Jean-Claude Mézières
Encyclopedia
Jean-Claude Mézières is a French comic strip
artist and illustrator. Born and raised in Paris, he was introduced to drawing by his older brother and influenced by comics artists such as Hergé
, Andre Franquin
and Morris
and later by Jijé
and Jack Davis
. Educated at the Institut des Arts Appliqués, upon graduation he worked as an illustrator for books and magazines as well as in advertising. A lifelong interest in the Wild West led him to travel to the United States in 1965 in search of adventure as a cowboy
, an experience that would prove influential on his later work.
Returning to France, Mézières teamed up with his childhood friend, Pierre Christin
, to create Valérian and Laureline, the popular, long-running science fiction
comics series for which he is best known and which has proved to be influential to many science fiction and fantasy
film
s, including Star Wars
. Mézières has also worked as a conceptual designer on several motion picture projects – most notably the 1997 Luc Besson
film, The Fifth Element
– as well as continuing to work as an illustrator for newspapers, magazines and in advertising. He has also taught courses on the production of comics at the University of Paris, Vincennes
.
Mézières has received international recognition through a number of prestigious awards, most notably the 1984 Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême
award.
area in the suburbs of Paris, Jean-Claude Mézières met his friend and frequent collaborator Pierre Christin at the age of two in an air-raid shelter
during World War II
. He was first inspired to draw by the influence of his older brother who, aged fourteen, had a drawing published in the magazine OK. Mézières' initial inspiration came from such OK strips as Arys Buck by Uderzo
, Kaza the Martian by Kline and Crochemaille by Erik. Later he was exposed to Hergé's Tintin
, Franquin's period on Spirou et Fantasio
and, his favourite of all, Morris' Lucky Luke
. He had his first drawings published in 1951, at the age of thirteen, in the magazine Le journal des jeunes, published by Le Figaro
. A year later, "completely fascinated by Tintin", he created an eleven page strip, Tintin in California, which features an unusually muscle-bound Arys Buck-influenced Tintin. This was followed, at the age of sixteen, by La Grande Poursuite, a Western
influenced by Tintin, Lucky Luke and Roy Rogers
which he sent to Hergé in the hope of getting published. Hergé sent a reply encouraging him to keep up his efforts.
In 1953, aged fifteen, Mézières enrolled at the Institut des Arts Appliqués in Paris for four years. Also in his class were two other aspiring artists who would go on to find success in the field of comics – Patrick (Pat) Mallet and Jean “Moebius” Giraud
. It was also at this time that he restarted his friendship with Pierre Christin who was attending the high school next door to the Arts Appliqués, the pair bonding over a mutual interest in jazz
and cinema. While at college, Mézières published illustrations and strips for magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou
.
Following art college, Mézières entered military service
, which lasted twenty-eight months, including a tour of duty based in Tlemcen
, Algeria
during the Algerian War, returning to France just fifteen days before the Algiers putsch
.
Answering an advertisement in Le Figaro after his discharge from the army, Mézières was employed by the publishing house Hachette
as an illustrator on a series of books titled Histoire des Civilizations (History of Civilization). Intended to run to twenty volumes, Histoire des Civilizations folded after just five.
Introduced to Benoit Gillain (son of the famous comics artist Jijé) by Jean Giraud, Mézières and Gillain entered into a partnership and opened a studio in 1963. Working mainly in advertising, Mézières acted as a photographer, model maker and graphic designer. He also assisted Gillain with the setting up of Totale Journal, a publication he would later work for again upon his return from America.
since he was a little boy through exposure to Western genre films starring the likes of Gary Cooper
, Burt Lancaster
and James Stewart
and comics such as Lucky Luke and Jerry Spring
. At the age of sixteen, he had attempted to travel to Mexico with Jean Giraud, whose mother lived there, but was prevented by his parents.
In 1965, Mézières arranged a working visa through a friend of Jijé's who had a factory in Houston, Texas
. In the end, however, he never took up the job in Houston. After staying in New York for a few months, the call of the West proved too strong and eventually he ended up hitchhiking
across the country, first to Seattle and then to Montana
(where he worked on a ranch driving tractors, laying posts and cleaning stables) before ending up in San Francisco. His initial plan was to find work in an advertising agency in San Francisco but he ran foul of the Immigration Service
who told him that his visa was good for working in the factory in Houston and nowhere else. He quickly left San Francisco in search of an authentic "Wild West" cowboy
experience. Arriving in Salt Lake City, Utah
with no money, he sought out Pierre Christin, who was living there while teaching at the University of Utah
, and turned up on his doorstep asking him if he could sleep on his settee. To make ends meet, Mézières produced some illustrations for a small advertising agency in Salt Lake City and for a Mormon
children's magazine called Children's Friend as well as selling some photographs he had taken while working on the ranch in Montana. After a few months, he found work on a ranch in Utah: this time succeeding in his aspiration of living the life of a cowboy, an experience he described as "better than in my dreams".
When winter came and there was no work available on the ranches, he collaborated with Christin on a six page strip called Le Rhum du Punch, a copy of which he sent to Jean Giraud who was by now writing and illustrating Blueberry for the comics magazine Pilote
. Giraud showed the strip to Pilotes editor, Rene Goscinny
, who agreed to publish it (issue 335, 24 March 1966). This was followed by another collaboration titled Comment réussir en affaires en se donnant un mal fou (How to succeed in business by almost killing oneself through hard work) which was also published in Pilote (issue 351, 14 July 1966). By this stage Mézières visa was almost expired and so he used the money from these strips to pay for his ticket home. In leaving America, Mézières also left behind a young woman, Linda, one of Christin's students: she followed him to France some months later and is now his wife.
Mézières experiences in the United States have provided the inspiration for several magazine articles published in Pilote, Tintin Magazine
and GEO
as well as two books – Olivier chez les cow-boys (Olivier with the Cowboys), a children's book written by Pierre Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières about a visit Christin's son Olivier paid to the ranch Mézières worked on in Utah and Adieu, rêve américain... (Farewell, American dreams...), again written by Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières, a nostalgic look back at their time in the United States.
. Goscinny put him to work on L'extraordinaire et Troublante Aventure de Mr. August Faust (The Extraordinary and Troubling Adventure of Mr August Faust), written by Fred. This would be the first serialised strip that Mézières would work on. Due to the lack of artistic freedom he was given (because Fred's script came with all the strip panels already blocked out), Mézières found this a difficult assignment.
By this time Pierre Christin was dividing his time between Paris and Bordeaux
, where he was working on founding the school of journalism at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie (IUT). Meeting up with Mézières one day, Christin suggested that they work on creating a comic strip together. Both had their experiences in the American West to draw upon but felt, thanks to Lucky Luke, Jerry Spring and Blueberry, that the market for Westerns was already crowded. Instead, Christin suggested that they turn their hands to science fiction, a genre that, at that time, was not prevalent in French comics. Although Goscinny was not a science fiction fan, he wanted to promote innovation and originality in Pilote and so commissioned them to produce a strip.
Drawing on influences from literary science fiction, Mézières and Christin devised the character of Valérian, a spatio-temporal
agent from the 28th century employed by Galaxity, the capital of the future Earth, to protect space and time from interference. Neither Mézières nor Christin had any interest in making Valérian into a clean-cut hero of the type that appeared in French comics of the time. Instead they sought to create an anti-hero
, "a banal character [without] any extraordinary means of action".
The first Valérian adventure, Les Mauvais Rêves (Bad Dreams) appeared in Pilote in 1967, with the first installment of the story published on 9 November in issue 420, and ran for fifteen issues, concluding in issue 434 on 15 February 1968. Bad Dreams shares an artistic style similar to that of Mézières and Christin's earlier collaborations for Pilote, with influences from Franquin, Morris and Mad magazine artist Jack Davis
. Also introduced in this story was Laureline, a peasant girl from the Middle Ages
. Originally intended to appear in only one story, the popular reaction to the character meant that she was retained for subsequent stories and she has since become elevated to the main star of the series.
Bad Dreams was followed by La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes (The City of Moving Waters) and its sequel Terre en Flammes (Earth in Flames) in 1968 and 1969 respectively. These two stories show some evolution in Mézières' art but also retain the cartoonish influences of Bad Dreams. Jean-Pierre Andrevon
best sums up Mézières' style at this time in his 1970 review of the story where he describes Valérian as a "kind of Lucky Luke of space-time". The City of Shifting Waters and Earth in Flames were collected together in one volume in 1970 under the title The City of Shifting Waters. This became the first Valérian album – Bad Dreams was skipped because of its short length – thirty pages – relative to the usual album length of around 46 pages. Every Valérian story up to and including The Rage of Hypsis
in 1985 would debut in serial form in Pilote before being published as an album.
L'Empire des Mille Planètes
(Empire of a Thousand Planets) premiered in Pilote in 1969 and marked a further development for the Valérian series and for Mézières art. This story was the series' first full-blown attempt at space opera
and it set out for the first time the two main signature elements of Valérian: the use of science fiction as a political allegory
and Mézières' meticulously detailed depictions of alien worlds. The follow-up story World Without Stars
saw the final evolution of Mézières' art into the style that would become prevalent in the Valerian stories of the 1970s and 1980s with the first realistic renderings of Valérian and Laureline as opposed to the caricatures of the earlier stories.
Mézières' style on Valérian remained fairly consistent until 1980's Métro Châtelet, Direction Cassiopeia
which mixed the space-opera with scenes set on contemporary Earth. This style continued for five albums until 1990's The Living Weapons
which saw a change in Mézières' style back towards the cartoonish style of the earlier stories. This style has remained with the series up to the most recently published (January 2007) album, The Order of the Stones
.
Valérian is Mézières' best known work, translated into at least thirteen languages, and continues to this day, although the last album L'Ouvre Temps was published in January 2010. It is one of publisher Dargaud
's top five best selling comics series. Various attempts were made from the late 1970s onwards to adapt Valérian for film or television and an animated series, titled Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline
, finally made its debut in 2007.
Western. Dissatisfied with the results, the project was abandoned after 45 seconds of animation had been completed. The same year he shot a short, ten minute, 8mm film
, La vie d'un Rêve (Life is a Dream), with Pierre Christin.
The success of Valérian, however, has led to Mézières becoming involved in a number of, mainly science fiction, film and television projects. The first of these was Billet Doux (Love Letter), a 1984 television series starring Pierre Mondy as a comic strip editor for which Mézières mocked up comic book covers and characters.
Also in 1984 he produced designs for director Jeremy Kagan
who was attempting to adapt René Barjavel
's novel La Nuit des temps
(The Ice People). Due to difficulties experienced by the film's Iran
ian producer as a result of the Islamic revolution
in Iran, the film was never made. Some of Mézières' production art was published in Les Extras de Mézières.
In October 1985, Mézières was contacted by the German director Peter Fleischmann
who proposed to adapt Russians Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
's 1964 novel Hard to Be a God
into a film. This was to be the first major German-Soviet co-production. Mézières travelled to Moscow to join the production team and also to Uzbekistan
where it was proposed to shoot the film. Travelling from there to Munich
, he produced several concept drawings and paintings over a three month period before the project was suspended due to funding difficulties. At this point Mézières left the production and returned to France. Filming was eventually scheduled to begin in April 1986 in Kiev
and Mézières re-joined the production, creating storyboard
s for some scenes. However, at this time the Chernobyl disaster
occurred only 100 km from Kiev and production was again halted. The film was eventually finished in 1989, but Mézières' concepts were barely used. Again, many of Mézières' designs were later published in Les Extras de Mézières.
In December 1991, Mézières was approached by director Luc Besson, a lifelong fan of Valérian, who wanted Mézières to work on designs for a science fiction film called Zaltman Bléros. Along with his old friend Jean Giraud, who had also been approached by Besson, he began work producing concepts of buildings and vehicles for the futuristic New York depicted in the script. Interested by the flying taxi cabs that appeared in some of the drawings, Besson asked Mézières to draw more taxis and also a flying police car. By the start of 1993, production had stalled and Besson moved to the United States to work on the film Léon
. Mézières returned to Valérian for the album The Circles of Power
, published in 1994. This album made use of some of the concepts Mézières had worked on for Zaltman Bléros and featured a character, S'Traks, who drove a flying taxi around a great metropolis on the planet Rubanis. Mézières sent a copy of the album to Besson when it was finished. The commercial success of Léon led to Zaltman Bléros, now re-titled The Fifth Element
, being green-lit for production. Mézières returned to the production and was amused to discover that the occupation of Korben Dallas, the film's main protagonist, had been changed from a worker in a rocket-ship factory to that of a taxi driver – obviously inspired by Mézières' drawings for the film and by The Circles of Power. Mézières produced further designs for the film including more taxis as well as spaceships and sets including the Fhloston Paradise liner seen in the latter part of the film. The Fifth Element was finally completed and released in 1997. Mézières published many of his concept drawings for the film in Les Extras de Mézières No. 2: Mon Cinquieme Element.
At the same time as he has been working on Valérian and various film and television projects, Mézières has worked extensively producing illustrations and comic strips for magazines and newspapers such as Pilote, Métal Hurlant
and Le Monde
, covers for books, art for advertising campaigns, etc. For Le Monde, in 1993, he was a regular illustrator for the Heures Locales column.
Mézières was also involved at one point in giving hands-on courses on the production of comic strips at the University of Paris, Vincennes
. Graduates of his course include André Juillard
and Régis Loisel
.
He has also collaborated with Pierre Christin on a number of non-Valérian projects. The first of these was Lady Polaris in 1987, an illustrated novel about the mysterious disappearance of a cargo vessel, the Lady Polaris. The narrative comprises various documents related to the lost ship: comic strips, log books, even an investigative journalism account by a fictionalised Mézières and Christin. The action takes place against the backdrop of many of the great seaports of Europe. Mézières undertook considerable research in putting together this book, visiting the ports of Liverpool
, Copenhagen
, Antwerp, Rotterdam
, Hamburg
, Lübeck
, Bordeaux
, Bilbao
and Genoa
.
Another collaboration with Christin was Canal Choc, a series of four albums about a television news team investigating strange phenomena. Mézières did not draw these albums but supervised a team of artists including Philippe Aymond and Hugues Labiano.
In 2001, Mézières was approached by the city of Lille
, which had been designated European Capital of Culture
in 2004, to produce something for the celebrations. He created a series of futuristic arches, called Chemin des Etoiles (The Way of the Stars) along the Rue Faidherbe in the city, similar to those seen at the Port Abyss spaceport depicted in the Valérian album At the Edge of the Great Void
which was first published the same year.
by Greg and Eddy Paape
and Lone Sloane
by Philippe Druillet
. The success of these strips would eventually lead to the creation of Métal Hurlant, the highly influential French comics magazine dedicated to science fiction. Mézières' influence has been noticed in such strips as Dani Futuro by Víctor Mora
and Carlos Gimenéz and Gigantik by Mora and José Maria Cardona. His visual style has also had an impact on some American comics artists notably Walt Simonson
and Gil Kane
. Sometimes this has gone beyond mere influence – following a complaint by Mézières, the artist Angus McKie
admitted that several panels of his strip So Beautiful and So Dangerous were copied from the Valérian album Ambassador of the Shadows
.
Outside of comics, Mézières' art has been particularly influential on science fiction and fantasy film. In particular, several commentators, such as Kim Thompson, Jean-Philippe Guerand and the newspaper Libération
, have noted certain similarities between the Valérian albums and the Star Wars film series. Both series are noted for the "lived-in" look given to their various settings and for the diverse alien creatures they feature. Mézières' response upon seeing Star Wars was that he was "dazzled, jealous... and furious!". As a riposte, he produced an illustration for Pilote magazine in 1983 depicting the Star Wars characters Luke Skywalker
and Leia Organa meeting Valérian and Laureline in a bar surrounded by a bestiary of alien creatures typical of that seen in both series. "Fancy meeting you here!" says Leia. "Oh, we've been hanging around here for a long time!" retorts Laureline. Mézières has since been informed that Doug Chiang
, design director on The Phantom Menace
, kept a set of Valérian albums and Les Extras de Mézières in his library.
Mézières has also noticed similarities between some of the sets in the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian and the planet seen in Birds of the Master
and between some of the production sketches for the alien fighters in the 1996 film Independence Day
and Valérian and Laureline's astroship.
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
artist and illustrator. Born and raised in Paris, he was introduced to drawing by his older brother and influenced by comics artists such as Hergé
Hergé
Georges Prosper Remi , better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, although he was also...
, Andre Franquin
André Franquin
André Franquin was an influential Belgian comics artist, whose best known comic strip creations are Gaston and Marsupilami, created while he worked on the Spirou et Fantasio comic strip from 1947 to 1969, during a period seen by many as the series' golden age.-Franquin's beginnings:Franquin was...
and Morris
Morris (comics)
Maurice De Bevere , better known as Morris, was a Belgian cartoonist and the creator of Lucky Luke. His pen name is an alternate spelling of his first name.-Biography:...
and later by Jijé
Jijé
Jijé was a Belgian comics artist, best known for being a seminal artist on the Spirou et Fantasio strip and the creator of one of the first major European western strips, Jerry Spring.-Biography:Born Joseph Gillain in Gedinne, Namur, he completed various art studies Jijé (13 January 1914 – 20...
and Jack Davis
Jack Davis (cartoonist)
Jack Davis is an American cartoonist and illustrator, known for his advertising art, magazine covers, film posters, record album art and numerous comic book stories...
. Educated at the Institut des Arts Appliqués, upon graduation he worked as an illustrator for books and magazines as well as in advertising. A lifelong interest in the Wild West led him to travel to the United States in 1965 in search of adventure as a cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
, an experience that would prove influential on his later work.
Returning to France, Mézières teamed up with his childhood friend, Pierre Christin
Pierre Christin
- Biography :Christin was born at Saint-Mandé in 1938.After graduating from the Sorbonne, Christin pursued graduate studies in political science at SciencesPo and became a professor of French literature at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. His first comics story, Le Rhum du Punch, illustrated...
, to create Valérian and Laureline, the popular, long-running science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
comics series for which he is best known and which has proved to be influential to many science fiction and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s, including Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
. Mézières has also worked as a conceptual designer on several motion picture projects – most notably the 1997 Luc Besson
Luc Besson
Luc Besson is a French film director, writer, and producer. He is the creator of EuropaCorp film company. He has been involved with over 50 films, spanning 26 years, as writer, director, and/or producer.-Early life:...
film, The Fifth Element
The Fifth Element
The Fifth Element is a 1997 French science fiction film directed, co-written, and based on a story by Luc Besson, starring Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and Milla Jovovich...
– as well as continuing to work as an illustrator for newspapers, magazines and in advertising. He has also taught courses on the production of comics at the University of Paris, Vincennes
University of Paris VIII: Vincennes - Saint-Denis
The University of Paris VIII or University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis is a public university in Paris. Once part of the federal University of Paris system, it is now an autonomous public institution and is part of the Academy of Créteil...
.
Mézières has received international recognition through a number of prestigious awards, most notably the 1984 Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême
Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême
Every year, the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême is awarded during the Angoulême International Comics Festival to an author for his body of work and/or for his achievement in the evolution of comics....
award.
Early life and career
Raised in the Saint-MandéSaint-Mandé
Saint-Mandé is a commune of the Val-de-Marne department in Île-de-France in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe.-History:...
area in the suburbs of Paris, Jean-Claude Mézières met his friend and frequent collaborator Pierre Christin at the age of two in an air-raid shelter
Air-raid shelter
Air-raid shelters, also known as bomb shelters, are structures for the protection of the civil population as well as military personnel against enemy attacks from the air...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He was first inspired to draw by the influence of his older brother who, aged fourteen, had a drawing published in the magazine OK. Mézières' initial inspiration came from such OK strips as Arys Buck by Uderzo
Albert Uderzo
Albert Uderzo is a French comic book artist, and scriptwriter. He is best known for his work on the Astérix series, but also drew other comics such as Oumpah-pah, also in collaboration with René Goscinny.-Early life:...
, Kaza the Martian by Kline and Crochemaille by Erik. Later he was exposed to Hergé's Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
, Franquin's period on Spirou et Fantasio
Spirou et Fantasio
Spirou et Fantasio is one of the most popular classic Franco-Belgian comic strips. The series, which has been running since 1938, shares many characteristics with other European humorous adventure comics like Tintin and Asterix...
and, his favourite of all, Morris' Lucky Luke
Lucky Luke
Lucky Luke is a Belgian comics series created by Belgian cartoonist, Maurice De Bevere better known as Morris, the original artist, and was for one period written by René Goscinny...
. He had his first drawings published in 1951, at the age of thirteen, in the magazine Le journal des jeunes, published by Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
. A year later, "completely fascinated by Tintin", he created an eleven page strip, Tintin in California, which features an unusually muscle-bound Arys Buck-influenced Tintin. This was followed, at the age of sixteen, by La Grande Poursuite, a Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
influenced by Tintin, Lucky Luke and Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...
which he sent to Hergé in the hope of getting published. Hergé sent a reply encouraging him to keep up his efforts.
In 1953, aged fifteen, Mézières enrolled at the Institut des Arts Appliqués in Paris for four years. Also in his class were two other aspiring artists who would go on to find success in the field of comics – Patrick (Pat) Mallet and Jean “Moebius” Giraud
Jean Giraud
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud is a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius, and to a lesser extent Gir, the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist's paintings, for instance the...
. It was also at this time that he restarted his friendship with Pierre Christin who was attending the high school next door to the Arts Appliqués, the pair bonding over a mutual interest in jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and cinema. While at college, Mézières published illustrations and strips for magazines such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou
Spirou (magazine)
Spirou magazine is a weekly Belgian comics magazine published by the Dupuis company...
.
Following art college, Mézières entered military service
Military service
Military service, in its simplest sense, is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft . Some nations require a specific amount of military service from every citizen...
, which lasted twenty-eight months, including a tour of duty based in Tlemcen
Tlemcen
Tlemcen is a town in Northwestern Algeria, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is located inland in the center of a region known for its olive plantations and vineyards...
, Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
during the Algerian War, returning to France just fifteen days before the Algiers putsch
Algiers putsch
The Algiers putsch , also known as the Generals' putsch , was a failed coup d'état to overthrow French President Charles De Gaulle and establish an anti-communist military junta...
.
Answering an advertisement in Le Figaro after his discharge from the army, Mézières was employed by the publishing house Hachette
Hachette (publishing)
Hachette Livre, , is a French publisher, the flagship imprint of Lagardère Publishing. It was founded in 1826 by Louis Hachette as a bookshop and publishing company. Hachette has its headquarters in the 15th arrondissement of Paris....
as an illustrator on a series of books titled Histoire des Civilizations (History of Civilization). Intended to run to twenty volumes, Histoire des Civilizations folded after just five.
Introduced to Benoit Gillain (son of the famous comics artist Jijé) by Jean Giraud, Mézières and Gillain entered into a partnership and opened a studio in 1963. Working mainly in advertising, Mézières acted as a photographer, model maker and graphic designer. He also assisted Gillain with the setting up of Totale Journal, a publication he would later work for again upon his return from America.
Work in the United States
Mézières had been fascinated by the American Old WestAmerican Old West
The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century...
since he was a little boy through exposure to Western genre films starring the likes of Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
, Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster
Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile...
and James Stewart
James Stewart (actor)
James Maitland Stewart was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
and comics such as Lucky Luke and Jerry Spring
Jerry Spring
Jerry Spring is a Franco-Belgian Western comics series created by the Belgian comics creator Jijé. Originally published in Le Journal de Spirou, the series made its debut on March 4, 1954.-Bibliography:-Sources:* BDoubliées Footnotes...
. At the age of sixteen, he had attempted to travel to Mexico with Jean Giraud, whose mother lived there, but was prevented by his parents.
In 1965, Mézières arranged a working visa through a friend of Jijé's who had a factory in Houston, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. In the end, however, he never took up the job in Houston. After staying in New York for a few months, the call of the West proved too strong and eventually he ended up hitchhiking
Hitchhiking
Hitchhiking is a means of transportation that is gained by asking people, usually strangers, for a ride in their automobile or other road vehicle to travel a distance that may either be short or long...
across the country, first to Seattle and then to Montana
Montana
Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
(where he worked on a ranch driving tractors, laying posts and cleaning stables) before ending up in San Francisco. His initial plan was to find work in an advertising agency in San Francisco but he ran foul of the Immigration Service
Immigration and Naturalization Service
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service , now referred to as Legacy INS, ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred from the Department of Justice to three new components within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as...
who told him that his visa was good for working in the factory in Houston and nowhere else. He quickly left San Francisco in search of an authentic "Wild West" cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
experience. Arriving in Salt Lake City, Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
with no money, he sought out Pierre Christin, who was living there while teaching at the University of Utah
University of Utah
The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
, and turned up on his doorstep asking him if he could sleep on his settee. To make ends meet, Mézières produced some illustrations for a small advertising agency in Salt Lake City and for a Mormon
Mormon
The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...
children's magazine called Children's Friend as well as selling some photographs he had taken while working on the ranch in Montana. After a few months, he found work on a ranch in Utah: this time succeeding in his aspiration of living the life of a cowboy, an experience he described as "better than in my dreams".
When winter came and there was no work available on the ranches, he collaborated with Christin on a six page strip called Le Rhum du Punch, a copy of which he sent to Jean Giraud who was by now writing and illustrating Blueberry for the comics magazine Pilote
Pilote
thumb|Cover of the first Pilote teaser issue, #0.Pilote was a French comics periodical published from 1959 to 1989. Showcasing most of the major French or Belgian comics talents of its day the magazine introduced major series such as Astérix le Gaulois, Blueberry, Achille Talon, and Valérian et...
. Giraud showed the strip to Pilotes editor, Rene Goscinny
René Goscinny
René Goscinny was a French comics editor and writer, who is best known for the comic book Astérix, which he created with illustrator Albert Uderzo, and for his work on the comic series Lucky Luke with Morris and Iznogoud with Jean Tabary.-Early life:Goscinny was born in Paris in 1926, to a family...
, who agreed to publish it (issue 335, 24 March 1966). This was followed by another collaboration titled Comment réussir en affaires en se donnant un mal fou (How to succeed in business by almost killing oneself through hard work) which was also published in Pilote (issue 351, 14 July 1966). By this stage Mézières visa was almost expired and so he used the money from these strips to pay for his ticket home. In leaving America, Mézières also left behind a young woman, Linda, one of Christin's students: she followed him to France some months later and is now his wife.
Mézières experiences in the United States have provided the inspiration for several magazine articles published in Pilote, Tintin Magazine
Tintin (magazine)
Le journal de Tintin or Kuifje , was a weekly Belgian comics magazine of the second half of the 20th century...
and GEO
GEO (magazine)
GEO is a family of educational monthly magazines similar to the National Geographic magazine. It is known for its profound reports, which are accompanied by opulent pictures.The first edition appeared in Germany in 1976...
as well as two books – Olivier chez les cow-boys (Olivier with the Cowboys), a children's book written by Pierre Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières about a visit Christin's son Olivier paid to the ranch Mézières worked on in Utah and Adieu, rêve américain... (Farewell, American dreams...), again written by Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières, a nostalgic look back at their time in the United States.
Valérian
On his return from the United States, Mézières visited the offices of Pilote magazine to see René Goscinny and Jean-Michel CharlierJean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier was a Belgian script writer best known as a writer of realistic European comics. He was a co-founder of the famed European comics magazine Pilote.-Biography:...
. Goscinny put him to work on L'extraordinaire et Troublante Aventure de Mr. August Faust (The Extraordinary and Troubling Adventure of Mr August Faust), written by Fred. This would be the first serialised strip that Mézières would work on. Due to the lack of artistic freedom he was given (because Fred's script came with all the strip panels already blocked out), Mézières found this a difficult assignment.
By this time Pierre Christin was dividing his time between Paris and Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, where he was working on founding the school of journalism at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie (IUT). Meeting up with Mézières one day, Christin suggested that they work on creating a comic strip together. Both had their experiences in the American West to draw upon but felt, thanks to Lucky Luke, Jerry Spring and Blueberry, that the market for Westerns was already crowded. Instead, Christin suggested that they turn their hands to science fiction, a genre that, at that time, was not prevalent in French comics. Although Goscinny was not a science fiction fan, he wanted to promote innovation and originality in Pilote and so commissioned them to produce a strip.
Spacetime
In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions...
agent from the 28th century employed by Galaxity, the capital of the future Earth, to protect space and time from interference. Neither Mézières nor Christin had any interest in making Valérian into a clean-cut hero of the type that appeared in French comics of the time. Instead they sought to create an anti-hero
Anti-hero
In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis in which the character is generally useless at being a hero or heroine when they're...
, "a banal character [without] any extraordinary means of action".
The first Valérian adventure, Les Mauvais Rêves (Bad Dreams) appeared in Pilote in 1967, with the first installment of the story published on 9 November in issue 420, and ran for fifteen issues, concluding in issue 434 on 15 February 1968. Bad Dreams shares an artistic style similar to that of Mézières and Christin's earlier collaborations for Pilote, with influences from Franquin, Morris and Mad magazine artist Jack Davis
Jack Davis (cartoonist)
Jack Davis is an American cartoonist and illustrator, known for his advertising art, magazine covers, film posters, record album art and numerous comic book stories...
. Also introduced in this story was Laureline, a peasant girl from the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
. Originally intended to appear in only one story, the popular reaction to the character meant that she was retained for subsequent stories and she has since become elevated to the main star of the series.
Bad Dreams was followed by La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes (The City of Moving Waters) and its sequel Terre en Flammes (Earth in Flames) in 1968 and 1969 respectively. These two stories show some evolution in Mézières' art but also retain the cartoonish influences of Bad Dreams. Jean-Pierre Andrevon
Jean-Pierre Andrevon
Jean-Pierre Andrevon is a French science fiction author. He has used the pseudonym Alphonse Brutsche for novels published under the Fleuve Noir label. In addition to his regular authorship, he has written scenarios for several prominent comics artists, among others Georges Pichard and Caza,...
best sums up Mézières' style at this time in his 1970 review of the story where he describes Valérian as a "kind of Lucky Luke of space-time". The City of Shifting Waters and Earth in Flames were collected together in one volume in 1970 under the title The City of Shifting Waters. This became the first Valérian album – Bad Dreams was skipped because of its short length – thirty pages – relative to the usual album length of around 46 pages. Every Valérian story up to and including The Rage of Hypsis
The Rage of Hypsis
The Rage of Hypsis is volume twelve in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.-Outline:...
in 1985 would debut in serial form in Pilote before being published as an album.
L'Empire des Mille Planètes
Empire of a Thousand Planets
Empire of a Thousand Planets is volume two in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.-Outline:...
(Empire of a Thousand Planets) premiered in Pilote in 1969 and marked a further development for the Valérian series and for Mézières art. This story was the series' first full-blown attempt at space opera
Space opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. The term has no relation to music and it is analogous to "soap...
and it set out for the first time the two main signature elements of Valérian: the use of science fiction as a political allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
and Mézières' meticulously detailed depictions of alien worlds. The follow-up story World Without Stars
World Without Stars
World Without Stars is volume three in the [lucia star] science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.-Outline:...
saw the final evolution of Mézières' art into the style that would become prevalent in the Valerian stories of the 1970s and 1980s with the first realistic renderings of Valérian and Laureline as opposed to the caricatures of the earlier stories.
Mézières' style on Valérian remained fairly consistent until 1980's Métro Châtelet, Direction Cassiopeia
Métro Châtelet, Direction Cassiopeia
Métro Châtelet, Direction Cassiopeia is volume nine in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.-Outline:...
which mixed the space-opera with scenes set on contemporary Earth. This style continued for five albums until 1990's The Living Weapons
The Living Weapons
The Living Weapons is volume fourteen in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.-Outline:...
which saw a change in Mézières' style back towards the cartoonish style of the earlier stories. This style has remained with the series up to the most recently published (January 2007) album, The Order of the Stones
The Order of the Stones
The Order of the Stones is volume twenty in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières. It continues the story begun in At the Edge of the Great Void...
.
Valérian is Mézières' best known work, translated into at least thirteen languages, and continues to this day, although the last album L'Ouvre Temps was published in January 2010. It is one of publisher Dargaud
Dargaud
Les Éditions Dargaud is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics series, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. It was founded in 1943 by Georges Dargaud.Initially, Dargaud published novels for women...
's top five best selling comics series. Various attempts were made from the late 1970s onwards to adapt Valérian for film or television and an animated series, titled Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline
Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline
is a French/Japanese animated television series based on the French comic book series Valérian and Laureline written by Pierre Christin and drawn by Jean-Claude Mézières. The animation first aired in France in 2007.-Production:...
, finally made its debut in 2007.
Work in film and television
Mézières was always as interested in the cinema as he was in drawing. In 1957, he began work with Jean Giraud on creating an animatedAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
Western. Dissatisfied with the results, the project was abandoned after 45 seconds of animation had been completed. The same year he shot a short, ten minute, 8mm film
8 mm film
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions: the original standard 8mm film, also known as regular 8 mm or Double 8 mm, and Super 8...
, La vie d'un Rêve (Life is a Dream), with Pierre Christin.
The success of Valérian, however, has led to Mézières becoming involved in a number of, mainly science fiction, film and television projects. The first of these was Billet Doux (Love Letter), a 1984 television series starring Pierre Mondy as a comic strip editor for which Mézières mocked up comic book covers and characters.
Also in 1984 he produced designs for director Jeremy Kagan
Jeremy Kagan
Jeremy Paul Kagan is an American film and television director, screenwriter and television producer.-Early life:Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Kagan received his B.A...
who was attempting to adapt René Barjavel
René Barjavel
René Barjavel was a French author, journalist and critic who may have been the first to think of the grandfather paradox in time travel. He was born in Nyons, a town in the Drôme department in southeastern France...
's novel La Nuit des temps
La Nuit des temps
The Ice People is a 1968 French science fiction novel by René Barjavel.-Plot:When a French expedition in Antarctica reveals the ruins of a 900,000 year old civilization, scientists from all over the world flock to the site to help explore and understand...
(The Ice People). Due to difficulties experienced by the film's Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian producer as a result of the Islamic revolution
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
in Iran, the film was never made. Some of Mézières' production art was published in Les Extras de Mézières.
Peter Fleischmann
Peter Fleischmann is a German film director.- Biography :Peter Fleischmann was born in Zweibrücken. He studied at the German Institute of Film and Television in München and Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris...
who proposed to adapt Russians Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are Soviet Jewish-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated on their fiction.-Life and work:...
's 1964 novel Hard to Be a God
Hard to Be a God
Hard to be a God is a 1964 sci-fi novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky set in the Noon Universe.The novel follows Anton, an undercover operative from the future planet Earth, in his mission on an alien planet, that is populated by human beings, whose society has not advanced beyond the Middle Ages...
into a film. This was to be the first major German-Soviet co-production. Mézières travelled to Moscow to join the production team and also to Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
where it was proposed to shoot the film. Travelling from there to Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, he produced several concept drawings and paintings over a three month period before the project was suspended due to funding difficulties. At this point Mézières left the production and returned to France. Filming was eventually scheduled to begin in April 1986 in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
and Mézières re-joined the production, creating storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
s for some scenes. However, at this time the Chernobyl disaster
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
occurred only 100 km from Kiev and production was again halted. The film was eventually finished in 1989, but Mézières' concepts were barely used. Again, many of Mézières' designs were later published in Les Extras de Mézières.
In December 1991, Mézières was approached by director Luc Besson, a lifelong fan of Valérian, who wanted Mézières to work on designs for a science fiction film called Zaltman Bléros. Along with his old friend Jean Giraud, who had also been approached by Besson, he began work producing concepts of buildings and vehicles for the futuristic New York depicted in the script. Interested by the flying taxi cabs that appeared in some of the drawings, Besson asked Mézières to draw more taxis and also a flying police car. By the start of 1993, production had stalled and Besson moved to the United States to work on the film Léon
Léon (film)
Léon is a 1994 French thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson...
. Mézières returned to Valérian for the album The Circles of Power
The Circles of Power
The Circles of Power is volume fifteen in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières...
, published in 1994. This album made use of some of the concepts Mézières had worked on for Zaltman Bléros and featured a character, S'Traks, who drove a flying taxi around a great metropolis on the planet Rubanis. Mézières sent a copy of the album to Besson when it was finished. The commercial success of Léon led to Zaltman Bléros, now re-titled The Fifth Element
The Fifth Element
The Fifth Element is a 1997 French science fiction film directed, co-written, and based on a story by Luc Besson, starring Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and Milla Jovovich...
, being green-lit for production. Mézières returned to the production and was amused to discover that the occupation of Korben Dallas, the film's main protagonist, had been changed from a worker in a rocket-ship factory to that of a taxi driver – obviously inspired by Mézières' drawings for the film and by The Circles of Power. Mézières produced further designs for the film including more taxis as well as spaceships and sets including the Fhloston Paradise liner seen in the latter part of the film. The Fifth Element was finally completed and released in 1997. Mézières published many of his concept drawings for the film in Les Extras de Mézières No. 2: Mon Cinquieme Element.
Other works
Métal Hurlant
Métal Hurlant is a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas.The four were collectively known as "Les...
and Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
, covers for books, art for advertising campaigns, etc. For Le Monde, in 1993, he was a regular illustrator for the Heures Locales column.
Mézières was also involved at one point in giving hands-on courses on the production of comic strips at the University of Paris, Vincennes
University of Paris VIII: Vincennes - Saint-Denis
The University of Paris VIII or University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis is a public university in Paris. Once part of the federal University of Paris system, it is now an autonomous public institution and is part of the Academy of Créteil...
. Graduates of his course include André Juillard
André Juillard
André Juillard is a French comic book creator.-Biography:Born in Paris, Juillard is one of the most prolific artists of historical comics in France. His career began in 1974...
and Régis Loisel
Régis Loisel
Régis Loisel is a French comics writer and artist, best known for the long running series La Quête de l'oiseau du temps, written by Serge Le Tendre.He worked with Walt Disney Studios on the animated films Atlantis and Mulan....
.
He has also collaborated with Pierre Christin on a number of non-Valérian projects. The first of these was Lady Polaris in 1987, an illustrated novel about the mysterious disappearance of a cargo vessel, the Lady Polaris. The narrative comprises various documents related to the lost ship: comic strips, log books, even an investigative journalism account by a fictionalised Mézières and Christin. The action takes place against the backdrop of many of the great seaports of Europe. Mézières undertook considerable research in putting together this book, visiting the ports of Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, Antwerp, Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Lübeck
Lübeck
The Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, and one of the major ports of Germany. It was for several centuries the "capital" of the Hanseatic League and, because of its Brick Gothic architectural heritage, is listed by UNESCO as a World...
, Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, Bilbao
Bilbao
Bilbao ) is a Spanish municipality, capital of the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. With a population of 353,187 , it is the largest city of its autonomous community and the tenth largest in Spain...
and Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
.
Another collaboration with Christin was Canal Choc, a series of four albums about a television news team investigating strange phenomena. Mézières did not draw these albums but supervised a team of artists including Philippe Aymond and Hugues Labiano.
In 2001, Mézières was approached by the city of Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
, which had been designated European Capital of Culture
European Capital of Culture
The European Capital of Culture is a city designated by theEuropean Union for a period of one calendar year during which it organises a series of cultural events with a strong European dimension....
in 2004, to produce something for the celebrations. He created a series of futuristic arches, called Chemin des Etoiles (The Way of the Stars) along the Rue Faidherbe in the city, similar to those seen at the Port Abyss spaceport depicted in the Valérian album At the Edge of the Great Void
At the Edge of the Great Void
At the Edge of the Great Void is volume nineteen in the French comic book science-fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières...
which was first published the same year.
Legacy
Mézières' arrival on the French comics scene with Valérian was contemporaneous with the debuts of other notable French science fiction strips including Luc OrientLuc Orient
Luc Orient is a science fiction comic series featuring an eponymous hero, created in 1967 by the writer Greg and the artist Eddy Paape. It belongs to the large family of Franco-Belgian comics.- Publishing history :...
by Greg and Eddy Paape
Eddy Paape
Eddy Paape is a Franco-Belgian comics artist best known for illustrating the series Luc Orient.-Biography:Eddy Paape was born in Grivegnée , Belgium in 1920...
and Lone Sloane
Lone Sloane
Lone Sloane is a science fiction comics character created in 1966 by the French cartoonist Philippe Druillet.-Publication history:Lone Sloane's first episode was that of Druillet's very debut, Mystère des Abîmes, published in 1966. The following stories were published on the French magazine Pilote...
by Philippe Druillet
Philippe Druillet
Philippe Druillet is a French comics artist and creator, and an innovator in visual design.-Biography:Druillet was born in Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, France but spent his youth in Spain, returning to France in 1952 after the death of his father...
. The success of these strips would eventually lead to the creation of Métal Hurlant, the highly influential French comics magazine dedicated to science fiction. Mézières' influence has been noticed in such strips as Dani Futuro by Víctor Mora
Víctor Mora
Victor Mora is a Spanish writer of comic books.Born in Barcelona, he created and wrote the series Capitán Trueno, El Jabato, Dani Futuro, El Cosaco Verde, and El Corsario de Hierro. -Sources:...
and Carlos Gimenéz and Gigantik by Mora and José Maria Cardona. His visual style has also had an impact on some American comics artists notably Walt Simonson
Walt Simonson
Walter "Walt" Simonson is an American comic book writer and artist. After studying geology at Amherst College, he transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1972. His thesis project there was The Star Slammers, which was published as a black and white promotional comic book...
and Gil Kane
Gil Kane
Eli Katz who worked under the name Gil Kane and in one instance Scott Edward, was a comic book artist whose career spanned the 1940s to 1990s and every major comics company and character.Kane co-created the modern-day versions of the superheroes Green Lantern and the Atom for DC Comics, and...
. Sometimes this has gone beyond mere influence – following a complaint by Mézières, the artist Angus McKie
Angus McKie
Angus McKie is an artist who has worked as a colorist in the comics industry.He is best known as an English science fiction illustrator whose work appeared on the covers of numerous science fiction paperback novels in the mid 1970s and 1980s, as well as in Stewart Cowley's Terran Trade Authority...
admitted that several panels of his strip So Beautiful and So Dangerous were copied from the Valérian album Ambassador of the Shadows
Ambassador of the Shadows
Ambassador of the Shadows is volume six in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.-Outline:...
.
Outside of comics, Mézières' art has been particularly influential on science fiction and fantasy film. In particular, several commentators, such as Kim Thompson, Jean-Philippe Guerand and the newspaper Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
, have noted certain similarities between the Valérian albums and the Star Wars film series. Both series are noted for the "lived-in" look given to their various settings and for the diverse alien creatures they feature. Mézières' response upon seeing Star Wars was that he was "dazzled, jealous... and furious!". As a riposte, he produced an illustration for Pilote magazine in 1983 depicting the Star Wars characters Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker
Luke Skywalker is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the original film trilogy of the Star Wars franchise, where he is portrayed by Mark Hamill. He is introduced in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, in which he is forced to leave home, and finds himself apprenticed to the Jedi master...
and Leia Organa meeting Valérian and Laureline in a bar surrounded by a bestiary of alien creatures typical of that seen in both series. "Fancy meeting you here!" says Leia. "Oh, we've been hanging around here for a long time!" retorts Laureline. Mézières has since been informed that Doug Chiang
Doug Chiang
Doug Chiang is an American film designer and artist. He was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1962 and grew up in the United States.Chiang studied film at UCLA and industrial design at the College for Creative Studies. During the late 1980s he worked at various production studios including Rhythm and Hues...
, design director on The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a 1999 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It is the fourth film to be released in the Star Wars saga, as the first of a three-part prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy, as well as the first film in the saga in terms...
, kept a set of Valérian albums and Les Extras de Mézières in his library.
Mézières has also noticed similarities between some of the sets in the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian and the planet seen in Birds of the Master
Birds of the Master
Birds of the Master is volume five in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.-Outline:...
and between some of the production sketches for the alien fighters in the 1996 film Independence Day
Independence Day (film)
Independence Day is a 1996 science fiction film about an alien invasion of Earth, focusing on a disparate group of individuals and families as they converge in the Nevada desert and, along with the rest of the human population, participate in a last-chance counterattack on July 4 – the same...
and Valérian and Laureline's astroship.
Awards
- 1984: Winner, Grand Prix de la ville d'AngoulêmeGrand Prix de la ville d'AngoulêmeEvery year, the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême is awarded during the Angoulême International Comics Festival to an author for his body of work and/or for his achievement in the evolution of comics....
, the most prestigious award given at the annual Angoulême International Comics FestivalAngoulême International Comics FestivalThe Angoulême International Comics Festival is the largest comics festival in Europe. It has occurred every year since 1974 in Angoulême, France, in the month of January.The four-day festival is notable for awarding several prestigious prizes in cartooning...
. - 1987: Winner, with Pierre Christin, European Science Fiction SocietyEuropean Science Fiction SocietyThe European Science Fiction Society is an international organisation of professionals and fans who are committed to promoting Science Fiction in Europe and European Science Fiction worldwide....
award for Valérian. - 1992: Special mention by the jury, with Pierre Christin, Prix Jeunesse 9-12 ans (Youth Prize 9-12 years)Angoulême International Comics Festival Prix Jeunesse 9-12 ansThe Prix Jeunesse 9-12 ans is awarded to comics authors at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. It rewards the best album for a 9 to 12 years old targeted public.The award started in 1981 as the "Alfred enfant", without the distinction in age groups....
, at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, for Les Habitants du Ciel, an encyclopaedia of the alien creatures that have appeared in the Valérian seties. - 1995: Nominated, with Pierre Christin, for the Haxtur AwardHaxtur AwardThe Haxtur Award is a Spanish award for comics published in Spain. It is awarded annually at the Salón Internacional del Cómic del Principado de Asturias ....
for Best Short Comic Strip, at the Salón Internacional del Cómic del Principado de AsturiasAsturiasThe Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain, coextensive with the former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages...
(International Comics Convention of the Principality of Asturia, Spain), for the Valérian album The Circles of Power. - 1997: Winner, with Pierre Christin, Tournesol AwardAngoulême International Comics Festival Other awardsA number of awards was only presented at the Angoulême International Comics Festival for a short time.-Award for best French artist:* 1974: Alexis* 1975: Jacques Tardi* 1976: André Cheret* 1977: Moebius* 1978: Paul Gillon-Award for best foreign artist:...
given to the comic that best reflects the ideals of the French Green PartyThe Greens (France)The Greens were a Green political party to the centre-left of the political spectrum in France. They had officially been in existence since 1984, but their spiritual roots could be traced as far back as René Dumont’s candidacy for the presidency in 1974...
, for the Valérian album Hostages of the UltralumHostages of the UltralumHostages of the Ultralum is volume sixteen in the French comic book science fiction series Valérian and Laureline created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.-Outline:...
.
Selected bibliography
- The Valérian and Laureline (1967 – present) – drawn by Mézières, written by Pierre Christin. The classic comic strip series depicting the adventures of spatio-temporal agent Valérian and his feisty redhead companion, Laureline, as they travel through space and time is Mézières' most widely known and best-selling work. Seven of the albums have been translated into English.
- Mon Amérique à moi (My Very Own America) (1974) – an 8 page autobiographical strip, first published in Pilote, recounting Mézières' time in America in the mid 1960s. An English translation was published in black and white in 1996 as a part of European Readings of American Popular Culture an academic publication edited by John Dean and Jean-Paul Gabillet.
- Mezi avant Mézières (1981) – a collection of Mézières' early work for magazines such as Pilote.
- Mézières et Christin avec... (1983) – compilation of early work, including the first publication of the Valérian story Bad Dreams in an album as well as Mon Amérique à moi and the strips Mézières produced for Métal Hurlant.
- Lady Polaris (1987) – an illustrated novel written by Pierre Christin, set against the backdrop of the great seaports of Europe, about the mysterious sinking of the cargo vessel, the Lady Polaris.
- Les Extras de Mézières (Mézières' Extras) (1995) – a miscellaneous collection of works Mézières produced in the 1980s and early 1990s. Includes examples of Mézières' advertising work as well as concept designs for film projects.
- Les Extras de Mézières No. 2: Mon Cinquieme Element (Mézières' Extras No. 2: My Fifth Element) (1998) – a collection of the concept drawings Mézières produced for the film The Fifth Element.
- Adieu rêve américain (Farewell American Dreams) – part of the Correspondences de Pierre Christin series. Mézières and Christin reminisce about their American adventures.
External links
- Jean-Claude Mézières official site
- Mézières biography on Lambiek Comiclopedia