Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézieres' science fiction series Valérian and Laureline is one of the most influential French comics of all time. It had an especially significant effect on Luc Besson. The director not only used the influence of Valérian and Laureline to craft the world of The Fifth Element (Mézieres even did the early concept art), he's now shooting a feature film adaptation of the series starring Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne that will reportedly be the most expensive French film ever made.

But Christin and Mézieres' work might have had an influence on film before Besson. The comics originally started their run in the late 1960s and, as Cinebook's recent English translation of the series' second story The Empire of a Thousand Planets illustrates, might have provided some visual cues for George Lucas' Star Wars franchise. The final page of the new book shows six side-by-side comparisons of the Christin/Mézieres comics and stills from A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, and Revenge of the Sith. Slave Leia, the Millennium Falcon, Han in carbonite, Watto, and the unmasked Darth Vader all appear to have been influenced in some way by Valérian and Laureline. Check out the comparison above.