knowing Pierre Christinâs work, Iâm sure thereâs a larger socio-political point behind all of this. Â Iâm sure the concepts of evil subcontracting its work and people being unwittingly used as seen in this volume are a harsh criticism of politics at the time in France or something. Â I donât know. Â It just doesnât read terribly well to me today. Itâs just too much piled up on each other, unnecessarily. Â I miss those isolated single-album adventures.
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Mezieresâ Magnificent Art
Thereâs a great interview with Jean Claude Mezieres in âThe Comics Journalâ #260 (May/June 2004) that I read over the summer. Â Gary Groth and Gil Kane conduct the interview, which dates back to the late 1980s.
Mezieresâ attitude towards comics is⌠interesting.  âValerianâ is the only book heâs ever drawn. He has no interest in drawing any other.  He doesnât see himself as an artist.  He sees himself as a director.  I think he also enjoys the design work â and did lots of it for movies â but doesnât see himself as an illustrator.  He professes to not enjoying drawing and never drawing âfor funâ in his spare time. He wants to serve the story and get out.
As if to keep himself interested in drawing the series, he inserts various new styles into his art almost at random. Â The opening scene in this volume has characters explaining what dream world they hope to find in The Big Void, and those worlds are painted into the backgrounds. Â A scene later in the book with the villains of the piece is entirely painted over the black ink lines. Â Why? Â No good reason. Â I guess it just seemed like a good idea at the time.
That all said, there are some great and memorable moments in this book, all of which come from Mezieresâ artwork. Â Whether itâs the dramatic shadows used with the Molochs, or the foggy windy air of alien planets, or the design of space ships and environmental suits, Mezieres has some great tools in his art box at this point. But itâs not often the panel-to-panel storytelling that I remember of his, with a few exceptions where he did interesting page layouts.
That said, Na-Zultra returns in this book as one of the Big Bad Villains, and she still looks ridiculous. Â Sheâs not well designed, and her head has a strange skinny flat appearance to it. It still bugs me today as much as it did when she first appeared in the book.
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Two Bright Spots
The new character named Molto Cortes, naturally.
And how about this for a Star Wars reference in the series? Â Goodness knows Star Wars owes Valerian a credit or two, so this reference feels fun.
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Recommended?
No, not really. Â Not unless youâve read everything else so far, in which case youâve come this far, you only have two books to go, so you might as well finish things off. Â Certainly donât start here, where you have 10 or 12 volumes of continuity weighing down the work.
(This is Pipeline BD 100 review #110.)
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Iâve always been meaning to read the whole series in one sitting. Now that weâre pretty sure itâs done for good, maybe itâs time. Although we never know, sometimes creators strapped for money do crazy things. For lack of a decent Integrale in French Iâll have to go volume by volume I guess. Itâs great of you to stick all the way to the last album. Iâm not sure I like the idea of having one big bad retconned at the last minute as having engineered âeverythingâ but Mezières & Christin have a fairly good track record so Iâll give them the benefit of the doubt and see how it goes.
Funny that someone like you whoâs such a Savage Dragon diehard fan doesnât like cosmic stuff, since Larsen goes that way a few time in the course of his Image series.
Then it wouldnât surprise you to find out which are my least favorite parts of âSavage Dragon.â Actually, I think I still kind of resent everything thatâs happened after issue #50 and parts of the world started getting swapped out and duplicate characters happened. Oh, and also Norse gods. I never got into them, either. Even Walter Simonson canât get me into that. I have a mental block, I guess.
But youâre right â thereâs always the possibility that one of their kids will change the game plan just before they die and cause a public brawl with lawyers involved. đ And the Big Bad Retcon thing doesnât cover quite ALL the bases, just a few. But I think the hint is that thereâs more at work there.