European Comics in Official and Fan Translations
On board Captain Singh’a Rough’a’s vessel, Valerian and Laureline finally make it to the Great Void, the unexplored empty space right at the very end of the universe. During their ongoing search for the lost Earth, the pair comes face to face with the Wolochs, a race of terrifying stone monsters.
The evil hordes of the Wolochs are rampaging through space, and everywhere death and destruction follow. But despite the despair of some and the betrayal of others, Valerian, Laureline, and a few other brave souls are resisting. They’re hoping to use a mysterious artifact, the Time Opener, to banish the stones and bring back Earth. But what price must they pay to do so? And what sort of Earth will they get back if they succeed?
Memories From the Futures, 22nd volume of the series ‘Valerian and Laureline,’ is a superb homage to a saga that has turned upside-down both our vision of the future and the role of women in comics. The saga had come to a close in the previous volume with a temporal loop to which only the authors hold the key. In this new volume, authors Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières play the role of intergalactic tourists, revisiting some of their heroes’ most remarkable adventures. In addition to adding a few sublime pages to Alflolol, they return to Central Point, as well as taking us back to a time when Laureline, a wild young woman, had yet to be seduced by spatio-temporal agent Valerian. Back to the future in comics’ first space opera!
An apparently simple mission – apprehending a speculator-droid – turns into a race against time when the Shingouz drop in uninvited mid-arrest, begging Valerian and Laureline for protection against someone who means to kill them. To the agents’ surprise, it’s an old friend who soon pops up in hot pursuit, guns blazing. The ensuing shoot-out does little to simplify an already complicated situation: our heroes’ favourite information brokers have managed to … lose Earth in a card game!
It is the winter of 1937, and Aimé Louzeau lives with his mother and their servant. One day, he goes to the Quai des Orfèvres, the police prefecture of Paris, to speak with the vice squad. He currently works in the Criminal Investigation department, but crimes of passion and back alley stabbings really aren’t his thing, so he requests a transfer from Chief Inspector Séverin. The atmosphere immediately darkens, as Louzeau is thrown straight into the interrogation of a pimp called Guapito and his prostitute.
It’s June 1942. Five years have gone by, and Paris has changed. The Winter Velodrome, Inspector Séverin’s favorite place, is soon to be put to different use. Aimé Louzeau, although still the fresh-faced young man he always was, has been profoundly affected by his encounter with Eeva, the panther woman. She seems to have stirred up all sorts of contradictions in him: policeman or Indian chief? The frivolities of the 30s have well and truly disappeared, to be replaced by drama, resignation and blind melancholy.
Taho-the-Quick, a poacher, has an encounter with the animal totem of his people, the dragon queen, who entrusts him with the dangerous mission of carrying her egg to her dragon brothers up in the mountains. On his journey, Taho-the-Quick will not only have to fight enemies but also join forces with unexpected allies, including the mysterious White Claw, a warrior with unparalleled skills. The survival of the dragon species and that of a whole people will depend on their partnership.
White Claw the warrior, Taho the dragon slayer, and their brothers in arms head to the land of the Monkey People to liberate their prince and lead a revolution against the evil warmonger Suo-the-Red. Not all of the traveling companions will come back alive from this journey fraught with danger and betrayal… but one will rise from the dead and another will finally get the revenge he’s sought for so long.
The head of Galaxity’s Spatio-Temporal Service himself has joined Valerian and Laureline at Inverloch Castle. There, among various human and alien allies, he explains to them the threat that looms over Earth: all of the recent incidents, all those important people gone mad and threatening to bring about the apocalypse... All of that is due to the malicious influence of the mysterious planet Hypsis. But Hypsis is a world that moves from system to system – it’ll need to be pinpointed first...
On an interstellar cruise ships, a mysterious individual in full environmental suit is working hard to get to Earth. On Earth, meanwhile, another person in a spacesuit is exploring a nuclear reactor on behalf of its owners. That second man is Valerian, and since the disappearance of Galaxity, he’s been forced to make a living by putting his advanced knowledge and equipment to good use. But what he’s discovered inside the plant is extremely worrisome...