More recently, I'd seen the title surface again. I'd generally assumed it was from some recent reprintings of the material, and I'd started thinking maybe I should track a copy down sometime. It wasn't high on my list, but it was top of mind enough that when I was scanning through my bookshelves for something else last night, the title stuck out. (As it turns out, by the way, the real reason it's been getting more attention lately is that there's actual a feature film of Valerian due out next month! Like I said, I maintain only a passing awareness of movies.)
Apparently, I have in my collection the three volumes Dargaud published in the early 1980s. I presume these were books my father had in his collection before he passed it on to me, and I'd only noted them enough to get them alphabetized on my bookshelf.
I point this out for a couple reasons. First, it's a good example of why you should keep your collection organized! If my books were just in any old order, I probably would not have stumbled across them. Second, this is why I don't purge my collection, even though it takes up an increasing amount of room. I never know when and where my research will turn, and it makes it easier to follow up on research quickly and easily if you don't have to hunt through bargain bins looking for that one book that you didn't know you needed, and is now hard to come by because of renewed interest thanks to an impending movie.
I have no idea if the movie will be any good. I literally found out about it just before writing this post. But regardless, thanks to setting up my own collection as a working library, I can at least get the basic concept and judge for myself how much the Lucasfilm team were influenced by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières.
