The worlds of comics and science fiction in mourning. The author and designer Jean-Claude Mézières, co-creator of the space adventures of Valérian and Laureline with Pierre Christin and Évelyne Tranlé, died on the night of January 22 to 23 at the age of 83 according to his publisher Dargaud , who salutes "his requirement, his energy, his strong personality, his benevolence, his simplicity, his joie de vivre, his curiosity" in a press release.

In 2016, we had the great pleasure of meeting the artist, alongside Pierre Christin, on the sidelines of the promotion of the film Valérian by Luc Besson. The opportunity to discuss with the duo their meeting and their collaboration with the filmmaker, the comparison between their universe and that of American Comics, the profound influence of the latter on Pop Culture and on the genre of SF, in particular the space-opera codes that a certain George Lucas will more than largely feed on for Star Wars...

AlloCiné: How did you meet Luc Besson? Does it date from your collaboration on "The Fifth Element"? Jean-Claude Mézières: We've known each other for about 25 years. Luc contacted me in 1990/1991 to tell me that he was preparing a science fiction film, that of course he knew my comics and that he wanted me to work for him. I discovered that he was also a real connoisseur of Valerian and that he was someone who was interested in both comics and sci-fi atmospheres, which had been my workhorse since 15/20 years old. Our collaboration therefore went very well on The Fifth Element. I even passed him the flying taxi, the "Limouzingue" which S'Traks was the driver in the album Les Cercles du Pouvoir. What was your level of involvement with the film "Valérian et la Cité des a thousand planets"? Pierre Christin: Going from comics, which is a fairly microscopic art in some ways and especially by the means that are put into it, to cinema, which is a gigantic art in particular for this film, it's in any case change of profession, nature and scope, and it is therefore necessarily something very different.

Luc Besson arrived with his screenplay - since he's always the one who writes his own screenplays - and he was kind enough to show it to us so that we could comment. It happened at full speed since we saw each other on a Friday and he asked me to read it for Monday morning.

So I had one of the busiest weekends of my life. His script was perfectly worked out and worked very well based on what we had done. Anyway, it wasn't a question of going back to the script to impose things that would have possibly been closer to comics. What do you feel when you see on the big screen these paper characters who have accompanied you for so long? Jean-Claude Mézières: The mix for me worked very well. I found my characters and it doesn't really matter whether Valerian's lock is placed here or there in the film. I found the spirit of Valérian and Laureline perfectly in line with what we are trying to tell as our adventures progress.

There is also this side of a happy young couple who get out of all the trouble - and God knows that it falls a lot on their faces - with a lot of confidence and in a fantastically rich world, such as I try to draw by looking for my ideas in the bottom of my inkwell.

Pierre Christin: As a screenwriter, I like the act of writing and, once it's done, it's something that becomes quite foreign to me. When I happen to read it again - which is very rare and, in general, it's because I have to - it really is as if someone else had written it.

When I see a film, I want to be surprised, so at the limit it should be quite different from what I did. For people who have done comics, when you come face to face with Luc's film, it's first of all a huge visual shock: there are lots of noises, sounds, things and things, full of agitation , characters and pyrotechnics… We go into a totally new universe compared to that of the comic strip. Basically, what I liked was everything that wasn't in the comics and everything that I hadn't thought of. How do you explain the longevity of the comic strip Valérian et Laureline qui fête his fiftieth birthday this year? Is it a privilege for you or a kind of prison? Jean-Claude Mézières: Nobody forced us to work on Valérian and if we had wanted to slam the door for any reason, we would have done it. We never signed lifetime contracts (laughs). On the contrary, each new Valérian album rolls the dice again because there is no golden rule set fifty years ago. We do what we want to do and the genre, in itself, is also completely renewed to the extent of our power of creation and imagination.Pierre Christin: There is something paradoxical: Valérian n' has never been so fashionable. It's a solid comic that has a very loyal following, but compared to some comics or texts from the 70s with a psychedelic and stoned side, Valérian was perceived as something correct but not necessarily avant-garde. Obviously it was not trying to be, but it was part of a certain tradition while seeking, on the other hand, to renew the subjects and the design.

As it was not very fashionable, it never went out of fashion. Finally, it took us further than we might have thought with this kind of final apotheosis thanks to the film. And then Valérian appears today as a kind of fetish French science-fiction comic strip, which it has been from the beginning but partly underground. And today, it is back in full light.

It's a bit odd in the history of comics, but you also find that in American comics. In many ways, they were forgotten and it is the cinema that brought them back to life in an even more spectacular way.

Precisely about comics, we have the impression that the characters of Valérian and Laureline appear a bit like the antithesis of American superheroes of the time. They reflect and are less violent, they doubt and are even sometimes clumsy… Pierre Christin: You have seen very correctly. Jean-Claude and I were great lovers of the United States, but above all it's French comics against the spirit of American comics. Valerian doesn't have any superpowers and doesn't even have anything super. He is peaceful and moderate and has a not very strong ego. From this point of view, he is the antithesis of many American heroes. And then there is also a political bias.

In many American comics - except those from American SF - there is still a kind of rejection of others, the villains, the bad guys, the Good, the Evil... All this is not at all in the spirit of Valerian where everyone is equal and has reasons for doing what they do.

In Valérian, we don't take out the guns or the superpowers, we talk to try to solve the problems. Obviously, it is Laureline who is the most apt to lead the most twisted discussions. Valérian therefore posed from the start and very consciously as a kind of antithesis of the culture of American comics.

One of the weaknesses of many comics is being under American influence. It's very good that Americans are under American influence since they are at home (laughs), but not for the others. I am thinking in particular of comics from Latin America where theoretically people are anti-gringos: in fact, half of them take place in the United States and the heroes are WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, editor's note) and not latinos at all. This is precisely what we tried not to do!

Jean-Claude Mézières: For my part, I graduated from the Franco-Belgian school which is the opposite of American comics. My great gods were Hergé with Tintin or even Franquin, in short, an extremely varied breeding ground. Despite great graphic qualities, American comics always depict guys charging at the reader, with their shoulders or fists in a particular position. These are so stereotypes that we could make stamps of these images, without having to bother to draw them. It bores me !

We did it in an album, Les Héros de l'Equinoxe, through a pastiche of superheroes where I clumsily try to draw people fighting. It's funny and it's very much in the spirit of the album because we were doing a demonstration a contrario, but otherwise it doesn't amuse me at all to draw like that.Pierre Christin: I find that your superheroes are very successful. But it's no luck that you work with me otherwise you would have found a real job at Marvel in the United States! (laughs) Jean-Claude Mézières: Never, never! (laughs) Over the years, the Valerian series has inspired several science fiction writers and directors. But there is one, in particular, who seems to have borrowed more ideas than the others: Georges Lucas with his Star Wars saga. How did you react at the time? Jean-Claude Mézières: At first, I was surprised by telling myself that it was extraordinary since it was really the spirit of Valérian. And then I realized that in addition to certain anecdotes in the script, there were graphic details that had been taken over.

For example, when Laureline is in a golden bikini, it's obvious that I didn't invent golden bikinis. But when this one fights on the deck of an open ship above the desert, as in Return of the Jedi, then there are still a lot of similarities.

Ditto in our second album, The Empire of a Thousand Planets, when the Connoisseurs raise their helmets to show their burnt face, it refers to the episode where the character puts on his helmet to hide his burnt face. Me, I did a little comparison and people then decide if it's a meeting or a loan. Everyone judges as they want and basta.

Pierre Christin: It must be said that the world of science fiction is a world of exchange. Unlike realistic or psychological cinema, where you put your camera in a three-room kitchen and, boom, you have your film, a science fiction feature film is much more laborious since you have to create from scratch a world that does not exist. So since you can't easily find the three-room kitchen or its equivalent in science fiction, you have to look a little at what has been done before, around and elsewhere.

Science fiction does not copy itself, but it feeds on itself. Valérian comes from a whole series of written science fiction, that of Isaac Asimov, Van Vogt and many others, which we accumulated in our childhood reading. There were no illustrations in these novels or short stories and so these were images that we had forged in our minds.

These diverse influences are also the charm of science fiction. It's like a big building in which there are lots of rooms with corridors connecting them. For example, in such a room, there is a funny spaceship. Spacecraft shapes, there are not two hundred and fifty thousand. In the same way that all cars look alike with four wheels and a bonnet, even if in detail they are very different. So there are borrowings within the science fiction that everyone has practiced. Lucas simply put his hand a little far into the holy water font.

Jean-Claude Mézières: Cinema plagiarizes and parodies itself as well. For example, for large kissing scenes. You can find a lot of things that the cinema cites again for pleasure and it's delicious as a spectator. Do you think that the French heritage of science fiction comics which is full of incredible authors (Druillet, Moebius , Bilal…) is underestimated? Pierre Christin: Like comics, science fiction has long been part of a sub-category compared to great literature and post-new wave cinema. It has always been a bit of the poor relation. There is the general public for whom science fiction is often a thing of slightly retarded kids or obsessed with things where there is only metal, engines and rockets.

And then there is a public of extremely loyal and cultivated fans which means that, as with comics, science fiction is a genre that resists very well and holds up for a long time, unlike texts or novels having a literary prize.

How many Goncourt prizes do we really remember today? The great science fiction series, on the other hand, are not liked by some of the readership, but they are adored, collected, pampered and even awaited by relatively small groups of readers who are true devotees of this type of literature.Jean -Claude Mézières: The graphics very often represent the charm, the weight and the strength of a science fiction comic strip. Through his delusions and his magnificent outbursts, he can take the reader very far. But transposing this into a two-hour film can pose terrible limits, however, as the graphics of such a designer sometimes cannot be transformed into living images. In France, there are not many directors who can embark on this kind of adaptation.