Valerian and Laureline book 1: The City of Shifting Waters


By J.-C. Méziéres & P. Christin, with colours by E. Tranlé and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-038-2

Valérian is possibly the most influential science fiction series ever drawn – and yes, I am including both Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in that expansive and undoubtedly contentious statement. Although to a large extent those venerable newspaper strips formed the medium itself, anybody who has seen a Star Wars movie has seen some of Jean-Claude Méziéres & Pierre Christin’s brilliant imaginings which the filmic phenomenon has shamelessly plundered for decades: everything from the look of the Millennium Falcon to Leia’s Slave Girl outfit…

Simply put, more carbon-based lifeforms have experienced and marvelled at the uniquely innovative, grungy, lived-in tech realism and light-hearted swashbuckling rollercoasting of Méziéres & Christin than any other cartoon spacer ever imagined possible.

Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent launched in the November 9th, 1967 edition of Pilote (#420, running until February 15th 1968) and was an instant hit. The graphic novel under discussion here ‘The City of Shifting Waters’ is actually the second chronological yarn.

The groundbreaking series followed a Franco-Belgian mini-boom in science fiction triggered by Jean-Claude Forest’s 1962 creation Barbarella.

Other notable successes of the era include Greg & Eddy Paape’s Luc Orient and Philippe Druillet’s Lone Sloane and, which all with Valérian‘s hot public reception led to the creation of dedicated fantasy masterpiece Métal Hurlant in 1977.

Valérian and Laureline (as the series eventually became) is a light-hearted, wildly imaginative time-travel adventure-romp (a bit like Dr. Who, but not really at all…), drenched in wry, satirical, humanist and political commentary, starring (at first) an affable, capable, unimaginative and by-the-book cop tasked with protecting the universal time-lines and counteracting paradoxes caused by casual time-travellers.

When Valérian travelled to 11th century France in the first tale ‘Les Mauvais Rêves (‘Bad Dreams’) he was rescued from a tricky situation by a fiery, capable young woman named Laureline and he brought her back with him to the 28th super-citadel and administrative wonderland of Galaxity, capital of the Terran Empire. The indomitable girl trained as a Spatio-Temporal operative and by the time of this book was accompanying him on his missions throughout time and space.

Every subsequent Valérian adventure until the 13th was first serialised weekly in Pilote until the conclusion of ‘The Rage of Hypsis’ (January 1st – September 1st 1985) after which the mind-bending sagas were published as all new complete graphic novels, until the magnificent opus concluded in 2010.

(One clarifying note: in the canon “Hypsis” is counted as the twelfth tale, due to the collected albums being numbered from ‘The City of Shifting Waters’ – the second story but the first to be released in collected book form. When ‘Bad Dreams’ was finally released in a collected edition in 1983 it was given the number #0.)

The City of Shifting Waters was originally published in two tranches; ‘La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes’ (#455 25th July to 468, 24th October 1968) and ‘Terre en Flammes’ (‘Earth in Flames’, #492-505, 10th April to 10th July 1969), and opens here with the odd couple dispatched to 1986 – when civilisation on earth was destroyed due to ecological negligence and political chicanery – to recapture Xombul, a madman determined to undermine Galaxity and establish himself as Dictator of the Universe.

To attain his goal the renegade has travelled to New York after a nuclear accident has melted the ice caps and flooded the metropolis (and everywhere else), seeking hidden scientific secrets that would allow him to conquer the devastated planet and prevent the Terran Empire from ever forming…

Plunged back into an apocalyptic nightmare where Broadway and Wall Street are under water, jungle vines connect the deserted skyscrapers, Tsunamis are an hourly hazard and bold looters are snatching up the last golden treasures of a lost civilisation, the S-T agents find unique allies to preserve the proper past, survive even greater catastrophes such as the volcanic eruption of Yellowstone Park and frustrate the plans of the most ambitious mass killer in all of history…

Visually spectacular, mind-bogglingly ingenious and steeped in delightful in-jokes (the utterly-mad-yet-brilliant boffin who helps them is a hilarious dead ringer for Jerry Lewis in the 1963 film “The Nutty Professor”) this is still a timelessly perfect Science Fiction masterpiece every fan of the genre – in whatever medium – would be crazy to miss…
© Dargaud Paris, 1976 Christin, Méziéres & Tran-Lệ. All rights reserved. English translation © 2010 Cinebook Ltd.