diverse alien creatures they feature. Mézières' response upon seeing Star Wars was that he was "dazzled, jealous... and furious!". As a riposte, he produced an illustration for Pilote magazine in 1983 depicting the Star Wars characters Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa meeting Valérian and Laureline in a bar surrounded by a bestiary of alien creatures typical of that seen in both series. "Fancy meeting you here!" says Leia. "Oh, we've been hanging around here for a long time!" retorts Laureline. Mézières has since been informed that Doug Chiang, design director on The Phantom Menace, kept a set of Valérian albums and Les Extras de Mézières in his library. Mézières also noticed similarities between some of the sets in the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian and the planet seen in Birds of the Master and between some of the production sketches for the alien fighters in the 1996 film Independence Day and Valérian and Laureline's astroship. Awards 1984: Winner, Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, the most prestigious award given at the annual Angoulême International Comics Festival 1987: Winner, with Pierre Christin, European Science Fiction Society award for Valérian 1992: Special mention by the jury, with Pierre Christin, Prix Jeunesse 9–12 ans (Youth Prize 9–12 years), at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, for Les Habitants du Ciel, an encyclopaedia of the alien creatures that have appeared in the Valérian series 1995: Nominated, with Pierre Christin, for the Haxtur Award for Best Short Comic Strip, at the Salón Internacional del Cómic del Principado de Asturias (International Comics Convention of the Principality of Asturia, Spain), for the Valérian album The Circles of Power 1997: Winner, with Pierre Christin, Tournesol Award given to the comic that best reflects the ideals of the French Green Party, for the Valérian album Hostages of the Ultralum 2018: Max & Moritz Prize from Comic-Salon Erlangen (Germany) for Special Prize for outstanding life's workSelected publications The Valérian and Laureline (1967–2019) – drawn by Mézières, written by Pierre Christin. The classic comic strip series depicting the adventures of spatio-temporal agent Valérian and his feisty redhead companion, Laureline, as they travel through space and time is Mézières' most widely known and best-selling work. With the exception of the short stories originally published in the digest-sized Super Pocket Pilote spin-off publication of Pilote, all albums have been translated into English. Mon Amérique à moi (My Very Own America) (1974) – an 8-page