Lucky Luke and Roy Rogers which he sent to Hergé in the hope of getting published. Hergé sent a reply encouraging him to keep up his efforts. In 1953, the fifteen years old Mézières enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art for four years. His class there included two other aspiring artists who would go on to find success in the field of comics – Patrick (Pat) Mallet and Jean "Moebius" Giraud. With Giraud in particular, he developed a life-long friendship due to their shared interest in Westerns and science fiction (both men later worked together as production illustrators on Besson's The Fifth Element). At this time he also rekindled his friendship with Pierre Christin, who was coincidentally attending the high school next door to the Arts Appliqués, the pair bonding over a mutual interest in jazz and cinema. While at college, Mézières, like Giraud, published illustrations and strips for publications such as Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Spirou magazine. Following art college, Mézières entered military service, which at the time lasted twenty-eight months, including a tour of duty based in Tlemcen, Algeria, during the Algerian War, returning to France just fifteen days before the Algiers putsch. Answering an advertisement in Le Figaro after his discharge from the army, Mézières was employed by the publishing house Hachette as an illustrator on a series of books titled Histoire des Civilizations (History of Civilization), for which he brought in Giraud to help him out with the well-paid chore. Intended to run to twenty volumes, Histoire des Civilizations folded after just five. Introduced to Benoit Gillain (son of the famous comics artist Jijé) by Giraud, Mézières entered into a partnership with Gillain and they opened a studio in 1963. Working mainly in advertising, Mézières acted as a photographer, model maker and graphic designer. He also assisted Gillain with the setting up of Totale Journal, a publication he would later work for again upon his return from America. Work in the United States Mézières had been fascinated by the American Old West since he was a little boy through exposure to Western genre films starring the likes of Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster and James Stewart and comics such as Lucky Luke and Jerry Spring. At the age of sixteen, he had attempted to travel to Mexico with Jean Giraud, whose mother lived there, but was prevented by