But whereas Barbarella, who famously champions free love, reads perhaps more as burlesque, Laureline feels fleshed-out and human. And while the early Wonder Woman comics by William Moulton Marston lost some of their feminist power through their heavy-handedness, Laureline is tough in a more accessible way—without needing superpowers. Indeed, when the series begins, Laureline is not a futuristic elite agent, but, rather, an 11th-century peasant. In the comics’ first story, Bad Dreams (translated into English for the first time this year), Valérian travels back in time on a mission to the Middle Ages, when he meets Laureline. She discovers that Valérian is from the future, a potentially timeline-altering secret that prompts him to take her back to Galaxity, changing her life—and science fiction—forever.

* * *

I discovered Christin and Mézières’ comics in my twenties. At first, they reminded me of many things: the French artist Moebius’s fantastical sci-fi in The Airtight Garage and Edena; Star Wars (which Christin famously claimed stole design elements from his comics); and one of my favorite video-game series as a teenager, TimeSplitters, which also, half-comically, sent galactic agents into the past to battle cross-temporal villainies. But Valérian, which appeared before all these works, still seemed tonally unique.

I began with the first full-length story in the series, The City of Shifting Waters, which was the earliest to imagine Valérian and Laureline on a large-scale adventure. Initially published in two parts, the story took place in a New York City after a global nuclear catastrophe in the 1980s, flooded and controlled by seafaring bandits pillaging abandoned department and jewelry stores. Valérian, sent into this past timeline to investigate a suspicious incident amid the chaos, is later saved by Laureline, who has been secretly trailing him. Valérian finally encounters her in a dark room on a ship and tries to fight her, thinking she’s one of the bandits; though Laureline seems poised to beat him, she laughingly reveals herself, after which the pair set off on the mission together. The art in these early stories is simplistic in comparison to the majestic shadows and dreamlike scenes of later tales like On the Frontiers, but what drew me in was Laureline.

The young female agent subverts not only the expectations of the 20th century in which the comics appeared but also of her own medieval period. Indeed, the first time Laureline appears in the series is to save Valérian, not be rescued as a damsel in distress. Although the Dark Ages were less lightless than often rendered, had Laureline remained in her own time, she likely would have been required her to submit to the men around her. As de Beauvoir wrote of the constructions of gendered behavior in societies, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”; Laureline was always strong, but her power bloomed when it was given room to. This sense of becoming is perhaps most visible in the sixth volume, Ambassador of the Shadows. With Valérian kidnapped by violent aliens, Laureline must save him, and the day, on her own; it turns into the first of Laureline’s solo tales, highlighting her ingenuity and resilience.