Writer Phillipe Graton brought the latest adventure of Michel Vaillant, the cartoon character created by his father, to The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival in March. "Macao" will be released in November during the Grand Prix, and will feature a new character, the driver’s son
Michel Vaillant, the cartoon character created by Frenchman Jean Graton, will return to Macau after more than three decades. The racing car driver’s stories have been continued by his son, Philippe Graton, for the past 25 years, and "Macao", the seventh volume of the series’ latest season, will be launched in the territory in November during the 65th Macau Grand Prix.
However this time, Vaillant will not be returning to race on the Guia Circuit, but rather to find something priceless, hidden in the back streets of the city, that he desperately needs in order to save the family business.
“The first problem I encountered when I started collecting information about the Macau Grand Prix is that there is a maximum age limit for [F3] drivers, they cannot be more than 26 years old,” Philippe Graton said at The Script Road press conference. “Of course Michel Vaillant doesn’t show his true age, but he’s much older than 26, so we had to find a story that would allow him to remain the main character and hero of the story.”
Graton said the solution was to find a plotline that would unfold both on the racing track as well as within the city, with something he “absolutely has to find to save the family business.”
Taking the character off the track also served another purpose, to “show what Macau is like.” Since the first time Michel Vaillant was in the territory in the 1980s, “Macau has changed a lot; it’s almost a different city we’re showing,” Graton says. “Some scenes will happen on the little streets I like very much, because you never know if you are in Portugal or China, and this was the Macau that I wanted to use as a background for the story, because this is the right environment that I wanted for this story,” Graton explains.

And this time, Michel Vaillant will not come alone. In the seventh volume of the new season of the series, Philippe Graton presents a new character to the readers: Patrick, the driver’s 17-year-old son, described by the author as a “geek” and a tech buff. Having turned his back on his father’s world, the young man comes with a distinct purpose: to collaborate in a research project at the University of Macau.
The idea for this new story was born of a challenge from Ricardo Pinto, director of the Macau Literary Festival (and publisher of Macau CLOSER) exactly one year ago, when Graton first came to the city as a guest of The Script Road. He returned in November during the 64th Macau Grand Prix with his co-writer Denis Lapière and his designer, Benjamin Bénéteau, to start the process of creating the new story.
“We call the books ‘graphic novels’ because they are not fun like comic books, but very realistic. So we have to discover places, talk to a lot of people, take lots of pictures, document and understand what we’re talking about,” Graton explained of the process behind the work.
Ricardo Pinto and Susana Gomes have also joined the Michel Vaillant creative team as co-directors of a documentary on the process of creating Macao.
“The idea for this documentary is precisely to show how ‘graphic novels’ are being made today, very different from how they were made in the past,” explains Ricardo Pinto, who is also the producer of the film.
“We tried to accompany the team during their visit to Macau during the Grand Prix last year, and then met them in Brussels when the Salon de l’Auto was taking place and where Michel Vaillant had a huge exhibition. It was important for us to be there, not only to realize how they do the job, but also to show how important these adventures are for people, and this will also feature in the documentary,” the producer explains.
Macao will be released in November, during the next edition of the Macau Grand Prix, in French and possibly also with Portuguese, English and Chinese translations. With the driver’s return to China, Graton hopes this will mean an opportunity to contact mainland publishers and introduce the stories to the Chinese market. The documentary is also scheduled for release at that time.