Re/Read: Prince Valiant Volume 8

Re/Read is a regular feature by Fantagraphics Bookstore curator Larry Reid drawing attention to backlist books you may have missed or are worthy of another read. This time we’ll visit a classic by Hal Foster, Prince Valiant Volume 8, 1951 – 1952. I have long maintained that midcentury America’s fascination with medieval folklore owed more to Hal Foster than Chaucer. Foster’s colorful Sunday comic strip, “Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur,” captured the country’s imagination as it was delivered directly into millions of American homes. A Prince Valiant feature film was produced in 1954, starring Robert Wagner, Janet Leigh,…

Prince Valiant – “A History of Valiants” by Kim Thompson

{product_snapshot:id=1581,true,false,false,left}This Afterword is excerpted in its entirety from Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938 from Fantagraphics Books. Terrifically popular from its inception, Prince Valiant is one of the most frequently reprinted comic strips of all time. Like many other classics, it was extensively collected in comic book form early on, but starting in the 1950s, it was also one of the first to graduate to bona fide book editions. Sadly, commercial and technical limitations conspired to undercut the true glory of Foster’s work, as the strips were recolored (inevitably to their detriment, as in the otherwise impressive 1960s Nostalgia Press editions)…