Art and text: Hal Foster (from page 630, March 6, 1949). Source: Prince Valiant (Vol. 7): 1949-1950 – Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books, 2013).

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).

.NOTE: The following was first shared at The Wild Reed on August 28, 2010. Did you know that the first article I ever had published had nothing to do with theology or politics or gay rights? Rather, it was about the adventures of a fictitious Viking prince in the days of King Arthur! I remember I bought a nice jumper (that’s a sweater for my American friends) with the $40 I was paid for this article – one that was published in The Canberra Times in April 1987. It was also an article that I submitted to the professional writing class I was taking at that time at the Canberra College of Advanced Education (now the University of Canberra). My instructor awarded me a “credit” grade, and noted that my article was “topical, interesting, and well-researched . . . [with] a genuine enthusiasm evident throughout.” He also observed that I “occasionally lapse into over-long sentences” – a habit that dogs me to this day! In a future post I’ll share how I first became interested in the subject of this first ever article of mine. But for now I simply share (with added links and images) what I wrote back in the Australian autumn of 1987, when I was just a beardless youth of 21. _______________________ Valiant Prince Turns Fifty By Michael Bayly Canberra Times April 1987 An old witch once prophesied that a certain young and adventurous prince would never know contentment in his life. Whether or not the witch’s prophecy has been fulfilled is hard to ascertain, as contentment, like wealth, is one of those difficult concepts to measure. Yet to the thousands of faithful readers, the writer and artist who labours to bring the prince to an exquisite degree of life, and the syndicate which has the right to publish this life in over 300 newspapers worldwide, I dare say the prince in question is a source of great contentment indeed. He is, of course, Prince Valiant – knight of the Round Table and heir to the throne of Thule, who this year celebrates fifty years of existence. Valiant, of course, is not fifty years of age. It has just taken that length of time for the two writer/artists who have been involved in his creation to chronicle his life so far. Prince Valiant, the comic strip, was created by Hal Foster in 1937. Foster, an accomplished commercial artist, was not new to the world of comics. He had previously written and illustrated Tarzan and the Apes. Yet it would be Prince Valiant, with its rich illustrations and detailed attention to the King Arthur legend, which would bring Foster international renown. “God in his wisdom endowed me with certain imperfections,” Foster once declared, “but I have made Prince Valiant as I wish God had made me. He’s sort of my body with muscles.” Prince Valiant was introduced to the Sunday comic pages as a five-year-old boy, the son of the Viking king, Aguar, and his Roman-born wife. Fleeing the sword of a usurper, Aguar and his household settle into exile in the Fens district of Britain. It is here that the young prince’s mother dies and the witch, Horrit, makes her grim prophecy. In a matter of weeks, the strip depicts Valiant’s aging to his late teens, thus beginning to chronicle the lad’s many adventures. “The most fun was establishing the legend of Prince Valiant in the early strips,” said Foster. “The hardest thing . . . has been to keep Val human. He has to be good and virtuous but I try to keep him human also. He has faults and frailties like everyone else.” Leaving his father’s household, the youthful Prince Valiant attaches himself to the court of King Arthur. Roaming across Britain, Europe, and the Holy Land, often as squire to the noble Sir Gawain, Valiant bravely, though sometimes recklessly, fights for the oppressed and for his own renown against invading Huns, Goths, and Saxons. During one adventure he is presented by Prince Arn of Ord with the Singing Sword. “Invisible is he who uses it in good cause,” Arn tells Valiant, who quickly validates the claim. In time he is rewarded and becomes a knight of Arthur’s legendary Round Table. “The medieval period gave me scope, that’s why I picked it,” Foster once said. “I have a leeway of almost three centuries [as] with the decline of Roman civilization in the fifth century, written records ceased being kept.” It was inevitable that Prince Valiant should meet his match, yet it was not in the guise of a warrior or sorcerer but a petite, golden-haired maiden – the young queen of an Aegean kingdom. Aleta, Queen of the Misty Isles, had been falsely accused of witchcraft and murder. Prince Valiant, having dragged her from her throne, vows to take her as his captive back to Camelot and to justice. “Who had enslaved whom?”, Prince Valiant would ask himself years later, for it soon became apparent that the two were hopelessly in love. And so after an epic adventure involving Valiant rescuing Aleta from a fiendish tyrant, the two young lovers were married. Foster once stated that he originally wanted to do a strip which would permit him to do fantasy. “I wanted to show magicians, ogres, dragons, and knights. However, after Prince Valiant began, the characters in the strip became too real to do much fantasy.” Yet what the strip may lack in fantasy, it more than makes up for in adventure. In the decades following his marriage, Valiant embarks on some of the greatest quests of his career. His young bride by no means disappears into the background. On one occasion, Aleta is abducted by Ulfran, the famed Viking raider. In pursuit, Prince Valiant is led to the shores of the New World where he defeats Ulfran and is reunited with his wife. The winter is spent in America with Valiant’s Viking crew and friendly Indians. It is here that Arn, Valiant and Aleta’s first child, is born. Prince Arn, named after Valiant’s adolescent friend, was the first of five children. Twin daughters, Karen and Valeta, came next; then Galan, heir to his mother’s throne; and finally Nathan. This youngest child almost never knew his family, having been abducted moments after his birth by agents of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Prince Arn eventually rescues his infant brother and restores him to his rightful family. Although much of Prince Valiant’s appeal lies in its skillfully written and illustrated adventures, there is something else equally responsible for the strip’s classic status. For as well as the brute strength of his opponents, the scheming evil of despots and sorcerers, and the treachery of the strip’s arch-villain, Mordred, Prince Valiant, the man, also confronts a variety of situations that call him to draw upon his strength of character and a moral code that, more often than not, challenges him to put others first. He is not a pillaging Viking thug but a gallant, if at times proud, nobleman intent on establishing peace and justice. Not an easy task in the brutal epoch of the Dark Ages. Even before Hal Foster’s death in 1982, Prince Valiant was being illustrated by John Cullen Murphy [left], the two artists having first began collaborating in 1970. The text of the stories, written by Murphy’s son, may be more detailed but the fundamental qualities remain, and thus the strip’s popularity. Combining elements of adventure, romance, and Arthurian lore, Prince Valiant has enthralled readers for half a century – a feat with which Valiant himself would be quite content. – Michael Bayly Canberra Times April 1987 Above: This panel from a 1989 strip is a rare depiction of Prince Valiant and his entire family. In it, Valiant and Aleta's son Galan is being presented by King Arthur with Uther Pendragon's sword for his "exemplary service in Cathay." Pictured from left: Prince Valiant's eldest son Arn and his wife Maeve, youngest son Nathan (foreground), Aleta, Galan, twin daughters Karen and Valeta, King Arthur, and Prince Valiant. _________________________________ Of course, Prince Valiant continues to this day! – as, since 2004, the strip has been illustrated by Gary Gianni (right) and written by Mark Schultz. For an excellent overview of the history of Prince Valiant, I highly recommend The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion by Brian M. Kane. The Prince Valiant Page by Gary Gianni is also an informative and entertaining resource – one that looks at the artistic style and method of Gianni, the third and latest artist to illustrate Prince Valiant. Finally, for the latest installment of Prince Valiant, click here. Above: "A dragon! A dragon awaits Prince Valiant!" Val and his youngest son Nathan are given a mysterious warning by "three weird sisters" in a 2005 story by Gianni and Schultz.

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).

Hal Foster's art meant a lot of things to a lot of people. Each panel of his seventeen hundred and eighty eight Prince Valiant pages was a work of art. Somewhere along the way here I'm going to start posting some of his individual panels, in full resolution, for close-up examination of his greatness. In the meantime, here is his first and his last of his Prince Valiant saga. First Hal Foster Prince Valiant panel, 1937 Last Prince Valiant panels to be written and illustrated by Hal Foster, 1971

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