Jean-Claude Mézières

Biography of Jean-Claude Mézières

Jean-Claude Mézières, born in Paris on September 23, 1938, into a family with a strong taste for art, discovered a passion for drawing at a very young age. During the Second World War, he became friends with his favorite writer, Pierre Christin, and it was from 1945/1946 that he discovered his first comic books (those of Uderzo and Kline) in his older brother's magazines. But the real crush would come, as for many comic book enthusiasts, with Tintin.

At the age of 15, and after a few small illustrated stories (only a few pages), he sent "La Grande Poursuite," 16 color pages, to Mr. Casterman, whose style oscillated between Buck Rogers and westerns. It was Hergé who responded to him and encouraged him. A student at the Applied Arts, he continued to draw short stories and managed to have them published in "Cœurs Vaillants" or in "Fripounet et Marisett".

At the Applied Arts, he became friends with other young people who shared his passions, met Franquin in Belgium, reconnected with Christin, who was pursuing brilliant studies in Literature.
We are at the end of the 1950s and all these young people have only one dream: America. Mézières went there in 1965, with a one-year professional visa as an industrial designer of metal structures. He met Christin who was teaching in Salt Lake City and met Linda, one of his students, who would soon become Mrs. Mézières.
Together, the two childhood friends wrote a story in 6 pages and, through a friend from the "Arts-A," had it published in Pilote, then led by Goscinny.

Back in Paris, Mézières was hired by Goscinny and truly began a career as a comic book artist. With Christin, who also returned to France, he proposed a science fiction series to Pilote. It would be Valérian, with a script by Christin, drawn by Mézières, and colored by Evelyne Tran-Lê, who happens to be Jean-Claude's younger sister...

Mézières' legend was launched and from 1970, Dargaud published the story in the form of albums. 21 to this day, in 40 years of existence. Valérian and Laureline has become one of the cornerstones of modern comics. Mézières' clear, highly readable construction is the cornerstone on which he built his success but also paved the way for the entire next generation.
In 1984, Angoulême honored him, paying him the deserved tribute.

Later, Mézières, also passionate about photography, turned to cinema, with more or less success for the first experiences, until he met Luc Besson.
First, Besson asked him, in 1992, to draw the visuals for a first project called "Zaltman Bléros" before finally being inspired by Mézières' work (the flying taxis from Valérian) and "The Power Circles" (which Mézières had written in between) to create, in 1995/1996, "The Fifth Element." A French film with an international cast, which premiered at Cannes and achieved more than 7 million admissions in France, The Fifth Element is still today the reference for French science fiction cinema... It's no wonder that Mézières is associated with it and that the film sees the triumph of his very detailed visuals, his sense of balance in the decor, and his exceptional imagination, he who is one of the fathers of our science fiction, along with Pierre Boule or René Barjavel.

Jean-Claude Mézières passed away on January 23, 2022, in Paris.

(c) Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES