Jean-Claude Mézières (; 23 September 1938 – 23 January 2022) was a French comics artist and illustrator. Born in Paris and raised in nearby Saint-Mandé, he was introduced to drawing by his elder brother and influenced by comics artists such as Hergé, Andre Franquin and Morris and later by Jijé and Jack Davis. Educated at the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art, he worked upon graduation as an illustrator for books and magazines as well as in advertising. A lifelong interest in the Wild West led him to travel to the United States in 1965 in search of adventure as a cowboy, an experience that would prove influential on his later work.
Returning to France, Mézières teamed up with his childhood friend, Pierre Christin, to create Valérian and Laureline, the popular, long-running science fiction comics series for which he is best known and which influenced many science fiction and fantasy films, including Star Wars. Mézières contributed as a conceptual designer on several motion picture projects, most notably the 1997 Luc Besson film, The Fifth Element, as well as continuing to work as an illustrator for newspapers, magazines and in advertising. He also taught courses on the production of comics at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis.
Mézières received international recognition through numerous awards, most notably the 1984 Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême.
Biography
Early life and career Raised in the Saint-Mandé area in the suburbs of Paris, Jean-Claude Mézières met his friend and frequent collaborator Pierre Christin at the age of two in an air-raid shelter during World War II. He was first inspired to draw by the influence of his elder brother who, aged fourteen, had a drawing published in the magazine OK. Mézières' initial inspiration came from such OK strips as Arys Buck by Uderzo, Kaza the Martian by Kline and Crochemaille by Erik. Later he was exposed to Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, Franquin's period on Spirou et Fantasio and, his favourite of all, Morris' Lucky Luke. He had his first drawings published in 1951, at the age of thirteen, in the magazine Le journal des jeunes, published by Le Figaro. A year later, "completely fascinated by Tintin", he created an eleven-page strip, Tintin in California, which features an unusually muscle-bound Arys Buck-influenced Tintin. This was followed, at the age of sixteen, by La Grande Poursuite, a Western influenced by Tintin, Lucky Luke and Roy Rogers which he sent to Hergé in the hope of getting published. Hergé sent a reply encouraging him to keep up his efforts.
In 1953, the fifteen years old Mézières enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art for four years. His class there included two other aspiring artists who would go on to find success in the field of comics – Patrick (Pat) Mallet and Jean "Moebius" Giraud. With Giraud in particular, he developed a life-long friendship due to their shared interest in Westerns and science fiction (both men later worked together as production illustrators on Besson's The Fifth Element). At this time he also rekindled his friendship with Pierre Christin, who was coincidentally attending the high school next door to the Arts Appliqués, the pair bonding over a mutual interest in jazz and cinema. While at college, Mézières, like Giraud, published illustrations and strips for publications such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou magazine.
Following art college, Mézières entered military service, which at the time lasted twenty-eight months, including a tour of duty based in Tlemcen, Algeria, during the Algerian War, returning to France just fifteen days before the Algiers putsch.
Answering an advertisement in Le Figaro after his discharge from the army, Mézières was employed by the publishing house Hachette as an illustrator on a series of books titled Histoire des Civilizations (History of Civilization), for which he brought in Giraud to help him out with the well-paid chore. Intended to run to twenty volumes, Histoire des Civilizations folded after just five.
Introduced to Benoit Gillain (son of the famous comics artist Jijé) by Giraud, Mézières entered into a partnership with Gillain and they opened a studio in 1963. Working mainly in advertising, Mézières acted as a photographer, model maker and graphic designer. He also assisted Gillain with the setting up of Totale Journal, a publication he would later work for again upon his return from America.
Work in the United States Mézières had been fascinated by the American Old West since he was a little boy through exposure to Western genre films starring the likes of Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster and James Stewart and comics such as Lucky Luke and Jerry Spring. At the age of sixteen, he had attempted to travel to Mexico with Jean Giraud, whose mother lived there, but was prevented by his parents.
In 1965, Mézières arranged a working visa through a friend of Jijé's who had a factory in Houston, Texas. In the end, however, he never took up the job in Houston. After staying in New York for a few months, the call of the West proved too strong and eventually he ended up hitchhiking across the country, first to Seattle and then to Montana (where he worked on a ranch driving tractors, laying posts and cleaning stables) before ending up in San Francisco. His initial plan was to find work in an advertising agency in San Francisco but he ran foul of the Immigration Service who told him that his visa was good for working in the factory in Houston and nowhere else. He quickly left San Francisco in search of an authentic "Wild West" cowboy experience. Arriving in Salt Lake City, Utah with no money, he sought out Pierre Christin, who was living there while teaching at the University of Utah, and turned up on his doorstep asking him if he could sleep on his settee. To make ends meet, Mézières produced some illustrations for a small advertising agency in Salt Lake City and for a Mormon children's magazine called Children's Friend as well as selling some photographs he had taken while working on the ranch in Montana. After a few months, he found work on a ranch in Utah: this time succeeding in his aspiration of living the life of a cowboy, an experience he described as "better than in my dreams".
When winter came and there was no work available on the ranches, he collaborated with Christin on a six-page strip called Le Rhum du Punch, a copy of which he sent to Jean Giraud who was by now writing and illustrating Blueberry for the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote. Giraud showed the strip to Pilote'''s editor, Rene Goscinny, who agreed to publish it (issue 335, 24 March 1966). This was followed by another collaboration titled Comment réussir en affaires en se donnant un mal fou (How to succeed in business by almost killing oneself through hard work) which was also published in Pilote (issue 351, 14 July 1966). By this stage Mézières visa was almost expired and so he used the money from these strips to pay for his ticket home. In leaving America, Mézières also left behind a young woman, Linda, one of Christin's students: she followed him to France some months later and became his wife.
Mézières' experiences in the United States have provided the inspiration for several magazine articles published in Pilote, Tintin, and GEO magazines as well as two books – Olivier chez les cow-boys (Olivier with the Cowboys), a children's book written by Pierre Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières about a visit Christin's son Olivier paid to the ranch Mézières worked on in Utah and Adieu, rêve américain... (Farewell, American dreams...), again written by Christin with photographs and illustrations by Mézières, a nostalgic look back at their time in the United States.
Valérian On his return from the United States, Mézières visited the offices of Pilote magazine to see René Goscinny and Jean-Michel Charlier. Goscinny put him to work on L'extraordinaire et Troublante Aventure de Mr. August Faust (The Extraordinary and Troubling Adventure of Mr August Faust), written by Fred. This would be the first serialised strip that Mézières would work on. Due to the lack of artistic freedom he was given (because Fred's script came with all the strip panels already blocked out), Mézières found this a difficult assignment.
By this time Pierre Christin was dividing his time between Paris and Bordeaux, where he was working on founding the school of journalism at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie (IUT). Meeting up with Mézières one day, Christin suggested that they work on creating a comic strip together. Both had their experiences in the American West to draw upon but felt, thanks to Lucky Luke, Jerry Spring and Blueberry, that the market for Westerns was already crowded. Instead, Christin suggested that they turn their hands to science fiction, a genre that, at that time, was not prevalent in French comics. Although Goscinny was not a science fiction fan, he wanted to promote innovation and originality in Pilote and so commissioned them to produce a strip.
Drawing on influences from literary science fiction, Mézières and Christin devised the character of Valérian, a spatio-temporal agent from the 28th century employed by Galaxity, the capital of the future Earth, to protect space and time from interference. Neither Mézières nor Christin had any interest in making Valérian into a clean-cut hero of the type that appeared in French comics of the time. Instead they sought to create an anti-hero, "a banal character [without] any extraordinary means of action".