Pierre Christin, prolific writer of bande dessinee, including Valerian and Laureline, has passed away, according to Le Monde. He was 86.
Christin, with artist Jean-Claude Mezieres, created Valerian and Laureline for Pilote magazine; the first story was published in 1967. Between then and 2019, a total of 23 graphic novels were published, creating one of the most prominent science fiction storylines of Franco-Belgian comics. Christin’s longtime collaborator on valerian and Laureline, artist Jean-Claude Mezieres, passed away in 2022 (see “R.I.P. Meziers“).
Christin was a jazz pianist and journalist before turning to comics, and spent time in California as a young man. He created what became the school of journalism at Bordeaux University.
He continued to write for Pilote throughout the 70s, working with a variety of artists including Tardi, Boucq, and Vern. He wrote numerous original graphic novels with a variety of other artists through the decades, and was also a novelist and writer of illustrated books.
Valerian and Laureline was adapted into a French-Japanese animated series in the 00s, and Luc Besson directed the feature film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which was released in 2017 (our reviewer liked it, see “Confessions of a Comic Book Guy“).
Source: ICV2
