Prince Valiant Celebrates 50th Anniversary with Valiant’s Son Marrying Mordred’s Daughter—Prince Valiant Vol. 26: 1987-1988

The Prince Valiant saga continues in Volume 26, covering the years 1987 and 1988 of the strip. The story picks up with wedding preparations. Valiant and Aleta’s son Arn is going to marry Maeve, the daughter of Mordred. The wedding takes place on the fiftieth anniversary of the script. Then Arn and Maeve leave on their honeymoon and leave the strip for about a year.

Meanwhile, Yuan Chen (tutor to Valiant’s son Galan and first introduced in Volume 23) arrives in Camelot to discuss China’s trade with the west. Yuan Chen describes how the Great Wall of China was built to keep the Huns out of China, so the Huns went west into Europe, and now they are hindering the silk and spice routes for Europe. The Chinese merchants want the Knights of the Round Table to help them protect the route and then Camelot will get part of the profits. King Arthur is happy to agree to this because he has to pay for all the destruction Mordred’s recent rebellion caused. Consequently, the strip divides into two stories—Valiant goes off to find a land route to China along with Galan, Gawain, and others, while Aleta returns to the Misty Isles with her twin daughters to catch up on her governing duties there.

Aleta’s adventures concern her trying to restore the lands of two young men whose uncle has stolen them. It turns out the villain is Mephisto who was once interested in Aleta. He is also a spy for the Emperor Justinian. She manages to trick him and trick the emperor in the process.

As for Valiant, his adventures are more of the action kind. Surprisingly, Gawain barely figures in the adventures, but Galan plays a key role. They fight off wolves. Then they are held hostage and forced to build longships by villains who want longships like what Valiant has. Valiant has no choice but to build the longship to get his freedom, but he gets the upper hand in the end. There’s also an adventure where they are told they cannot leave a city they have come to. Valiant gets them out of that mess by creating a reverse Trojan Horse situation where he and his friends sneak inside the horse. Then the townspeople cast it out of the city wall when they begin to think it is causing them bad luck. Perhaps Valiant’s most fascinating adventure, however, is when he discovers a forgotten people who have been hiding in a cave since the time of Noah’s flood. They took refuge there and sealed themselves inside along with several animals that did not manage to make it to the ark, including fleeches (a type of winged monkey) and Yetis. Valiant is told he can’t leave their either, but he manages to escape and Galan takes the fleeches with him, while the Yetis escape and will apparently go live in the Himalayas.

Of greatest interest to me was that Valiant not only hears the tale of Prester John, but is mistaken for him by the Chinese Emperor, Wu Ti, when he arrives in China. (My novel Ogier’s Prayer: The Children of Arthur, Book Three also features Prester John. Consequently, I was fascinated to learn the legendary Christian King had already made his way into Arthurian legend before my own book. Also interesting is that there is a historical Chinese Emperor named Wu Ti or Wudi, but he lived a century before Christ, so he’s about 600 years out of his time here.) In the Prince Valiant strip’s version of Prester John’s story, the famous figure befriended a Chinese warrior noble and eventually inherited his land, then declared himself a king. The emperor claims Prester John stole land from him. Prester John has since disappeared. Eventually, Valiant and Yuan Chen manage to convince the emperor that Valiant is not Prester John. However, the emperor, believing Valiant is wise, decides he is the one to find Prester John and decides to hold Galan hostage while he goes on the quest. We are told that Valiant encountered a dragon at the beginning of the quest, but then the narrator tells us the chronicle goes silent because it took so long for news to get back to Camelot. I imagine the rest of the adventure will be told in a future volume.

Meanwhile, the story returns to Arn and Maeve, now back from their honeymoon. Arn has been made Parker of the lands of Orr in King Arthur’s domains. Meanwhile, Maeve is having difficulty fitting in with the other ladies in the area. When Arn declares a tournament will be held, Maeve enters it to the chagrin of Sir Guy, the local sheriff. Worse, Guy’s wife Mathilde also enters it and beats him in a race. Guy has been so intent preparing for the tournament with the intent to beat Maeve that he has neglected the guarding of the land, resulting in bandits attacking the area during the tournament. Of course, Arn and his men defeat the bandits. Rather than punish Sir Guy, it is decided he will teach both boys and girls horsemanship and self-defense going forward—a very women’s equality decision for the time.

Then Arn receives a letter from Aleta begging for his help since Valiant cannot be reached. Karen, one of the twins, has apparently run away from home. The story shifts to Karen, who stowed away on a ship and has arrived in Venice. There she is befriended by a young man named Giovanni. Giovanni is on a quest to find his father, who went on a trip to make his fortune and never returned. Volume 26 ends here.

In addition, the volume opens with an essay by Peter Menningen who wrote a series of Prince Valiant books in Germany as tie-ins for the Prince Valiant television series when it ran on TV there. Images of a large number of book covers and pages from the German strips he wrote are included, which highlight his fabulous artwork, less cartoonish than the Prince Valiant strip itself, and a bit more modernized. In Germany, Prince Valiant is known as Prince Eisenherz, which translates as Prince Ironheart.

Volume 27 will be released in December 2023. The preview for it tells us that among other highlights, Mordred will return to make more trouble. I look forward to it.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Children of Arthur series, which includes the novels Arthur’s Legacy, Melusine’s Gift, Ogier’s Prayer, Lilith’s Love, and Arthur’s Bosom. He has also written the nonfiction scholarly works King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, plus works on Gothic literature and historical fiction, history, and biography. You can learn more about Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com, www.GothicWanderer.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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Mordred’s Daughter Takes Center Stage: Prince Valiant Volumes 24 and 25, 1983-1986

The Prince Valiant saga continues with two of the most significant volumes to date in the series from Fantagraphics. While most of the Prince Valiant strip encompasses individual episodic stories, these two volumes constitute a larger story arc.

One of my favorite things about the Prince Valiant strip has been watching Prince Valiant’s children grow up, and that remains true in these volumes. We begin with Valiant and Aleta’s youngest child who has been kidnapped and is eventually rescued. Nathan, as he ends up being named, is little more than an infant, while his older siblings range in age from Arn, now fully grown and old enough to achieve knighthood by the end of these volumes, to Karen and Valeta, the twin girls who are busy chasing after young men, and then Galen, whose age isn’t certain, but is probably about ten to twelve. All of the children provide plot lines relative to their various ages which helps to keep the humor of the strip going amid the more serious adventures.

But Arn is the child at the center of the most serious adventures in these two volumes. Earlier, he had met and fallen in love with Maeve, but he did not know that Maeve is Mordred’s daughter. In these volumes, he learns of her unfortunate parentage, but he continues to love her. Maeve also proves herself to be her father’s daughter only biologically. As Mordred plots to overthrow Camelot, she turns against him, resulting in him imprisoning her and Arn eventually having to rescue her.

The first volume ends with Mordred successfully capturing Camelot and taking over Britain. Arthur and his court flee first to France and then to Thule, which for the first time is depicted on a map, showing it is clearly modern-day Norway. Valiant father’s, King Aguar, willingly takes in King Arthur, since once upon a time (when the strip first opened), Arthur had provided shelter to Aguar and his people. Once in Thule, Arthur and his knights plot how to regain control of Britain. Along the way, there is an exciting plot involving a competition between two brothers for the throne of Lappland.

Eventually, Arthur makes an agreement with the Saxons of Saxony to let them settle in Britain in exchange for their assistance in overthrowing Mordred. Earlier, Arn had made an agreement with some other Saxons to guard parts of Britain. Arthur is slowly becoming used to the idea that Britain will no longer belong solely to the Britons, and he notes how the Romans and Britons’ blood mingled in the past, and now Saxon blood will mingle with them also. In the October 23, 1983 strip, he states that the Britons and really all peoples are mongrels and then, “if we must be mongrels, let us be mongrels in peace.”

Arthur is not so open-minded when he learns Arn is in love with Maeve, but once Maeve proves herself loyal to Arn and Arthur and not Mordred, he is more accepting of her and will eventually surprise everyone by his graciousness.

But first, Arthur, with the aid of the Saxons and the Viking Boltar, has to invade Britain again. Battles ensue. Arn rescues Maeve from Mordred’s prison, only to have her recaptured by Mordred, and then rescued again. After Mordred discovers Maeve’s escape through dungeon caverns, he is captured by the Dawn people, a diminutive people from ancient Britain who then help to save Camelot.

Once Arthur is back in power, he asks the Dawn People what became of Mordred. They tell him they do not know—that he must have escaped from them—but in truth, they want to bring about their own form of justice by sentencing him to life in a pit. It seems unlikely Mordred will ever escape, but given that he doesn’t die, I wouldn’t be surprised if he resurfaces later.

Of course, in the traditional Arthurian legend, Arthur and Mordred die while fighting together at the Battle of Camlann. Mordred’s effort in these volumes to conquer Camelot might be Prince Valiant’s take on Mordred’s treachery. Still, I suspect we will see more of Mordred, rather than just have a happy ending now, but for the time being, he has been vanquished.

All is now well and plans begin for Arn and Maeve’s wedding. Valiant gives Arn his mother’s ring to give to Maeve. However, it keeps falling off her finger, so she puts it in a cabinet for safekeeping. Aleta has some difficulty adjusting to the idea of having a daughter-in-law, and at first, there is some tension over the wedding planning, but in the end, it seems like Aleta and Maeve will get along. The most surprising moment comes when Arthur declares that since he has no children and Maeve is his relative (his niece since Mordred is his brother), that Maeve and Arn’s child shall rule Camelot after him, and should he die before the child is old enough to rule, Arn will be regent. And so the bloodline of Arthur and Valiant is mingled.

I was expecting the strip to end in 1986 with Maeve and Arn’s wedding, but it did not. Instead, it ends with the wedding ring disappearing. Fears it was stolen lead to Galen doing an investigation and discovering the cabinet Maeve placed it in once belonged to Merlin, so it must be a magical cabinet. The mystery of where it disappeared to will apparently be solved in the 1987 strip. Volume 25 ends with a preview of Volume 26 for 1987-1988 that says the strip celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with the marriage of Arn and Maeve, which suggests the wedding might not take place for a while yet.

Volume 24 is accompanied by an opening essay by Stan Sakai, a Japanese-Hawaiian cartoonist who writes about the blend of history and fantasy in the Prince Valiant strip and how it influenced his own work. The volume ends with an essay about the creation of Prince Valiant miniatures in Germany, where the strip has been popular, and numerous photos of the miniatures. Volume 25 includes an essay by Cullen Murphy who did the writing for the strip under his father John Cullen Murphy. His essay is about his mother and how she helped inspire some of the artwork, especially being a model for Aleta, and it is accompanied by his mother in several photographs in poses similar to those in the strip. The volume concludes with an essay by Meg (Murphy) Nash, John Cullen Murphy’s daughter, about her work helping her father with the lettering and coloring for the strip, which really made me appreciate the level of detail the strip required in the days before everything went digital, even down to making sure the newspapers used the right colors when reproducing it.

As Prince Valiant has progressed, at times the stories have become cliché and felt somewhat repetitive, but these four years reflect some of the finest storylines since the strip’s earliest years because of the larger arc to the story they provide. They make me want to continue on to see Arn and Maeve wed and their children grow up and to find out whether we have seen the last of Mordred.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Children of Arthur series, which includes the novels Arthur’s Legacy, Melusine’s Gift, Ogier’s Prayer, Lilith’s Love, and Arthur’s Bosom. He has also written the nonfiction scholarly works King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, plus works on Gothic literature and historical fiction, history, and biography. You can learn more about Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com, www.GothicWanderer.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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The Plots Thicken: Prince Valiant Vols 22 and 23—1979-1982

The Prince Valiant saga continues in the latest two volumes reproduced by Fantagraphics, and I must say these are two of the best volumes yet in the series. Ironically, Volume 22 contains the last of creator Hal Foster’s contributions to the strip. He had already quit doing the final artwork some years earlier, handing it over to John Cullen Murphy, but through 1979, he continued to create the scripts and concepts for the artwork, until at age eighty-seven, he fully retired. The writing was then taken over by John Cullen Murphy’s son Cullen Murphy. With all due respect to Foster—for we would have no Prince Valiant without him, and his incredible work marked the strip’s first forty-two years—I feel there is no falling off in artwork after he left, and the plots, as evidenced at least in the first three years completely in the Murphys’ hands, may well be even stronger than in Foster’s original work. Having your successor keep up the momentum and quality of your work is rare indeed, and countless examples can be provided of works that have retained popularity but still fell off in quality when the original creator was no longer involved. One example is L. Frank Baum’s magnificent Oz novels. The series has continued for thirty-plus volumes after his original fourteen novels, but while they continue to be written and be popular, none of his successors ever really achieved the quality and whimsy of his original novels, as readable and enjoyable as many of those sequels are.

Volume 22 of Prince Valiant continues with one of my favorite elements of the strip, watching Valiant’s children grow up. We see his oldest son, Arn, now a squire to Sir Gawain and setting off on his first quest. Valiant’s youngest and fourth child, Galan, becomes a page so he can learn the manners of the court. The twin girls get less attention in these volumes, but they are ever present. Among the highlights of this volume are Arn and Gawain’s journey to the Isle of Man to help protect it from Viking raiders. In another storyline, Valiant is captured by brigands and sold into slavery, causing Arn to travel as far as the Sahara to find him, with a dramatic rescue happening during a sandstorm. Perhaps best of all, Mordred moves into the forefront of the plots beginning in this volume. In Prince Valiant, Mordred is Arthur’s half-brother, not his son, but he is just as evil. He begins to poison King Arthur to try to take the throne for himself, but of course, his plot is discovered. After Arthur recovers, he banishes Mordred from court, declaring “May your children scorn you and your grandchildren call you Judas.” This is a significant moment in the storyline, although the reader will not realize it for some time, but more of that in a moment. Several other adventures occur in this volume that I will leave for readers to discover on their own.

Volume 23’s highlights begin with a wild boy who comes to Camelot. When his presence leads to some tragic results, a female wanderer appears and tells Arthur and Valiant that they must pay for their pride. She then sends Valiant to find an old man in the Alps and ask him for humility. The quest has surprising results for Valiant, who receives from the old man a gold casket that he can’t believe is “humility.” When he brings it back to the female wanderer, she tells a story of how it contains her beauty, which she lost because of pride. She will return into the strip later.

Next, Valiant journeys to his father’s kingdom of Thule where he meets up with Arn. Mordred reenters the plot because he is in Thule, plotting behind the scenes to get his revenge on Valiant for foiling his plot to poison Arthur. He ultimately overthrows Valiant’s father, King Aguar, driving him from the kingdom and back to living in Britain’s fens, bringing the strip back to its origins, since Aguar refuses to take charity from Arthur. Then Mordred makes an alliance with the Picts and attacks Camelot. We are told many records of the events of this time are lost because they were destroyed during the pillaging. Valiant’s twin daughters and son Galan are sent for safety to Ireland where Galan learns a secret of the High King of Ireland; he then basically blackmails the king into going to Camelot’s aid. All is righted in the end; Camelot and Thule are returned to their rightful rulers. A dramatic fight at sea between Mordred and Arn as Mordred escapes results in Arn falling into the sea and washing up on the shore of a remote island where he meets the beautiful huntress Maeve. He is smitten with her, but she rejects his love, and through the rest of the volume, we find him pining over her.

Meanwhile, Aleta is pregnant again, to Valiant’s surprise. She decides to return to her kingdom of the Misty Isles to give birth to the child. On the way, she and Valiant visit Constantinople, where they meet Justinian, nephew of the Emperor Justin. Justinian has feelings for Aleta, but he also has a wife, Theodora. He wants a male heir, but Theodora, though pregnant again, has only produced boys. Through his evil plotting, Justinian has Aleta’s newborn son kidnapped, planning to switch babies if Theodora has a girl. When Theodora has a boy, the doctor who lied and told Aleta her son was stillborn decides to take Aleta’s baby and give it to a peasant couple. Eventually, Valiant learns what has happened, and Arn sets out on a quest to find his baby brother, who has been adopted by a Jewish family and named Nathan. As the volume ends, Justinian, now emperor, is plotting to kill all the Jewish babies to stop Valiant from finding his child, but Arn has just discovered him.

Interwoven into the search for the lost child is the story of Galan’s friendship with Yuan Chen, a scholar from Cathay (China) who makes the boy begin to be curious and think about math and science topics. Eventually, Yuan Chen convinces Valiant to let Galan travel with him to India. Valiant agrees but sends a guard with him. Galan and Yuan Chen have their own adventures when they arrive at their destination.

What I loved especially about Volume 23 was that often two plots were going on simultaneously, which made the pacing better. Frankly, in some of the earlier volumes the plotting got kind of boring.

Like all previous volumes, there are opening and closing essays. Volume 22 begins with an article by Cullen Murphy first published in The Atlantic in 1994. I loved reading it because I read it when it was first published in The Atlantic at the time I was beginning work on my book King Arthur’s Children. It was my first introduction to the Prince Valiant strip and revealed something interesting to me—that Valiant’s son marries Mordred’s daughter and their child will inherit Arthur’s kingdom. Although it would be years before I would religiously begin reading the strip, I was intrigued from that point on. Spoiler alert: In Volume 24, it appears it will be revealed that the woman Arn loves, Maeve, is Mordred’s daughter and a love affair will ensue.

The final essay in Volume 23 discusses historicity in the Prince Valiant strip, which is interesting because it points out both the depth of research Foster and the Murphys did to make the setting appropriate to the days of King Arthur and where they introduced anachronisms. For example, by providing a timeline of Valiant’s life, he would have to be ninety-nine years old to live long enough to meet the Emperor Justinian. Oh well, the storylines are fun if we don’t try to impose too much historical accuracy on them.

Volume 24 has an essay on art, including the role of nature in the strip. It includes mention of other strips that were influenced by Foster, including mention that he was himself influenced by Howard Pyle. The concluding essay is really a collection of the drawings/scripts Foster created to work from.

Overall, I would say these volumes created a real resurgence of interest in the Prince Valiant strip for me, especially with Mordred being brought more to the forefront. I eagerly await Volume 24, to be released in December 2021.

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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Children of Arthur series, which includes the novels Arthur’s Legacy, Melusine’s Gift, Ogier’s Prayer, Lilith’s Love, and Arthur’s Bosom. He has also written the nonfiction scholarly works King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition and The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption, plus numerous other novels and nonfiction works. You can learn more about Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com, www.GothicWanderer.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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Prince Valiant: Vol 14: 1963-1964 – The Arthurian Plot Slowly Thickens

The Prince Valiant strip’s subtitle is “In the Days of King Arthur,” but I have to admit the scenes that take place at Camelot are often less inspired than those that take place elsewhere in Foster’s strip, and I felt that was the case with this volume, though there are still notable moments.

This volume opens with Val, Aleta, and their family on their way back to Camelot, and other than a little subplot in which Arn gets kidnapped and is rescued, they arrive there safely.

Prince Valiant, Vol. 14 includes King Arthur’s famous Battle of Mount Badon.

In the two years of work presented in this volume, Foster seems to be wanting to push his storyline closer to the catastrophe that brings about the end of Arthur’s reign, but at the same time, he holds back, making it happen very gradually. Once Valiant is back in Camelot, there are two key Arthurian moments in the book. The first concerns Modred (Foster’s spelling). Modred is complaining about how he and the other knights do all the work but Arthur gets all the glory and money. He has enlisted his four brothers of the Orkney clan, along with several younger knights, in his cause. When Gawain brings Valiant to one of Modred’s meetings, Valiant quickly makes the other knights see the treachery and lack of validity in Modred’s words so that soon all of the knights abandon him other than the Orkney clan. Valiant notes also that none of the established Knights of the Round Table are at the meeting other than those of Orkney.

The Orkney clan still wishes to plot with Modred. Modred wants to catch Lancelot and Guinevere in a trap and include Aleta in it. At this point, Gawain is torn between his friendship for Valiant and Aleta and his loyalty to his brothers. He warns Aleta to be careful, but she doesn’t understand the warning. The plot Modred ends up hatching is to distract and lead Valiant’s twin daughters away from the court just long enough so everyone will go looking for them. Both Aleta and Lancelot go looking in Guinevere’s private garden. The Orkneys lock them in the private garden for the night, thinking in the morning they will be found and it will look like they’ve committed adultery. (This plot doesn’t hurt Guinevere directly, but, of course, she’ll be heartbroken if Lancelot has to leave Camelot, and it will hurt Valiant also. If two of Arthur’s chief knights leave Camelot, Modred will have better opportunity for overthrowing the king.)

Of course, Modred’s plans come to naught. Valiant and Arn realize where Aleta is and climb over the garden wall. When the garden is later unlocked, Modred sees Lancelot and Aleta together and starts to accuse them, only to have Valiant and Arn then step out to show there is no dishonor because the four of them have all been together. Valiant then tells Modred he does not appreciate his insinuations. Modred, fearing Valiant will challenge him to a duel, flees Camelot, planning to continue to plot against King Arthur from a distance.

The other major Arthurian moment in this volume is the Battle of Mount Badon. I admit I found the battle a bit dull, but what is wonderful is the lead-up to it, involving Valiant’s son Arn. We have watched Arn grow up throughout the strip, and now he is old enough to go out as a scout, only to be captured by the Saxons. He gives them information about Arthur’s plans, then fakes his death when he escapes from them so they cannot know that he lives and has returned to Camelot to warn Arthur. The result is that Arthur knows exactly what to expect from the Saxons, so he takes them by surprise and soundly defeats them.

I’m not a fan of battle scenes, though Foster draws them well. What I love is the cleverness that Valiant and Aleta always display in getting out of sticky situations, and now it’s clear they’ve passed that cleverness on to their son.

It’s important to note that, according to most versions of the legend, Mount Badon was Arthur’s last great victory against the Saxons, followed by twenty or so years of peace before Camelot’s fall. One wonders whether Foster was starting to consider moving toward the fall of Camelot in the strip. By this point, Foster was in his early seventies, so he must have realized he could not draw the strip many more years, although it wouldn’t be until 1970 that he started looking for a successor and 1975 before he retired completely from the strip. In the end, I assume he couldn’t bear to see the strip end with his retirement, and so the fall of Camelot was put off indefinitely.

Valiant and Aleta’s twin girls are also growing up in this volume—they end up having their first crush on the same boy, and they employ a bit of trickery themselves to try to get him interested in them; however, they’re still too young to succeed, as is their victim, a twelve-year-old king. Nevertheless, I imagine they will be quite able to manipulate men with their feminine wiles just like their mother before too many more volumes have passed.

Two other passages worth noting in this volume are examples of Foster’s postmodern intrusion into the strip. I believe these are the first times he breaks the spell, reminding readers they are reading a story. The first is when he mentions that two characters ride out of the story. The second is when he claims the manuscripts he is basing the story on were damaged at one point, and so he can’t complete a specific episode and has to guess what happened. He then picks up the story with Valiant and Aleta traveling to Thule. The volume ends here with Valiant’s arrival in Thule where he has to trick some raiders to protect his father’s kingdom.

I wouldn’t say this is one of the stronger volumes in the series, but it still has its moments. Of added interest is the introduction by Roger Stern about other cartoon artists who engaged in “swiping” Foster’s work. “Swiping” is a term meaning copying or even plagiarizing. Numerous frames are presented as examples of Foster’s Tarzan and Prince Valiant strips beside frames of other cartoonists who have figures in similar poses—most notably a comparison between Tarzan and Batman’s poses—and also backgrounds that are so similar the artists obviously copied from Foster—one of an interior banquet hall in the Valiant strip is compared to one by Don Rosa for a Clan McDuck strip. Also interesting is the essay at the end of the book about Foster’s desire to be a fine art painter before he became a famous cartoonist. Several of Foster’s landscape paintings are presented—some are not overly impressive but some are quite exquisite. While he never saw his dream realized of being a famous painter, I’m sure Foster delighted far more people with his Tarzan and Prince Valiant strips than he ever would have with landscape paintings.

Volume 15 of the Prince Valiant reprints by Fantagraphics will be released in June. In it, there will be a return to the New World. Watch for the review later this year.

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Tyler Tichelaar, Ph.D., is the author of The Children of Arthur series, which includes the novels Arthur’s Legacy, Melusine’s Gift, Ogier’s Prayer, Lilith’s Love, and the upcoming Arthur’s Bosom. He has also written the nonfiction scholarly works King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition and The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption. You can learn more about him at www.ChildrenofArthur.com.

 

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Prince Valiant, Vol. 9: 1953-1954 – Aleta Wins the Day

This latest Fantagraphics reprint of Hal Foster’s wonderful strip begins with an insightful article by Mark Schultz, which says about everything I’ve thought that makes this strip so worthwhile. I have to admit the plots tend to become repetitive, and as wonderful as the illustrations are, the soap opera feel of the storyline becomes a bit tedious, but Foster shined for two things in particular—the breathtaking landscape scenes he did and the way he could draw a face and convey expression in it.

I’ve always liked to draw since I was a kid, but I have never been able to pull off realistic-looking faces. Foster was a master at this and someone we could all learn from. In this opening essay, Schultz talks about how Foster depicts Valiant and Aleta’s relationship through his ability to show their feelings for each other, as well as how they mask those feelings. Schultz says Foster was unique in this ability to reveal the characters’ internal lives through their expressions and body language, and I very much agree.

This particular volume picks up with the end of Valiant’s efforts to bring Christianity to Thule—and with rather alarming results. Valiant is shown destroying Pagan idols, something that in the twenty-first century I found upsetting and disgusting because we tend to be more open to diversity in these days, and while I was raised a Christian, I couldn’t help but feel the unfairness of this behavior, and when the destruction of these idols infers that they are false because they do nothing to avenge themselves, I can’t help noticing that Foster has the Pagans burn the Christian church down next, and the Christian God doesn’t intercede either, which leaves the reader wondering whether either God is real or exists, at least from Foster’s viewpoint. Of course, the Christian church is rebuilt, and then Valiant and Aleta go off on adventures, leaving the religious theme behind for now until later in the volume when Valiant ends up in Ireland and meets St. Patrick.

Valiant and Aleta part ways early in the volume because Aleta wants to go visit the Misty Isles, but Val ends up being called to help King Arthur in fighting against the Saxons who have allied with the five kings of Cornwall. By the time these battles are done, Val has introduced the idea of using stirrups for the knights, which is often introduced as a reason why King Arthur was successful and able to hold back the Saxons in several Arthurian novels that have been published since then, though I’m unsure who first introduced this idea into Arthurian literature—perhaps it was Foster.

But the real highlight of the volume, as Schultz remarks, is how Aleta manages as a woman to gain control in the Misty Isles, putting down a possible rebellion in her kingdom through her female presence and her cleverness. One of the things I really love about Foster’s storytelling is that while there are battles and swordplay and violence, many of the conflicts are resolved through Aleta or Val’s trickery and cleverness. It’s always more fun to trick or outsmart an enemy than to have to kill him. Bullies and cowards then end up showing their true colors and getting what they deserve.

A trip to the Holy Land, although not overly dramatic, but again with a little trickery to save the day, rounds out the volume along with the introduction of a girl character, Diane, who becomes friends with Valiant and Aleta’s son, Arn. Arn seems to have really grown up in this volume and transition from being a toddler to now a young boy; the strips from his viewpoint are refreshing, plus Diane appears to be a clever young version of Aleta.

The volume concludes with an essay about the 1954 film version of Prince Valiant starring Robert Wagner. The essay puts the film in context with what was happening in Hollywood at the time and changes in the movie industry, as well as discussing the film’s reception. It was rather a flop of the film, but it’s still a film I find entertaining (see my previous review of it at https://childrenofarthur.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/prince-valiant-in-glorious-technicolor-a-review-of-the-1954-film/), though it takes a lot of liberties with the strip. Apparently, Foster wasn’t too crazy about the film either, according to the article.

Volume 10 has just been released this month, so watch for my next review soon. In the meantime, Volume 9 has plenty to entertain.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition and the new Children of Arthur series, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

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Prince Valiant: Volumes 7 & 8 – the Adventures Continue

In the past, I’ve written an individual blog for each volume of the Prince Valiant series, but I decided to group these two together because I couldn’t get myself too excited about Volume 7; furthermore, the adventure in it continues into Volume 8 because the books are printed by the years the strip was published and not by breaks in the storyline. Volume 7 contains the strips from 1949-1950 and Volume 8 covers 1951-1952.

Prince Valiant, Vol. 7: 1949-1950, published by Fantagraphics Books

Volume 7 begins by concluding Valiant’s trip to North America that was covered in Volume 6. Valiant, Aleta, newborn Prince Arn, and his other companions return to England and Camelot. They don’t have much time to rest, however, before new adventures begin for them. First there is an adventure with a haunted castle, and then a journey to Hadrian’s wall where the Picts are invading. Aleta is the great negotiator and trickster here as she wins over the Picts and stops the war. However, Valiant is wounded during the skirmishes, so he cannot travel by land back to Camelot because it would be too painful for him. Consequently, they take a sea voyage to visit his family in Thule. During the time in Thule, an enemy tries to overthrow Valiant’s father, King Aguar, and once again, Aleta steps in and saves the day through trickery; Foster, I believe, uses this method frequently to resolve conflict to provide a humorous tone to many of the adventures, while avoiding a lot of bloodshed in a Sunday comic strip—a couple of times when he did create frames that were too violent, they were censored and he had to change them.

To me, the most interesting part of this volume was that King Aguar listens to Christian evangelists who try to explain Christianity to him, but he finds they are poorly informed and they argue among themselves about the key points of their religion. Consequently, Valiant, who has been exposed to Christianity in Camelot (although he’s never been depicted as being baptized as a Christian) decides to travel to Rome to find teachers who can return with him to Thule to convert his father’s people.

The adventures in Volume 7 end there, but there is also an interesting article included about Hal Foster’s work painting illustrations for the Union Pacific Railroad. Many of these paintings show mountain scenes with railroad trestles, and this work may have informed his creation of scenes of the Alps and others in the Prince Valiant strip. While Foster’s storylines read like a soap opera and tend to wander about, no one can fault his ability to create great landscape drawings, so it’s interesting to see how his early career influenced the Prince Valiant strip in this way.

Volume 8 was much more to my taste. Valiant has several adventures on his journey to Rome to find Christian missionaries to return to Thule. He has even more adventures on the way back to Thule. However, we are informed briefly that the people of Thule do not warm to the missionaries easily, and it will still be centuries before the country converts to Christianity. The illustrations of Valiant crossing the Alps in this volume are incredible and reflect the influence of Foster’s Union Pacific Railroad artwork.

Prince Valiant, Vol. 8: 1951-1952

Other highlights of this volume include Valiant’s squire, Arf, who ends up losing a leg to frostbite during the journey and getting what must be one of the first prosthetic legs in history. On the way home, Valiant travels back to Camelot and then to the Orkneys to take a ship over to Thule. Gawain is his companion on this trip, and they stop to visit Gawain’s family, his mother Morgause, as well as brothers Gaheris, Agrivaine, and Mordred. We are only given the first hints here of the sinister role of Mordred in the strips that are yet to come.

Foster isn’t above some cutesy moments. Besides Val returning to Thule to discover Aleta has given him twin daughters, Valeta and Karen, we have Prince Arn, now a toddler, being jealous of his sisters, including several frames from his viewpoint. Arn even gets his own adventure when he is kidnapped and rescued by Tillicum, the Indian woman who returned with Val and Aleta from North America. Tillicum has her own subplot romance in this volume as well with a surprising twist.

At the end of this volume, another great adventure is in the works. Val travels around Thule to discover how receptive the people are to Christianity. He meets a druid (I didn’t know the Norse had druids) who gives him nectar to drink, resulting in Val having a vision of the Rainbow Bridge, the Norse Gods, and Valhalla. This vision is supposed to be proof, according to the druid, that Christianity is not the only true religion. Val will apparently explore this idea in more detail in Volume 9.

While I find moments of the story lag in places, the illustrations throughout these volumes are beautiful and breathtaking, whether it’s of Val and his men fighting the rapids in North America or Val seeing a rainbow bridge, or just splendid landscapes showing mountains and castles. I am looking forward to seeing what Val learns about the Norse Gods, as well as seeing his children grow up, and how Mordred plays a larger part in successive volumes. Stay tuned for more.

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Mordred and Modron: Arthur’s Mysterious Brothers

The following excerpt is from my book King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition upon a little discussed aspect of Arthur’s perhaps forgotten brother in early Arthurian legends:

Sir Mordred at the Battle of Camlann

Before we leave Mordred, we should notice that there may be some confusion between him as either Arthur’s son or brother, and between Mordred and a brother of Arthur’s named Modron. The confusion is further increased since Modron usually appears as Arthur’s sister rather than brother.

R.S. Loomis tells us that the ravens of The Mabinogion who battle with Arthur’s knights are Arthur’s nephew Owain’s mother, Modron, and her sisters, the daughters of Avallach (Wales 96-7). Loomis also states that Morgan le Fay and Modron have a connection because both are daughters of Avallach (Celtic Myth 192). If Morgan le Fay and Modron are sisters, we must first wonder whether they are Arthur’s sisters, making them the daughters of one of Arthur’s parents, or are they the children of Avallach? If Modron is Owain’s mother, it seems strange that Morgan is also frequently credited with having a child named Owain. Perhaps the two are not sisters, but merely the same person with a confused identity. This situation may be a similar case to Arthur’s Welsh sons becoming confused or integrated into Mordred.

Celtic scholars are in agreement that Modron, who seems to be Morgan le Fay’s sister, is the old Gallo-Roman goddess Matrona, who gave her name to the river Marne, and therefore, seems to be connected with water (Loomis, Celtic Myth, 193). If this connection to a river is true, it should not surprise us that Modron is sister to Morgan, who is often the Lady of the Lake.

When the Welsh wrote of Modron in their legends, they made her the mother of both Owain and Mabon (Loomis, Celtic Myth, 193). This son, Mabon, can be traced back to Apollo Maponos, who was worshiped in both Gaul and Britain (Loomis, Celtic Myth, 4).

What is strange is that if Modron were a female, she should later appear as Arthur’s brother in a modern novel such as in Edward Franklin’s The Bear of Britain (1944), where he is treacherous, along with Mordred, who is here Arthur’s nephew (Thompson 41).

In other works, Mordred has been depicted as Arthur’s brother, which may be another confusion with Modron, but more likely authors just taking license with the story. In Edison Marshall’s novel The Pagan King (1959), Mordred is Arthur’s half-brother. Why would Arthur have both a treacherous brother and nephew? In Marshall’s opinion, it must have seemed easier to combine the two into one character. We may then wonder whether Mordred and Modron have an older mythological connection or at least these writers are drawing upon what they want to believe is a lost connection.

In the Prince Valiant comic strip, begun by Hal Foster in 1937 and still running in more than 300 newspapers each Sunday, Mordred is also Arthur’s half-brother. In this case Mordred has a daughter, but she is not King Arthur’s direct descendant as a result. Mordred’s daughter Maeve marries Arn, the son of Prince Valiant. Arn and Maeve’s daughter Ingrid (born in the 1987 comic strip) has been designated as Arthur’s heir. Mordred has been removed from the line of succession. My guess is that Foster chose to depict Mordred as Arthur’s half-brother to avoid the issue of incest in a comic strip; I doubt Foster was interested in the relationship between Mordred and Modron.

Modron cannot be readily accepted as an early brother of Arthur. Nowhere in early traditions does he appear as such. However, in Welsh tradition is a tale where Arthur speaks to an eagle, which reveals itself to be his deceased nephew, Elewlod, the son of Madawg, son of Uthr (Bromwich, Arthur Welsh, 58). That Madawg’s son should become an eagle, may remind us of Modron as a raven, and also the legends which tell of Arthur being turned into a raven rather than dying. Perhaps then we can accept Madawg as being Modron.

Modron’s reasons for becoming confused with Mordred may also have explanations. We have seen Modron’s possibility as a sister to Morgan le Fay, Lady of the Lake. Modron herself is connected to river goddesses. Mordred definitely has a connection to water through his mythological ancestor, Dylan. Suggested connections have also been made betwen Pryderi and Rhiannon and Modron and Mabon, who was also taken away when three nights old from his mother (MacCana 83). In “Culhwch and Olwen,” Cei and Gwrhyr search for Mabon and must ask all the oldest animals where he may be. In her chapter “Chrétien de Troyes,” Jean Frappier points out that in Yvain are blended in traditions of Modron as a water nymph (Loomis, Arthurian Literature,163), and in an Irish tale, a character named Fraech is wounded by a water-monster and is then carried away by his fairy kinswomen to be healed. In her chapter “The Vulgate Cycle,” Jean Frappier makes notice of another Irish tale that tells of Fergus mac Leite being wounded by a water-monster, and as he lays by the lake dying, he charges his people that his sword Caladcolg (the original of Excalibur) should be preserved till it can be given to a fitting lord (Loomis, Arthurian Literature, 310). Could Mordred then have an origin as a water monster or as a female goddess of the sea? Or could there be a lost tradition that Mordred is the son of Modron? Why not, since we already have Morgan le Fay and Morgause as possible mothers for him.

Accurate connections between Mordred and Modron have not yet been made, but the similarities may point to a need for further investigation into this matter.

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Tyler Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition. You can also visit him at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

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Happy 75th Birthday, Prince Valiant!

This month, Hal Foster’s masterful comic strip Prince Valiant: In the Days of King Arthur celebrates its seventy-fifth birthday. Foster’s strip first debuted on February 13, 1937, and it has continued to be a hit with comic strip fans, Arthurian enthusiasts, and students of art and illustration ever since.

For many years, I’ve wanted to read the entire Prince Valiant strip. When I lived in Kalamazoo, the local paper used to carry it on Sunday so I got to read it for a short time, but never consecutively enough to follow the story. I had seen books printed of parts of the strip, but it wasn’t until Christmas that I was able to set out on my quest to read the entire Prince Valiant series. For Christmas I received Volume I of the Prince Valiant strip, covering 1937-1938, and published by Fantagraphics Books. I have every intention of reading the rest of the volumes which are coming out every few months and available at bookstores. I’ll write more about Volume I in a future post. Since it’s Prince Valiant’s 75^th anniversary, I’ll blog about it throughout the month.

After 75 years, Prince Valiant still rides!

I first became interested in Prince Valiant when writing King Arthur’s Children back in the 1990s, especially because I came across the statement that Mordred had a daughter in the strip, and I’ve always been fascinated by depictions of Arthur’s descendants. It turns out, however, that Mordred is not Arthur’s son but his half-brother in the strip. Mordred’s daughter Maeve ends up marrying Arn, Prince Valiant’s son, and their daughter Ingrid (born in the 1987 comic strip) has been designated as Arthur’s heir while Mordred has been removed from the line of succession. My guess is that Foster chose to depict Mordred as Arthur’s half-brother to avoid the issue of incest in a comic strip.

Despite this disappointment for me, what little I had read and researched of Prince Valiant kept me fascinated. The first volume of Prince Valiant has an interesting introduction that talks about Hal Foster’s artistic style and his background. I was thrilled to discover that before writing Prince Valiant, Foster had worked on the Tarzan comic strip—Tarzan being one of the few characters in my opinion that ranks up there with King Arthur—so I hope to read Foster’s Tarzan strips as well some day.

Foster’s work is very impressive. You wouldn’t think a comic strip that only came out once a week was an arduous task, but Foster would spend about sixty hours a week working on it. Actually, you realize it had to be a big job to create the strip once you look at the art work. Foster’s drawing is superb, and he adds great detail to every panel of the strip. He also had to take the time to plot out the story, and he was usually 9-12 weeks ahead in creating the strip. He also spent considerable time researching the historical Britain of King Arthur and visiting all the places that he would include in the strip. Then he had to take the plot and break it down into week by week separate “chapters” and then each chapter into a panel or “scene.” Foster was a master at offsetting the visual and written aspects of the strip, and it is well-known that he was revolutionary in removing the balloons for speech. The result is something that is closer to book illustration than comic strip, but it is this superior style that has made Prince Valiant endure all these years.

Foster is also great at creating diverse characters and keeping the story moving in multiple directions as well as reintroducing characters as needed. For example, Valiant travels to Camelot, goes off on adventures, and then returns to Camelot repeatedly which provides relief from the strict King Arthur story.

But after seventy-five years, does the strip still stand up? Yes, it does. I have to admit that I don’t think I could read it weekly and stay interested in it, but that is partly the result of our time period today. Back in the late 1930s, in the years before television was common, and far from the days of the Internet, when movies and radio were the primary forms of entertainment, people may have had a greater attention span and been willing to wait for the fulfillment of the cliffhanger each week. Today, cliffhangers still work with half hour television programs, but a strip that only takes a couple of minutes to read each week is a bit different. However, reading the strip in book form works well. I found myself reading about a year’s worth of strips, fifty-two per year obviously, in about an hour, although I paused to admire the art work numerous times. Furthermore, this new edition is beautifully reproduced, along with essays that describe the reproductions to create brilliant colors, and the price of the books at $29.95 (and selling online for about $10 less) can’t be beat for such large full color pages. Prince Valiant is still a remarkable adventure, and if it has a tendency to wander about like a soap opera rather than have a tight plot, that’s the result of the medium, and given its restraints, Foster knew how to keep it interesting for decades, and his successors continue to do so years after his passing.

Not long after the strip debuted, the Duke of Windsor (King Edward VIII) actually went so far as to say that Prince Valiant was the “greatest contribution to English literature in the past one hundred years.” I don’t know how much of a reader the Duke of Windsor was, but if that were true, it would make Prince Valiant more significant than anything written by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, the Bronte Sisters, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, John Galsworthy, William Butler Yeats, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennsyon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, J.M. Barrie, and countless other great English authors. High praise indeed!

In any case, Happy Birthday, Prince Valiant! May you continue to ride through Arthur’s England for many years to come!

For more Prince Valiant in all his manifestations from toys and figurines to books, visit www.PrinceValiant.org

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

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