Writer: Jean-Claude Forest (1930-1998)
Artist: Paul Gillon (1926- )
 

Les Naufrages du Temps' premise is that, in 1990, as Mankind is under attack from a plague, two people, Christopher Cavallieri and Valerie Haurele, are placed into individual hibernation capsules and sent into space.  A thousand years later, Chris is brought back to life and helps the solar system to fight the Trasses, a collective intelligence made up from a race of alien, winged rats.  In the process, Chris finds Valerie's capsule and reanimates her.  However,  during their thousand-year sleep, the two voyagers had kept idealized images of each other. They soon discover that their love cannot withstand the ravages of reality...

 

Volume 3 introduces two new villains: one, a fantastic creature called the Tapir, is the crimelord of the Solar System; and the other a mad scientist, Leobart.  Both villains attempt to take over a mysterious world that lies within a gargantuan, worm-like creature.  Their plots are foiled by Chris and a group of friends, including the beautiful Mara -- Valerie's rival for Chris' love -- a cyborg, Major Lisdal and other colorful characters.    In Books 5 and 6, Chris discovers that the real Valerie was kidnapped by the Tapir and sent through space to his home planet, where she is prisoner of giant slug creatures with the power to materialize dreams.  To free Valerie, Chris allies himself with the Tapir's race, and once again defeats his old enemies, the Trasses.

 

Then, Chris and his friends are taken to Orkand, a planetary system used as a prison.  There, the heroes battle the fanatic cultists of Beselek, who hold the system under their domination.  In order to defeat their enemies, they finally gain the alliance of the Ortho-Mentas, a guild of scientists who live in orbit, in the wreck of a giant spaceship.  In the final two books in the series, Chris and Valerie are taken back to the Solar System, where the High Council is determined to clean up Terra from the plague which infests it, and the mutated monsters who inhabit it.  But Valerie betrays the Council and flees to the planet's surface.  On Terra, she and Chris discover that the plague is the original native lifeform of Earth, and men only invaders.  Mankind then surrenders Earth for its galactic destiny.

 

The Stories   1. L'Etoile Endormie [The Sleeping Star] ("Chouchou", 1964; rep. Hachette, 1974)  2. La Mort Sinueuse [The Creeping Death] (Hachette, 1975)  3. Labyrinthes [Labyrinths] (Hachette, 1976)  4. L'Univers Cannibale [The Cannibal Universe] (Hachette, 1976)      Writer/Artist: Paul Gillon.    5. Tendre Chimere [Tender Chimera] (Humanos, 1977)  6. Les Maitres Reveurs [The Master Dreamers] (Humanos, 1978)  7. Le Sceau de Beselek [The Seal Of Beselek] (Humanos, 1979)  8. Ortho-Mentas (Humanos, 1981)  9. Terra (Humanos, 1984)  10. Le Cryptomère (Humanos, 1989)

 
 

Publishing History   Les Naufrages du Temps premiered in 1964 in the short-lived French comic magazine "Chouchou".  The full story was eventually serialised in the daily newspaper "France-Soir" in 1974 and released as two, bichromic graphic novels by Hachette in 1974 and 1975.  Two more volumes (in color) were then released, also by Hachette, in 1976.  Les Naufrages du Temps were then serialized in "Metal Hurlant" in 1977.  "Metal"'s publiher, Les Humanoides Associes, then reprinted the earlier volumes in color, and continued the series until its end in 1989.  Gillon took over the writing of the series with Volume 5.

 

 

Paul Gillon (1926- ) joined the editorial team of "Vaillant" in 1947, illustrating numerous adventure stories such as Lynx Blanc [White Lynx}, Fils de Chine [Son of China], Le Cormoran [The Cormorant] and its popular spin-off, Jeremie.  In 1959, he started drawing the famous daily romance strip 13, Rue de l'Espoir [13 Hope St.], a French Heart of Juliet Jones written by Gall for "France-Soir."  His science fiction series include Les Naufragés du Temps, co-created with Jean-Claude Forest for "Chouchou", and La Survivante [The Survivor] for "L'Écho des Savanes" (1985).  Other, recent works include the espionnage thriller Les Leviathans (1978), Processus de Survie [Survival Process] (1984) and La Derniere des Salles Obscures [The Last Of The Dark Rooms] (1998).