The BD-ist Pierre Christin died on 03 October. His heritage is a huge collection of graphical novels he scenarized. Many of them masterpieces, from the political Black Order Phalanges with Enki Bilal, where a group of [very] former International Brigadists (pictured in 1937 on the cover below) reconstitutes to fight to death a parallel group of fascists who fought in Franco’s war against the Spanish Republic and rerouped (circa 1980) againstprogressive forces throughout Europe, followed by a scathing description of the decaying USSR in Hunting Party, again with Bilal, to
the science-fiction series of Valérian (and Laureline) [along with Jean-Claude Mézière] that spans decades and follows societal progress by seeing Laureline becoming the main character (rather than her female partner Valérian), fighting dictators, conglomerates, colonialism, and pollution—more a space social drama than a space opera, as he once stated—, to
the 86-ish ecology cum fantasy trilogy, La Croisière des Oubliés, again with Bilal. Plus other great books that I read and re-read during my (extended!) childhood, mostly in the BD journals that were created over that period, from Pilote to Métal Hurland, À Suivre, &tc. He was also involved in teaching, from a visiting position in contemporary French literature in USU, Salt Lake City, to a professorship in journalism and communication at the University of Bordeaux, where he created the first French public school of journalism, now Institut de journalisme Bordeaux Aquitaine. A great artist, may he now roam forever the deep space landscapes he and Mézière created!
