The screenwriter, author with Mézières of “Valérian et Laureline”, and collaborator of Bilal or Tardi, died this Thursday, October 3 at the age of 86.
Being a comic book writer means doing “intrinsically part of the environment but always like an attached piece”, Pierre Christin told in 2019 Release, on the occasion of an exhibition dedicated to him in Angoulême. The screenwriter died on Thursday October 3, in Paris, at the age of 86, we learned Release from Dargaud, its publisher, confirming information from Monde.
Born July 27, 1938, in Saint-Mandé (current Val-de-Marne), Pierre Christin was the pen behind the SF comic strip Valerian and Laureline, imagined from 1967 with his childhood friend Jean-Claude Mézières as drawing artist. He had greatly contributed to breaking the narrative and aesthetic codes of a genre which, in the 70s, was still mainly aimed at children and was often despised.
Her Laureline also one of the rare heroines in a comic book world “100% male”, told Pierre Christin again in 2019. A militant choice for the screenwriter: “All the authors were men, like the owners of the companies, often Catholic as well. Women were generally absent, apart from Sécotine or Bécassine. They were generally stories about little boys told by old little boys. We were very keen that there be a woman from the start and that she be the one to have the great role, to lead the fight and the story.”
We also owe him, among a plethora of work numbering a good hundred works, including Rumors about Rouergue (1976) with a still very young Tardi, or the masterpieces the Phalanxes of the Black Order (1979) et Hunting party (1983), with Enki Bilal.
More information to come…
