Pierre Christin is a French comics creator and writer and he, along with Jean-Claude Mézières, a French comic strip artist and illustrator created the French comic book series Valérian and Laureline. First published in 1967, it is also known as Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent, or simply as Valérian, and it recounts the adventures of the dark-haired Valérian, a spatio-temporal agent and his redheaded female colleague Laureline as they travel the universe through space and time. The movie adaptation, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, will be released in theaters on Friday July 21, 2017. It stars Dane DeHaan as Major Valerian, Clara Delevingne as Sergeant Laureline, Clive Owen as Arün Filitt, their commander and Rihanna as Bubble, a shapeshifting entertainer.

According to Wikipedia, Valérian and Laureline, Valérian is a classical hero who is kind, strong, brave and follows the orders of his superiors even if he does not always agree with them. His partner Laureline is intelligent, determined, independent and good looking. The comic series combines space opera with time travel. Christin’s writing style contains humor, complexity and strongly humanist and left-wing liberal political ideas while Mézières’ art is best known for its vivid depictions of the alien worlds and species that they encounter along the way. It is considered innovative in European comics and pop culture and its influence can be seen in films such as Star Wars and The Fifth Element. Many of the stories have been translated into several languages.