Prince Valiant

Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, or simply Prince Valiant, is a comic strip created by Hal Foster. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story for its entire history. Today it stands out for its realistic panoramas and intelligent and often humorous narrative, which appears below the pictures, without word balloons. The items shown are accurate, but taken from very different time periods ranging from the viking age to the 19th century.

History and story overview

Prince Valiant began in full color tabloid sections on Saturday February 13 1937. The first full page was strip #16, which appeared in the Sunday New Orleans Times Picayune. The internal dating changed from Saturday to Sunday with strip #53. The full page strip continued until 1971 when strip #1188 was not offered in full page format—it was the last strip Hal Foster drew. The strip continues today by other artists in half page format.

The setting is Arthurian. Valiant himself is a Nordic prince (from the faraway Thule—apparently located somewhere near the city Trondheim on the Norwegian west coast). Early in the story, Valiant comes to Camelot, becomes fast friends with Sir Gawain and Sir Tristram, earns the respect of King Arthur and Merlin, and becomes a Knight of the Round Table. Later, he meets the love of his life—Aleta—on a Mediterranean island. He fights the Huns with his magic Singing Sword, Flamberge, travels to Africa and to America, and helps his father regain his lost throne of Thule.

The historical and mythological elements of Prince Valiant were initially chaotic, but soon Foster attempted to bring the facts into order. Some of the elements of the story (for instance, the death of Attila the Hun in 453, the murder of Aëtius in 454, though different from the historical version (Valiant and Gawain are blamed for the murder and must flee), and Geiseric's sacking of Rome in 455, which Prince Valiant and Aleta witness), place the story in the 5th century. Some slightly fantastic elements, like "marsh monsters" (a dinosaur-like creature) and witches, are present in the early years but are later downplayed (as are Merlin's and Morgan le Fay's use of magic), so that by 1942 the story is in most aspects a realistic one.

Prince Valiant at the bridge excerpt from the June 19, 1938 strip—© 1938 King Features Syndicate
Note Foster's compositional techniques, particularly how perspective creates a visual flow of Viking raiders from left to right, a flow that stops abruptly just before the figure of Prince Valiant highlighted against a dark background. The arch of the bridge further accentuates this dynamic.

In 1970, after try-out strips by several artists, Foster invited John Cullen Murphy to collaborate on the strip. Here is a list of the transition artists:

• 1956 Foster
• 1957 Gray Morrow
• 1958 Foster
• 1959 Foster
• 1960 Murphy
• 1961 Foster
• 1962 Wally Wood
• 1963 Foster
• 1964 Murphy
• 1965 unknown
• 1966 Murphy
• 1967 same as 1965
• 1968 Foster
• 1969 Murphy
• 1970 same as 1965
• 1971-2 Murphy
• 1973 Foster
• 1974-5 Murphy
• 1976 Foster
• 1977-87 Murphy
• 1988 Foster
• 1989 on Murphy

From 1971 on Murphy drew the strip from Foster scripts and pencil sketches. Foster continued to write the strip until strip #2241, in 1980. Murphy then drew it himself, with scripts by his son Cullen Murphy, an editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Stories by Cullen Murphy included many adventures in which Val is opposed by Byzantine Emperor Justinian. John Cullen Murphy's daughter, Mairead, did the lettering and coloring.

In March 2004, Murphy retired, and turned the strip over to his hand-picked successor, illustrator Gary Gianni. Writing duties were soon afterwards passed on to Mark Schultz. Prince Valiant appears weekly in more than 300 newspapers nationwide, according to its distributor, King Features Syndicate. The full stretch of the story is now some 1800 Sunday strips. The Prince Valiant half page appears in the Reading Eagle.

Awards and recognition

For his work on the strip, Hal Foster was recognized for his work with the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award in 1957, their Story Comic Strip Award in 1964, and their Special Features Award in 1966 and 1967. John Cullen Murphy received the National Cartoonist Society Story Comic Strip Award for his work on the strip in 1971, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1984, and 1987. In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative postage stamps.

Reprints

• Hastings House produced 7 hardback Prince Valiant books in the 1950s, using the illustrations by Hal Foster but with the text simplified by Max Trell and for the last three books by James Flowers. This series was reprinted in Germany as Prinz Eisenherz (Prince Ironheart), and continued there for an additional five volumes.
• Nostalgia Press published four hardback reprints in conjunction with King Features. To save time, the colorist on these books has colored some entire panels solid pink or solid purple.
• Prince Valiant -- an American Epic, from Manuscript Press, reprinted the first three years in three volumes, in the full original color and full page size. They also published a hardback omnibus of the three years, in a limited edition of 26 copies, ISBN #0-936414-09-X.
• Fantagraphics published a set of 50 trade paperbacks reprinting all of the strips written by Hal Foster, including those drawn by John Cullen Murphy.

In other media

Prince Valiant has often been reprinted in comic books. Feature Book #26 reprints most of the first year of the strip, and is the only comic book to have an original cover by Hal Foster. Many Foster strips were reprinted in the pages of Ace Comics and King Comics. Not reprints are seven Dell four-color Prince Valiant comic books — #567, 650, 699, 719, 788, 848, 900 — drawn by Bob Fuji, writer unknown. There was also a Prince Valiant comic book published in 1973 reprinted Foster art and simplified text, intended for children learning to read.

Marvel Comics published a 3-part miniseries based on "Prince Valiant" in the 1990s.

There have been two Prince Valiant phonograph records and three coloring books, and in 1954 Treasure Books published a small children's book with Foster art in brilliant color.

Chaosium produced a Prince Valiant role-playing game.

Manuscript Press published a full page print of Hal Foster's last page, which had never appeared in newspapers in the full page size.

Page #2000, which reprinted early Foster art, was issued as a print by King Features.

Hal Foster's last drawing of Prince Valiant was for a larger than full page full color print, originally issued for $500.

Hal Foster's last professional work was a print of Merlin for the National Cartoonist Society portfolio.

Cultural references

• A parody of this strip, Prince Violent, appeared in the old Mad Magazine (comic book format).
• Prince Valium is the sleepy prince in the movie Spaceballs. Also, in the movie Beetlejuice, Winona Ryder's character says that nothing will interrupt her mother's (played by Catherine O'Hara) sleep that night, because "she's sleeping with Prince Valium."

Movie and television adaptations

• Prince Valiant (1954 film) - A 1954 US motion picture by 20th Century Fox. Directed by Henry Hathaway, it starred James Mason and Robert Wagner. The film was also adapted into a comic book
• A 1991 animated US television series on The Family Channel in the US and CBBC in the UK, titled The Legend of Prince Valiant
• A 1997 UK/Ireland/Germany movie

See also List of films based on Arthurian legend

References

• A Prince Valiant Companion by Todd Goldberg and Carl Horak, edited by Don Markstein and Rick Norwood, Manuscript Press, ISBN 0-936414-07-3.
• Hal Foster: Prince of Illustrators by Brian M. Kane, Vanguard Productions, ISBN 1-887591-25-7, IPPY Award-winning biography of Hal Foster, 2001.

External links

• Prince Valiant at King Features
• Todd Goldberg's plot summaries and timeline up to 1980
• Toonopedia
• excerpt from Foster biography by Brian Kane