With the movie Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets coming to theaters soon, I bought the "groundbreaking graphic novel" upon which it is based. The graphic novel includes three Valerian stories: Bad Dreams (1967), The City of Shifting Waters (1970), and The Empire of a Thousand Planets (1971).
The story opens in the 28th Century where humanity rules a galactic empire but only a handful of people have jobs. Among the employed are the Technocrats who rule the empire and protect space-time from tampering. The top space-time agent is Valerian. Xombal, a rebellious technocrat of the First Circle, has traveled back to 11th Century France for reasons unknown and Valerian is sent to capture him. While there, he encounters Laureline, a peasant girl who lives in a 'haunted' forest. She helps him track down Xombul and discover that he is practicing sorcery which he plans to bring back to the 28th century so he can rule the galactic empire. With his sorcery, he has changed peasants into ogres, a local sorcerer into a dragon, and Laureline into a unicorn! Of course, Valerian stops Xombul just in the nick of time but Laureline knows too much about the future to be left in 11th Century France. She is recruited as Valerian's partner.
Overall, the story is ludicrous and kind of campy. The inclusion of sorcery and a supposedly historical French sorcerer from whom Xombul is able to learn magic is really out of place for a sci-fi series. It was also weird that Valerian always arrived after Xombal. Why not arrive a week early and be ready for him? Of course, time travel always presents a basket of nonsense and paradoxes. The future looks rather bleak since most of humanity spends their time 'dreaming,' basically wasting their lives in the equivalent of a Star Trek holodeck. This is the civilization that our hero is sworn to protect?
Silly as it was, it was fun. This is just the sort of thing that would have thrilled me when I was in prime comic-reading age.
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