The Four Color Media Monitor

The Connexion announced the cartoonist who co-created Valerian & Laureline with Pierre Christin in the late 1960s has died at 83 about 2 weeks ago:

Jean-Claude Mézières, cartoonist and co-creator of the French graphic series Valérian et Lauréline, and who inspired director George Lucas in his iconic film franchise Star Wars, has died aged 83.

[...] The series Valérian et Lauréline, which Mr Mézières co-created with his friend Pierre Christin in 1966, was considered to be one of the best works of French science-fiction.

It's been told over the years how George Lucas appeared to have borrowed some ideas from their artwork for Star Wars (including the outfit worn by princess Leia in the 3rd movie that Disney later got rid of for the sake of appeasing leftist feminists), but never actually thanked Mezieres and Christin for any of that:

However, Mr Mézières was less keen on Mr Lucas’ behaviour after he wrote to Mr Lucas and received no reply despite Mr Lucas having said that he devoured the Valérian series.

Of the parts of Star Wars that appeared to have been inspired by his work, Mr Mézières said: “When you borrow your friend’s car, you bring it back with a full tank of petrol and return the keys. But [Lucas] hasn’t filled the tank or returned the keys.”

I have no idea if Lucas ever got back to them, but he should certainly offer his condolences to the guy, and gratitude for inspiring him. At the time it was first launched, V&L was one of the most significant sci-fi tales you could find in French comic strip serials. Mezieres and Christin deserve a lot of credit for giving the genre a boost as they did back in the day.

Here's more about the history of V&L on Down The Tubes.

Labels: comic strips, Europe and Asia, good artists, history