Valerian & Laureline Writer Pierre Christin Dies

French newspaper Le Monde reported that writer Pierre Christin (Valerian & Laureline) died on October 3 in Paris. He was 86.

Christin was born at Saint-Mandé on July 27, 1938. His passions were piano jazz and literature. He worked as a journalist, novelist, and professor. Christin created would would become the school of journalism at Bordeaux University. He also traveled to the U.S. as a visiting lecturer in 1965, and became a teacher of French contemporary literature at Salt Lake City University in Utah.

Christin debuted the science fiction graphic novel series Valerian & Laureline in Pilote magazine in 1967 with artist Jean-Claude Mézières (The Fifth Element set design). The series ended in 2010. The series inspired the 2007 French/Japanese anime coproduction Time Jam: Valerian & Laureline (pictured right). Anime studio Satelight coproduced the television series with French animation studio Dargaud-Marina and distributor EuropaCorp. All 40 episodes are streaming in English on Crunchyroll. Sentai Filmworks released the series on home video. The graphic novels also inspired the Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets film in 2017.

Thanks to Delphine Maurette from ANN’s French team for assistance with this article.

Sources: Le Monde, ICv2 (Milton Griepp)