Euro Comics: Review of Valerian and Laureline - a podcast by Stergios Botzakis & Derek Royal

Time Codes:

• 00:00:25 - Introduction
• 00:03:23 - Setup, and a big thanks to Jerome Saincantin!
• 00:05:01 - Valerian and Laureline
• 01:13:46 - Wrap up
• 01:15:10 - Contact us

This month on The Comics Alternative's Euro Comics series, Edward and Derek devote the entire episode to Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières's Valerian and Laureline series. They do this within the context of Luc Besson's new film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. As the guys point out, the series' English publisher, Cinebook, has begun to release new hardbound two-volume editions of title, but Derek and Edward are reviewing from the paperback single-story editions that have been available previously. In all, they discuss volumes 1-4, 6, 9-13, and 15, published through Cinebook between October 2010 and December 2016.

Among the many elements of Valerian and Laureline that they discuss are the evolution of Christin's style over the course of the series, the ways in which the stories both adhere to and deviate from common science-fiction tropes, the strong (and non-objectifying) representations of Laureline, the title's colorful cast of secondary or supporting figures, the series' all-age quality, and the subtle ways in which the creators embed current (at the time of creation) socio-political contexts within the narrative. Even the guys only focus on one title this month, there's more than enough to cover on this episode.

Further episodes of The Comics Alternative

Further podcasts by Stergios Botzakis & Derek Royal

Website of Stergios Botzakis & Derek Royal