Todays reading week I am looking into one of my favourite graphic novels and that is the series of Valerian and Laureline: The Time Opener by Pierre Christin (Christin, Mézières and Tranlé, 2010).
I’m looking at this novel because for starters I grew up reading this comic and the other series/issues and two I’ve always love the panelling of the storyboards and layout. Jean-Claude Mezieres is the artists of this series of valerian and I’ve found his approach to be unique yet simple and with a flow of the other style comics for Valerian.
From the pipeline comics web page it quotes ” This volume is the conclusion to Valerian & Laureline’s saga. It brings back characters and refers to events from just about every book from the series” (Comics, 2019). I think this is purely from the illustrations by Mezieres. the artist has captured each character to their correct status in the comic and from my experience its was from the illustrations of the characters and the storyline that drew me into reading them as a child.
The one thing I liked about this comic is the front cover. As you see here.
When I look at this front cover I think. This is one classic comic book front cover. The colours and style of illustration remind me of a comic artist named Fiona Staples (Staples, 2019). She was the creator of Saga series. Her work was rated in the top 25 comic book artists by SYFY (Estrella, 2019). From this source I have other comic book artist like Becky Cloonan (Cloonan, 2019) the creator of The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. As I looked at these artists I found that I have a fond likeness to “typical” comic book styles like Valerian.
The thing that I like about this comic style is the bold colours and watercolour style of the planets. As we all know now I am a fan of watercolours and illustrations. This is a reason of why I like valerian comics. I am Preparing myself to create a how to use watercolours within illustration so stay tuned for that.
I also want to give a little recognition for the Valerian film which came out in 2017. Let have a little recap on what the film is about. With using one of my “favourite” film critic on the interweb and that is Rotten Tomatoes (if you didn’t guess already I was being sarcastic). No, the real reason of why I use this source is because who doesn’t like a little convention. Without further or do lets get into this…
Right so, before I get into the juice of my opinion against Rotten Tomatoes. Here is a recap of what Valerian and the city of a thousand planets is all about. Valerian is a special operatives who has a side kick called Laureline. Together they act like space cops and make sure everything is in place in space (weyhey). The thousand planets was formed before their time but knew of its existence and they came to get to the thousand planets due to a job of which they come across a cute alien doglike pet, Or I think its meant to be a guinea pig. Either way its cute. So on so forth they get up to some crazy tasks to find out what happened to this planet called Mül which was destroyed about 30 odd years ago. Now that we have a brief idea of the movie lets go and see my opinion to Rotten Tomatoes.
Rotten tomatoes state that “DeHaan and Delevingne can do better – and so can the rest of us” (Bradshaw, 2017). Have to say one you watch a film for the story and the cinema feature not for the actors per-say however I do agree they could of done better but I don’t think this is relevant right now as I as a film lover and who studied film and tv production I think of editing skills and the director. Speaking of which a critic on Rotten Tomatoes had a great status about this and said “The fantasy worlds and creatures rendered in astoundingly beautiful visual effects are worth the ticket price alone, dazzling in 3D and an immersive, imaginative delight” (,) I have to agree the visual aspect of the film was a delight to watch and as an illustrator and who also studied animation for 2 years. I have to admire the SFX and the CGI of the planets, creatures and film making itself. I am very bias towards this movie as I did really love it but I have kept a mature head on and shown Rotten Tomatoes critics. Example like this one “I can picture this film becoming a bit of a cult classic but don’t wait for that” (Wagner, 2017). Granted this stung a lot as a fan for the director and the film itself. But I do see what they mean here. However I think if you look at the magical aspects of this film and the entertainment value then this film is spot on. It has fantastic graphics and animation. The storyline was like I was following a comic. One, its not meant to be completely making sense they were following a comic style script. what do you expect. Two, The story line was based on Valerian finally committing to Laureline and trust me I have been waiting for this to happen for so, so long. People who have criticised this keep referring to Fifth Element. Sorry to state this but. It’s not Fifth Element. Its Valerian. The two are completely different. Granted some of the creatures are the same but its basing on the universe, space the big galactic. You are going to come across the same aliens if being realistic. I’m getting a head of myself here, I do think I stated some good points.
As much as I want to ignore and like Valerian here place my helmet down and block the haters I have to agree in some areas. But…
I have had my little debate. I am not a film critic I am an Illustrator and what I have to admire is that the film did have a great concept artist named Ben Mauro (Mauro, 2017). His work is amazing and I loved his artistic skills to create the creatures. Here is an example of his work.
Its incredible. As an illustrator I admire films for behind the scene and seeing Mauro’s work (Mauro, 2017) I cant stress enough that I think they deserve more recognition. I like how his work has a realistic feel to them and looking at this illustration of the Megaptor. I think the teeth on this beast is extremely wicked and I cant admire Mauro enough.
I hope you enjoyed this blog and found this useful
until the next blog.
Rach 🙂
Bibliography
Bradshaw, P. (2017). Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017). [online] Rotten Tomatoes. Available at: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/valerian_and_the_city_of_a_thousand_planets#contentReviews [Accessed 12 Feb. 2019].
Christin, P., Mézières, J. and Tranlé, E. (2010). The time opener. Cinebook/Europe Comics.
Comics, P. (2019). Valerian and Laureline v21: “The Time Opener” – Pipeline Comics. [online] Pipeline Comics. Available at: https://www.pipelinecomics.com/valerian-and-laureline-v21-the-time-opener/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2019].
Cloonan, B. (2019). Becky Cloonan. [online] Image Comics. Available at: https://imagecomics.com/creators/becky-cloonan [Accessed 11 Feb. 2019].
Estrella, E. (2019). The 25 greatest comic book artists from the last 25 years. [online] SYFY WIRE. Available at: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/25-of-the-greatest-comic-artists-from-the-last-25-years [Accessed 11 Feb. 2019].
Mauro, B. (2017). Valerian Concept Art by Ben Mauro | Concept Art World. [online] Concept Art World. Available at: http://conceptartworld.com/news/valerian-concept-art-ben-mauro/ [Accessed 12 Feb. 2019].
Staples, F. (2019). Fiona Staples. [online] Image Comics. Available at: https://imagecomics.com/creators/fiona-staples [Accessed 11 Feb. 2019].
Wagner, R. (2017). Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017). [online] Rotten Tomatoes. Available at: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/valerian_and_the_city_of_a_thousand_planets#contentReviews [Accessed 12 Feb. 2019].
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