Prince Valiant 01 1937 1939Trouve iciPrince Valiant (Zenda)1. (1937-1939) Les Princes-chevaliers (T.1)Une BD de Hal Foster chez Zenda 09/1995 ...
The pictures in comic strips today have become less ambitious and imaginative. Prince Valiant, 1942 The strips which first established the greatness of the medium had a strong visual character. Today the drawings have become simpler and more basic, even as the words have become more adult and sophisticated. You'll find no images in comic strips today like the grand images from Hal Foster's Prince Valiant: You'll find no powerful chiaroscuro drawings such as these from Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates: You see no displays of visual imagination such as this from Gasoline Alley: or this from Lyonel Feininger's Wee Willie Winkie: Feininger imagines the black smoke from the locomotive smokestack as "giants" while the steam from the cylinders becomes white rabbits running alongside the train: George Herriman's visual layouts were crucial to his poetic content: The words in Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon were pretty silly, but Raymond's drawings were quite eloquent. Note his strong brush work describing Dr. Zarkov's back: Raymond created huge fanciful worlds with his brush: Such worlds are gone from comic strips, having migrated to movie screens. Why have so many strips today settled for a low grade functionality? People have offered many explanations: smaller size, changed economics, different priorities. I'd like to suggest another explanation: drawings have become dumber because comic strip audiences are less appreciative of the importance of form. The modern appetite for comic strips has shifted from form to content; rudimentary drawings in simplistic, repetitive compositions don't slow the intake of a joke. Whatever the reason, there's an awful lot of mediocre drawing in popular strips today. In this example, the woman's rolls of fat make no sense, and the folds on her shirt work against the humor of the drawing. Those spasmodic motion lines surrounding both the woman and Opus suggest movement in all directions simultaneously. Opus is running on a floor substantially higher than the one on which the woman stands. I don't mind the ugly colors since the artist is going for a grotesque effect, but here the light source and purple shading are as aimless as the line work. There's no law that pictures must be internally consistent-- George Herriman made an art of inconsistency-- but the sloppiness of so much contemporary drawing wastes a lot of opportunities. Spontaneity is a virtue only as long as artists are able to distinguish it from carelessness. Words can be eloquent but pictures have an eloquence all their own. If we lose sight of the enormous advantages of form -- the extraordinary range of qualities found in omission and selection, in visual design, imagination and grace-- we will never be able to recapture them with all the advantages of content.
Art: Gary Gianni (November 26, 2006). Text: Mark Schultz. Source: Prince Valiant: Far from Camelot – Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008).
Comic Creator Hal Foster
“Hal Foster: Detail of (misc) Prince Valiant panels”
NEXT: "Once Again I Help You Escape" See also the previous posts: • The Face He is Never More to Forget • The Note • So Val Goes Questing Across Wide Seas . . . • Before His Very Eyes Art and text: Hal Foster (from installment #251, November 30, 1941). Source: Prince Valiant (Vol. 3): 1941-1942 – Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books, 2011).
. . . / . . . . . . . . . .. Via Golden Age Comic Book Stories. .
"Prince Valiant," the weekly adventure strip that started February 13, 1937, and is still published in Sunday papers, celebrated its 3,700th installment yesterday. While there are still some strips around that began in the 1930's (such as "Blondie"), "Prince Valiant" is one of a kind. I've grown up reading the strip, and I'm always surprised (and disappointed) that I rarely run across anyone else who's a fan of "Prince Valiant." That's too bad -- because "Prince Valiant" is a reading experience like no other. And it's one that (in my opinion) should appeal to many people that don't normally read comics. First off, it's something more than a gag-a-day strip. "Prince Valiant" is a classic illustrated storybook, published in weekly installments. There're no word balloons; all the text is told in third-person narrative, with illustrations placed just as they would be in a book. The story itself is pure romantic adventure. A young Viking prince comes to King Arthur's court to become a squire. He's cursed with wanderlust, and so is pulled from adventure to adventure literally across the world. Prince Valiant's first son is born in Thule (Greenland) after Val discovers the New World. Val's also been to China, taken several trips to the Holy Land, explored Africa, traveled Europe, sailed the Mediterranean, and visited Russia. From the beginning, Hal Foster (the artist and writer of the strip) wanted something that would capture the reader's imagination. His successor, John Cullen Murphy expanded the romantic world of King Arthur's court even further -- his son who wrote the strip had a degree in medieval history. As a result, strips in the 1980's and 1990's brought in more authentic details of the period -- Queen Aleta (Val's wife) had to fight off the unwanted attentions of Byzantine emperor Justinian in an extended sequence set in Constantinople. And more medieval lore became fodder for stories as well. Val, for example, met Prestor John in India, and often found himself on an island that rises from the mists and offered an allegorical test -- a standard plot device in medieval stories. The current artist and writer (Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz) continue the same high standards of illustrated storytelling while bringing their own sensibilities and experiences with creating modern comics to the strip. Rather than a shuffling zombie forever recycling the gestures of its dead creator (such as "Dick Tracy"), "Prince Valiant" continues to offer up compelling and entertaining stories set in the medieval world both real and imagined. And at the heart of the strip is the large cast of characters that have grown and matured with the readers over the years. Prince Valiant is now a family man in his late 30's, torn now between his desire to remain at home with his beloved Aleta, and a wanderlust for adventure that can never be satisfied. His wife, Queen Aleta of the Misty Isles, has grown from a young girl into a mature, thoughtful ruler who still displays something of a temper -- especially if she jealously thinks (as with the current storyline) Val's somehow gotten tangled up in an adventure with another woman! I've talked before about the aging process in "Prince Valiant," which let Val's family grow up, marry and have children of their own. This march of time just adds to the appeal of the strip. The continuing story of Prince Valiant isn't just a never-ending sequence of adventure -- it's the story of one man's life in an extraordinary time and place. Here's to the next 3,700 Sundays! - Ralph
. . . / . . . . . . . . . .. Via Golden Age Comic Book Stories. .
This past weekend saw the publication of the wonderful installment of Prince Valiant by Gary Gianni and Mark Shultz that celebrates the 75th anniversary of the renowned adventure strip. Today, February 13, is the actual anniversary, and to mark the occasion here at A Prince Named Valiant I share the page or installment that began it all. Yes, it's Hal Foster's very first Prince Valiant page, originally published Saturday, February 13, 1937. It's followed by an official statement released earlier today by King Features, the publishers of Prince Valiant. Enjoy! Click on the image above for a larger view. Prince Valiant Turns 75 Hal Foster's epic adventures of Prince Valiant in the days of King Arthur celebrates 75 years of continuous publication NEW YORK, Feb. 13, 2012 – Horrit the Witch foretold that he would have a life of adventure, but never contentment. True to the prophecy, Prince Valiant has never rested in striving for the Arthurian ideals of chivalry: defeating evil, defending those who do right, and through feats of courageous derring-do, seeking truth and justice for the common good. Today, those 5th century quests may seem at times as alien and unattainable as the Holy Grail, but they live on to inspire all who read them each and every week in the Prince Valiant comic strip, which marks its 75th anniversary today. From the moment its first page appeared on Saturday, Feb. 13, 1937, Prince Valiant has been continuously published, offering its readers an epic series of unforgettable adventures, an exquisite panoply of artistic creation, a fascinating look at history, and a lasting tribute to Arthurian legend, one of the most consistent folk and literary traditions of Western civilization. In the very first story arc, readers met the young prince, still a mere boy, and his parents, rulers of the Scandinavian kingdom of Thule, as they fled from the evil Sligon, who had usurped the throne. The family found sanctuary in the fens of King Arthur’s British realm. During that first year of the strip’s syndication, Valiant grew to manhood, met Sir Gawain, Sir Lancelot and King Arthur and performed a host of knightly deeds such as slaying dragons and rescuing fair maidens. In 1938, he acquired his famous Singing Sword, the blade twin to Arthur’s own Excalibur and, after being knighted by King Arthur in 1939, he was able to ensure his father’s restoration as king of Thule the following year. One of the intriguing aspects of the Prince Valiant story is its domestic dramas. In 1946, Val married the fair Aleta, Queen of the Misty Isles. When Aleta was kidnapped and taken out to sea, Valiant’s dogged pursuit took him all across the Atlantic before he finally caught up with her in the Americas. The couple’s first son, Arn, was born in America in 1947. Val and Aleta would eventually have four more children: Karen and Valeta, twins, were born in 1951; Galan, in 1962, and Nathan, in 1982. Val became a grandfather when Arn and his wife, Maeve, had their first child in 1987. And so the saga has continued . . . Above: Prince Valiant and Queen Aleta's growing family. Art and text by Hal Foster (from the April 16, 1961 installment of Prince Valiant). Hal Foster [left], who had authored the popular Tarzan comic strip, was invited to create his new strip at the suggestion of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose King Features Syndicate has distributed the strip from the start. Prince Valiant became a legend during Foster’s own lifetime. The National Cartoonists Society gave Foster its highest honor, the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, in 1957. The Sunday-only page has continued to earn kudos from readers and professional peers alike under the lengthy and able stewardship of Foster’s successors. While Foster continued to write the strip, his hand-picked assistant, John Cullen Murphy [right], assumed the artistic mantle for the strip in 1970. Murphy surmounted the huge challenge of following in Foster’s footsteps and, when his son and editor of The Atlantic, Cullen Murphy, began to pen the scripts in 1979, the father-and-son team successfully guided the venerable comic strip to new successes during their tenure. John Cullen Murphy received the National Cartoonists Society’s Best Story Comic Strip Award an unprecedented six times for Prince Valiant. John Cullen Murphy passed the mantle to renowned comic book illustrator Gary Gianni [left]. Murphy had carefully chosen and worked for two years with him before Gianni took over full responsibilities for the strip in 2004. Cullen Murphy continued to write the strip until later that same year, when another comic book great, Mark Schultz, took over. 20th Century Fox made Prince Valiant into a feature film, starring Robert Wagner in the title role, in 1954. In 1991, an animated version, The Legend of Prince Valiant, became a regular feature on The Family Channel. In 1997, a second live-action version was released in Great Britain. In 1995, the United States Postal Service included Prince Valiant in its “Comic Strip Classics” series of commemorative stamps. Beginning in the 1930s, Prince Valiant has been the subject of many comic books and anthologies published through the years all around the world. Today, the Prince Valiant strip continues to inspire a great deal of interest in the publishing industry and currently several new reprint series are available worldwide. In addition to issuing an ongoing series of hardcover anthologies, Bocola Verlag in Germany has published for the serious collector Prince Valiant: The Camelot Edition, a numbered, slip-cased folio edition. Limited to 700 copies (the first 300 are in German, and the remaining copies in English) the editions are packaged with an original, historical newspaper broadsheet comics page. In Spain, Planeta DeAgostini is publishing a multi-volume series of the complete Foster opus. Other collections are being published in Austria, Switzerland, Canada, the Benelux, Russia, Eastern Europe and Uruguay. In the United States, Fantagraphics Books has published four volumes to date of a multi-volume series of Hal Foster’s classic pages. Andrews McMeel have published Prince Valiant: Far from Camelot by Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz, the award-winning artistic team currently producing the strip. See also the previous posts: • Prince Valiant Celebrates 75th Anniversary • Something Very Special . . . • A Valiant First Effort, Wouldn't You Say? • "He Wasn't a Superhero But He Was a Hero" • Mark Schultz on the Art of Hal Foster: "Uniquely Appealing, Innovative and Influential" • John Cullen Murphy on Prince Valiant: "It's My Duty. I'm Responsible For It" • Mark Schultz on Prince Valiant as an American Invention • Welcome! Recommended Off-site Links: • 75 Years of Prince Valiant – DailyInk.com (February 13, 2012). • Prince Valiant's 75th Anniversary – The Archivist (DailyInk.com, February 15, 2012).
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