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Some of his stories feature temporal paradoxes. The strip has been translated into several languages, including English, Swedish and Brazilian Portuguese (it was once a weekly feature of the influential newspaper " O Globo ").
Valérian and Laureline are space-time agents working for the galactic Earth empire Galaxity. The agents patrol the past to protect Galaxity, as well as explore and patrol other planets. The setting of the story is in the future in the 28th century. While the stories take place at a very wide range of worlds or epochs, there are some important central locations. One of them is the Point Central space station, which is a big meeting place for people of many different species from all over the galaxy. Point Central was built a long time ago, and some of its history is unclear. It is expanded as new races add their modules to it. It is administered by ambassadors.
Galaxity is the capitol city of the Earth empire.
The spaceship Valérian and Laureline are using, called xb982, is central to the story. It is always used by the agents to travel everywhere, sometimes using a space-time jump, a sort of hyperspace drive enabling near-instant transportation.
In the first adventure, Valérian was working alone. During a time travel mission to the French Middle Ages, where he was to capture the Galaxity scientist Xiombul, Valérian is saved by Laureline, a local young woman. Because the people living in the past are not allowed to know about time-travelling, she has to go to the future with Valérian to eventually become his partner as an agent.
Valérian is the more calm one of the two; he was raised into believing that the actions and policies of Galaxity were always right, and wants to do things properly and by the book. Laureline, on the other hand, has a skepticism towards authorities in general, and is sometimes more impulsive in her actions.
There are plenty of other characters, some of them occurring more than once in the series. Here are a few of them: