For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky

“Valerian and Laureline” is a French comic with a science fiction theme. I've only read one album so far, “The Land Without Stars”. I saw it already as a kid, but it didn't look exciting, so I never read it. In contrast to the other reviewers, I don't think the drawings are very good. But yes, I also thought of David Lynch's “Dune” or the Jabba aspect of “Star Wars” when reading this album. The “Flash Gordon” motion picture featuring Max von Sydow also came to mind.

I admit that the plot (if that's the name for it) is quite funny!

The spatial-temporal agents of Galaxity, Valerian and Laureline, are quite the characters. Valerian is an immature drinker and prankster, although he is also pretty good at manning space shuttles and fighting with blunt instruments. Laureline is The Beautiful Half-Nude Girl Who Can Fight, Too. This unlikely couple penetrates the atmosphere of a bizarre, hollow planet with an internal sun, the inhabitants of which are completely oblivious to the outside universe, or to the fact that their world (Zahir) is on a collision course with several human colonies.

The two agents quickly discover that Zahir is in the grips of a never-ending war between two cities, Valsennar and Malka. Valsennar is a patriarchy where women do all the dirty work, but with a twist: the ruling males are effeminate, while the subordinate females are aggressive and war-like. Conditions in Malka are the opposite: the rulers are a caste of warrior-women or Amazons, while the cowardly men are forced to become cannon-fodder. I admit that Malka was something to behold! Yes, this is how “the men's rights movement” imagines Sweden to look like, ha ha. Poised in between the two warring powers are the nomadic Lemm people, who sell explosives to both sides, no questions asked.

Naturally, there's a lot of jokes about gender roles, stereotypes and pointless wars in “The Land Without Stars”. Apart from the feminist (or quasi-feminist) message, parallels to the Cold War are pretty obvious. The parochial "hollow earth" where nothing ever changes and nobody knows anything about the wider galaxy is an obvious metaphor for our species, obsessed with its trivial BAU while the world is on a collision course with crises that can wreck us all. It's also interesting to note that the hollow earth concept used in this comic seems to be a version of the “concave” one, mostly associated with Cyrus Teed (1839-1908), a harmless crackpot mentioned in books about such things. Let me also note that a zoological survey of Zahir would be most interesting. These guys really disprove the old canard that bumblebees can't fly!

For giving me a few laughs, I give this comic album four stars.