Pierre Christin was born July 23, 1936 in Saint Mandé, a suburb of Paris, France. Growing up during World War II, he met Jean-Claude Mézières during an air raid. They became life-long friends as they also attended the same school.
Christin graduated from The Sorbonne University and started studying political science and became a professor of french literatture at the University of Salt Lake City in Utah.
In 1965, he met Mézières again. He had been working on comics and commercial art for ten years. Pierre was persuaded by Jean-Claude to write "Le Rhum du Punch" (The Rum of the Punch), which was illustrated by Mézières and published in Pilote in 1966.
The following year, Pierre Christin returned to France and became director of the journalism department at University of Bordeaux. The same year, he started writing (under the pen-name Linus) "Valérian, Spatiotemporal Agent" (Valerian, Space-time Agent) for Pilote, again with illustrations by Mézières. The series eventually became the most important European science fiction comic.
Pierre also created the "Légendes d'aujourd'hui" (Legends of Today) series, first with illustrations by Jacques Tardi and later by Enki Bilal. Bilal became a regular partner and together they made "Les Phalanges de l'Ordre Noir" (The Black Order Brigade) and "Partie de Chasse" (The Hunting Party), both very insightful political comics about oppresion, conspiracy and injustice.
Among the other artists that Christin has worked with are François Boucq, Daniel Ceppi and Annie Goetzinger.
See also other Comics creators. Audited August 19, 2002