Valerian & Laureline

Coincidentally I've seen this old French series mentioned a few time so now I'm curious. Anyone read it? How is it?

Really good. First couple of volumes are mostly worth it for the art and the stories are a bit meh for me, but around volumes 4-5 the plots get a lot tighter and interesting. Great stuff all around.

Maybe I'll try it out!

Read the city of shifting waters and empire of thousand planets, they were ok. i will defenetly read some more.

I am waiting for the movie.

Ya realize that there are non-burgers on this board, right?

First book was wierd, then it had a strong run during the Cold War and kinda went down the dumps post-Cold War when they were gunning to turn it into their own shitty version of Vagabond in Limbo or somthing.

>changing the title because of a movie that's going to lose millions
Boo

Don't expect to see that kind of thing in the English version.

Comixology has a 50% off sale for all 21 volumes. Worth checking out.

Funny anecdote about the movie adaptation:
>Although Luc Besson loved the Valerian comics growing up, he did not seriously consider adapting them into a movie until he was working on The Fifth Element. During that project, Besson had tapped the Valerian writer Jean-Claude Mézières to work on the film who asked Besson "Why are you doing this shitty film? Why won't you do Valerian?"

Is this the only nudity in the book? Asking for a friend.

It is one of my favourite series, but the last few albums went down the drain. L'Outretemps was a total disgrace.

I'm fearing the movie. Besson is good for the visuals, but the casting for our main two spacio-temporal agents seems to have taken the wrong cues from the horrid Matarthon cartoon, and the pace looks frantic in the same out-of-character way that the action was frantic in the Tintin movie...

Confident the books and movie will have NOTHING in common, which is fine. The books are about a couple that don't fuck, meandering through space with higher tech than where they end up, and surviving in the "diverse" part of the galaxy for a little while unravelling this priest-caste plot accidentally. It really goes nowhere, but it reads like a calmer, more relaxing Star Trek plot, and apparently it was an inspiration to early hollywood sci-fi, including Star Wars. I remember a graphic novel version of it detailing the panels that George Lucas stole, in nicer words.

somebody nice should storytime it and share a zippylink

>Worth checking out Comixology sale
>caring about shekels for a 40 yr old book that won't fund more from the creator
don't you know where you are, matey?

While the movie borrows its title from "L'Empire des Milles Planêtes", the plot is most likely from "L'Ambassadeur des Ombres". "Alpha" is clearly meant to be "Point Centrale".

Japs and Frogs made animated series out of it. It was great.

It's one my favorites sci-fi series, the first couple of issued are great, but it starts improving after that, and from Ambassador of the Shadows onward it's consistently great.

Yeah, the movies' absolutely a rework of the Ambassador of Shadows, though some things were changed. Mostly, the two main points of the book are gone (ie it shifts from a story where Valerian does nothing and Laureline is the competent one to a Valerian-centric narrative, and where in the original the eventual lesson was the world didn't need heroes to save it in the movie Valerian's very much the savior of the universe).

It's a great sci-fi series, full of interesting ideas (lots of weird aliens, timeline shenanigans, cold war, fake artificial earths, the best depiction of the holy trinity ever) , but it loses its way, probably starting a bit after "sur les frontières". It's also very notable because Laureline, originally a mere sidekick for Valerian, progressively becomes the real driving force in the team.

One of the most amusing things is its future earth originally was rebuilt after a nuclear apocalypse that occurred in 1986, but as the real 1986 came and went, and because it is not just a series about space travel but also time travel, the mystery of the non-apocalypse resulting in a parallel earth (ours) became a central plot point.

>no ass

I R E L A N D

>a couple that don't fuck
Although it seems like that in the beginning, hints are progressively dropped to indicate that they very much do.

Dear lord. The concept artists look more like Valerian than the prettyboy they cast as him...

Ironic as Valerian has already been plundered.

>originally a mere sidekick for Valerian, progressively becomes the real driving force in the team.

Now I wouldn't call her that, but Valerian certainly kind of became the brawns of their operation.

>The books are about a couple that don't fuck

Frankly, if you want subtle, you try finding out in which book it was revealed that Yoko and Vic are an item. That Valerian and Lareline being a thing was pretty obvious much earlier into the series and it's blindingly obvious after Earth disappears from their timeline.

>Now I wouldn't call her that
In Ambassador of the shadows she definitely is, and also in brooklyn Station

The art in volume 1 is not that great, especially at the beginning, but it's cool to see it improve. Volume 2 has great art and it gets better later in the series.

Would be nice though if more money for the publishers means more money to create/continue other comic series.

...

I hope the movie is better than the show.