Valerian: The Complete Collection, Volume 1, by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières

Because I loved The Fifth Element, I had to check out Luc Besson's latest movie, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.  And because I thought Valerian was awesome, I had to check out the comics on which it was based.  The comics, which date back to the 1960s and 1970s, have been collected in book form.  Valerian: The Complete Collection, Volume 1 contains the first four Valerian comics: Bad Dreams (1967), a two-part story The City of Shifting Waters and Earth in Flames (1970), and The Empire of a Thousand Planets (1971).

First of all, if you're not familiar with Valerian and you're a fan of sci-fi, you will want to get to know these comics.  Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières were groundbreaking in their day, and very influential in the world of sci-fi.  Even a casual reading of these comics will reveal influences on the Star Wars movies.

Given the historic significance of these stories, they are well worth preserving and reading.  The visuals are rich, the stories are complex and entertaining (more so than many sci-fi movies and TV shows today), and the broad range of characters, species, and technologies reveal imaginations that were well ahead of their time.

The genre has its limitations.  These are comics, after all.  The action is static, and sometimes there are too many words in a frame.  But, as is pointed out in the introductory material, comics have the advantage of allowing the reading to dwell on a particular frame, revisit a page, and absorb the story at his own pace.  If you're a fan of comics at all, especially sci-fi comics, you definitely will want to check this out.

(By the way, a word about the movie.  The movie was fabulous.  I loved it.  But don't read this comic expecting to see anything like the story in the movie.  Other than the main characters the world(s) in which they live, the movie contained very little content from these stories.)