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 Volumes 20 and 21

Prince Valiant’s story continues in these two volumes produced by Fantagraphics. This time, they are solely the work of John Cullen Murphy, Hal Foster’s successor, other than the 2000^th installment of the strip in Volume 20, which summarizes the key points of Valiant’s story and was drawn by Foster. The years of these volumes run from 1975-1978. I’ll summarize a few of the highlights here. But be forewarned there are some spoilers.

As this cover shows, Aleta always steals in the show in the Prince Valiant strip.

Volume 20 includes more of Prince Arn, Valiant’s son, who has become one of my favorite characters as we have watched him grow up. Here he meets twin princes, one of whom ends up murdering the other.

Aleta, Valiant’s wife, is another favorite character of mine. This time she and Valiant return to the Misty Isles, and on the way, Hashida the Sorcerer falls in love with her, kidnaps her, and hypnotizes her. Of course, Valiant rescues her, but Aleta won’t let him kill Hashida, explaining to him that if he kills everyone who loves her, he’ll decimate the male population.

Aleta’s banished sister, Helene, figures in the story also. Years ago, her husband plotted against Aleta. Now the husband is killed in a gambling fight and she is taken as a prize by the winner, so Valiant has to rescue her also.

Finally, Arn is sent to Camelot to begin to learn statecraft so he is ready someday to be a king.

In addition, a short but interesting essay is included at the end of Volume 20 by Michael Dean about stereotypical racial characters in the Valiant strip, particularly a very short segment in which a moneylender’s depiction led to an outcry by Jewish readers that he was a stereotype, even though the strip did not name him as a Jew. While Murphy was writing the strip at this time, Foster saw fit to respond with an apology. The essay mentions that in earlier strips Foster was sensitive to depictions of Jewish characters, but also that a larger study of racism and stereotypes in Foster needs to be made—something I agree with, for there are a lot of stereotypical racial characters in the strip, but at the same time, the strip is partly a product of its time and also has the problem of being very wide-reaching in allowing Valiant to travel over most of the known world at the time and consequently to come into contact with people from many different lands, some of whom have to be villains and some decent people to add interest to the plots. That is an oversimplification so I hope someone will write an in-depth article or book on racism in the strip.

John Cullen Murphy’s art work perfectly captures the style Foster created for the script.

Volume 21 begins with an interesting article about the “historicity” of Prince Valiant, which discusses the strip’s connection to the Arthurian legend and gives a fair overview of the development of the Arthurian legend and its sources while noting that Foster made reference to many events such as the quest for the Holy Grail and the love story of Tristan and Iseult while going off into Valiant’s own stories rather than focusing on the Arthurian ones. What is important and interesting here is how hard Foster tried to be historical, clearly setting the strip in the fifth and sixth centuries in the time when the Roman Empire had fallen and before the rise of the high Middle Ages. In fact, Foster was writing one of the earliest versions of Arthurian fiction that tried to be historical rather than being simply romance, although a few Arthurian novels predate it such as W. Barnard Faraday’s Pendragon (1930).

While there are several stories in Volume 21, for me the best were Valiant’s daughter Karen’s desire to become a warrior queen, and then the story of how Arn travels to Thule and reunites with Lydia, daughter of King Haakon, whom he has fallen in love with. Sadly, Lydia dies in a tragic accident, leaving Arn mourning. I trust Arn will find love in a future volume—there are even hints by the end of this one that he will. Meanwhile, Arn grown a mustache, showing us he is now fully grown.

The upcoming Volume 22 promises to return us more closely to the Arthurian plot as Arthur’s half-brother Mordred plots to usurp the throne. Stay tuned for more.

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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 books. You can learn more about Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com and www.MarquetteFiction.com.

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John Cullen Murphy Replaces Hal Foster: Prince Valiant Vols. 18 and 19

These two latest volumes of the reprint of the Prince Valiant comic strip by Fantagraphics cover the years 1971-1974. For the most part, they contain the same typical adventures of Prince Valiant and his companions as in every previous volume, with the exception that on May 16, 1971, Hal Foster drew his last Prince Valiant strip and the week after John Cullen Murphy took it over. It should be noted, however, that Foster had been trying out different possible successors for quite some time, and once he settled on Murphy, he allowed Murphy to do backgrounds and then draw characters before he completely handed the strip over to him.

In Prince Valiant 18, John Cullen Murphy takes over for Hal Foster as Prince Valiant must win back his wife after he and Aleta have an argument.

Although Foster got some complaints, including people saying they would never read the strip again, if one did not know which day Foster quit drawing the script, it is unlikely anyone would have noticed the difference. Murphy continued in Foster’s tradition, and nothing noticeable is different about the strip from the drawing and the colors to the storylines.

Among the last strips Foster did, his humor remains apparent. In the April 11, 1971 strip, Val has been traveling with Sir Lancelot when he meets up with Boltar and his Vikings. They stay at King Ban of Benwick’s castle where “The Vikings behave so well that only one is killed and two wounded.”

As for the storylines in these volumes, my favorites concern not Val but his children. One of the great joys of the strip has been watching Val and Aleta’s oldest son, Arn, grow up. Now he is basically a man. Although at one point in these volumes the strip refers to him as being fifteen, he looks and acts more like eighteen. Here for the first time Arn falls in love, with a young maiden named Lydia. A misunderstanding that Lydia’s brother is a man she’s interested in causes Arn to go on a journey to distance himself from her, only to have her brother follow him and explain the situation. After many adventures throughout Europe, Arn returns home to Lydia. We will have to see if marriage will ensue for them.

As for Val and Aleta’s other children, the twins are now teenage girls as well and willing to continue to cause mischief as young men are first starting to notice them. And young Galen takes the place Arn previously had of an imaginative and adventuresome young man getting into troubles that can be described as cute. Aleta also names Galan as heir of the Misty Isles since Arn will inherit Val’s father’s kingdom of Thule.

There are plenty of adventures here, stories of love lost and won, giants to fight, sea battles to wage, evil conspirators to overcome, adventures ranging from Thule to the Misty Isles, and tender moments of love between Val and Aleta who because of an argument are estranged for much of the story.

Also of note is that Sir Gawain is now appearing with gray hair. He looks like a hearty knight who can’t be more than fifty yet, but while the characters in the Prince Valiant strip age very slowly, age they do, which adds to the realism.

In Volume 19, Prince Arn, son of Valiant and Aleta, loses his heart to love for the first time.

Each volume also has an article at the beginning and again at the end of interest concerning Foster or the strip. Volume 19 ends with the illustrated novel of The Song of Bernadette, which Foster drew. Foster was not really religious so his illustrating a Catholic story is surprising, and little information exists about why he may have done it, but the story of St. Bernadette seeing the Virgin Mary in a grotto in Lourdes may have been why Valiant and Aleta ended up being married in a woodland grotto outside rather than a church—an odd departure for the Middle Ages and even for the early period when the strip was written in an age before hippies and outdoor weddings were common. Certainly, Foster was no fan of organized religion as often evidenced in the strip. For example, in Volume 18 a fanatic Muslim gets angry when Val is praying to the Christian God. I have also written about Christianity in the strip previously, especially in Volumes 7 and 8, and Volume 9 about how Christianity comes to Thule. Foster was obviously interested in Christianity from a historical perspective, but in illustrating The Song of Bernadette, it might also have just been a job for him. It certainly, being black and white, does not reflect his best work, but it is an interesting side note to Prince Valiant.

For this reader, the change to John Cullen Murphy as illustrator is no reason to quit reading Prince Valiant, and while at times the storyline becomes redundant, the artwork remains as resplendent as ever. I look forward to Volume 20, to be released in November.

If you’d like to visit some of the places Prince Valiant sojourned over in Britain, consider taking the Scholarly Sojourns’ Arthurian tour Uncovering Camelot.

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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 books. You can learn more about Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com.

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Prince Valiant: Vols 16 and 17

The Prince Valiant saga continues in Volumes 16 (1967-1968) and 17 (1969-1970) published recently by Fantagraphics. I’ve decided to review both volumes in the same blog post because, frankly, not a lot of interesting things happen in the two volumes worth mentioning. That is not to say that there aren’t plenty of adventures, but a lot of it is the same old kind of storylines that have been in the strip for the past thirty or so years by this point.

Prince Valiant 16 includes Valiant having to settle a dispute over who is heir to an earldom and Valiant having to rescue Gawain when he is captured, which includes a trip to the Misty Isles along the way.

Of course, the Foster fans are legions, and Foster deserves all the praise he gets for his fabulous illustrations. He also deserves credit for his ability to create story arcs that kept readers interested week after week. Personally, I think I would have gotten bored reading the strip that way, so I prefer to read it in a volume that covers two years at a time and takes me about two hours to read, so I usually do it in one or just a few sittings.

I, like all the Foster fans, and I am a fan, but not a super fan, love staring at the images of castles and all the breathtaking landscapes he draws. I also enjoy looking at the attractive knights and ladies, and the more sinister facial expressions of the villains and the scarier places, from fens to caves and dungeons, that Foster creates. As I said, the artwork is fabulous.

The storylines, though, become tiresome as Val or Aleta trick one more scoundrel after another, or young knights and ladies overcome impediments to their love affairs. The saving grace of these volumes for me is watching Val’s four children growing up. Arn is now almost a man and the artwork shows his expressions ranging from boy to man, a sign he is going through puberty. The twin girls, Karen and Valeta, are becoming boy crazy, and even young Galan is ready to give up his toys for weapons—one of the most charming moments in the strip is in 8-25-68 when he uses a sword to cut up his mother’s flowers.

However, one gets the sense that even Foster was getting bored by this point. In 1967, the character of Reynolde gets a lot of attention for several pages, but then is quickly written out as a new story starts and I suspect Foster just got sick of him. In 1970, several different weeks the strip was drawn by other artists, as the essay in the back of the book explains, because Foster was looking for his replacement. He would end up choosing John Cullen Murphy.

Prince Valiant 17 includes Val’s son Arn going off on his own adventures and Val’s son Galan trying to catch a unicorn. Plus, Val has to face the magic of Morgan le Fay.

For me, the two treats of these volumes was the accompanying essays. In Vol. 16 the essay at the end talks about a parade in New Orleans in 1938 in which a Prince Valiant float was first featured, and then in 1939, the entire parade was devoted to the strip, each float depicting different scenes from the story—the pictures of the float make me long for the old days when parades still had gorgeous floats. In Vol. 17, the opening essay by Brian Kane talks about Foster’s use of humor in the strip. Kane breaks it down into several types of humor, which felt a bit labored to me, but I think what I most enjoy, aside from the pictures, is the humor of the strip so I enjoyed reading this essay. Certainly, Aleta and Val are both experts at trickery to resolve a situation in a humorous manner or get themselves out of trouble. Vol. 17 ends with a series of drawings Foster did as a child between ages nine and eleven. These were also quite interesting because they showed how even at such a young age, Foster was not only a talented artist but thinking about story arcs and incorporating drama and humor into his work.

Overall, both volumes will be enjoyable to lovers of Prince Valiant. I am personally eager to read the next volume when John Cullen Murphy took over the art for the strip while Foster continued to oversee and write scripts for it. It will be interesting to read this volume and the ones to follow to see how Prince Valiant changed.

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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 books. You can learn more about Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com.

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Prince Valiant: Return to North America, Vol 15: 1965-1966

This latest volume of the Prince Valiant comic strip is largely concerned with Prince Arn’s visit to North America. About three-quarters of the volume details his journey there and back. The last section mostly concerns Prince Valiant trying to stop a plot by Mordred to take the throne.

Prince Valiant 15 — the the bottom right panel is from a storyline in which Val enters a crypt in Scotland and uses a skull to scare off a druid following him.

I hate to admit it, but this was one of the dullest books so far in the Prince Valiant series. The illustrations, as always, were splendid, but something was missing in terms of the storyline.

It all begins well enough. Arn hears tales of how his parents had once gone to North America and visited with the Native Americans. His mother was regarded as a goddess and the Natives were sorry to see her leave. When she did leave, she told them someday her son might return to lead their people to greatness.

Foster is playing on the myth of the white man being thought of as a god by the Native Americans—a myth that goes back to the first white explores to the New World like Cortez. However, Foster is writing in the 1960s, so he’s a bit more up-to-date.

In any case, Arn decides it’s time for him to fulfill this prophecy, even though he’s only just shy of fifteen, and his parents agree to let him go, with a shipload of warriors and Tillicum, his Native American nurse.

Once they arrive in North America, however, the plot gets dull. Foster understands whites have a tendency to think themselves better than Natives, and Arn is no different. He wants to bring civilization to the Algonquins, but with the guidance of his nurse, Tillicum, herself Native American—he learns to appreciate that Natives good qualities.

There isn’t much else to the story. There are a few skirmishes between the Algonquins and Iroquois. Arn finds himself in some sticky situations, having to hide out from Natives searching for him. Eventually, he helps the Algonquins defeat the Iroquois, and then the Ottawa come to befriend the Algonquins so they won’t be hurt like the Iroquois. In the end, Arn does succeed in leading the Algonquins to greatness, not by civilizing them, but by causing them to create a federation with other tribes that leads to the birth of the Algonquin nation.

I don’t have much else to say about it. What I’ve said about Foster’s depiction of Native Americans can be read in my previous blog on Val and Aleta’s first trip to North America:

https://childrenofarthur.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/prince-valiant-vol-6-1947-1948-the-north-american-journey/

Bottom line, however, more work needs to be done on Foster’s treatment of Native Americans. Volume 6 in this series, as noted in my blog from that volume, has a preface about how Foster tried to treat the Natives with respect, but I doubt Native Americans today would find it so respectful. Foster could also let racism seep into his depictions of other peoples, such as Arabs. Ultimately, he was a product of his time. I wish this volume had addressed Foster’s treatment of Native Americans in more detail. Instead there is an interview by an author who helped make Prince Valiant books for Dell—interesting in itself, but perhaps not as suitable for this volume.

That is not to say there are not breathtaking images in the book. The scenes of canoes on the lakes and rivers were particularly striking to me. Foster’s plots, however, are repetitive and leave much to be desired. Part of the problem is reading the strip in two year groupings. The strip at the end of 1966 ends in the middle of a new plot, and then we must wait several months for Fantagraphics to bring out the next book so we can continue the story. The strip itself has a serial, soap opera feel as a result of its weekly rather than yearly grouping of its storylines. One wishes Foster had more thought to how the strip might be packaged in book form down the road, but of course, he could not foresee that when he began it in the 1930s.

And so, this book left me disappointed, but I’ll go on to read the next volume regardless.

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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 and the Quest for the Holy Grail: Volumes 11 and 12

Finally, in Volume 12 (1959-1960) we come to the quest for the Holy Grail in the Prince Valiant strip, but not before some rather less-than-exciting adventures in Volume 11 (1957-1958).

Volume 11 of Prince Valiant.

I’ll admit that Volume 11 was a disappointment overall for me. It begins with a long essay about Pal Palenske, who was likely an interesting man as an advertising executive, but the essay’s point isn’t clear until the very end—that Foster worked with him. I can imagine that it is difficult to keep coming up with new essays for this series, but this one was rather marginal in its connection to Foster. I’ll admit not really being interested in Foster’s advertising work, so many of these essays are rather tedious for me. Of course, Foster’s artwork in his ads was marvelous regardless, but it is all tangential to Prince Valiant, which is the main reason why I read the series, and it’s not even Prince Valiant himself who interests me so much as what Foster did with the Arthurian legends in his strip.

Volume 11 has several adventure stories but some of them feel largely like rehashes of earlier plots. The big treat of the volume is seeing Prince Arn growing up and the adventures he undertakes, but overall, I found nothing worth getting excited over in this volume.

Volume 12 is a different story. First off, I appreciated Neal Adams foreword, which told it like it is. Adams describes his own indifference to the Prince Valiant strip growing up, and he hits the nail on the head in pointing out the strip’s faults. He says that the strip is not a comic book so the story didn’t flow as well. Valiant’s page-boy haircut was also a turn off for him. I have to admit both Valiant’s haircut and also his name are turnoffs. He sounds like some sort of romantic and unrealistic Romeo and he is decidedly lacking a masculine look most of the time. One exception being the opening of Volume 12 when he is enslaved, has his hair cut short, and is shirtless. Then he seems manly enough to be a hero. This raises questions of why the strip still appeals to so many people when the modern reader must see Valiant as sort of girlish and old-fashioned in look; even the 1990s television cartoon series cut Valiant’s hair to make him look more manly. But Adams goes on to discuss how as he got older he saw that Foster’s drawings were far superior to those of other comics—they are more like artful movie stills. He also credits Foster with trying to be historically accurate in his drawings, and I admit that I sit in wonderment at the details of the drawings and even how there will be layers of figures on top of each other which must have been incredibly difficult to draw. My problem is I read more for the story, which just doesn’t always come up to the standards of the artwork.

As for the stories in this volume, it is better than the last volume, although some of the plots are becoming the same old, same old, and tiresome. The major plot of interest is the quest for the Holy Grail. King Arthur asks Valiant to look into the truth of the Holy Grail because many knights have gone off to seek it and not returned, which is hurting the Round Table as Merlin had predicted.

Volume 12 of Prince Valiant, in which Valiant goes searching for the Holy Grail.

When Valiant agrees to go, he and Aleta have a fight about it, resulting in his getting mad and spanking her. This act of brutality would not be acceptable in a strip today, and even worse, when Valiant leaves on the quest, ashamed of his behavior and thinking Aleta will never love him again, Aleta confesses to herself that she enjoyed being spanked and thinks of Valiant as “a magnificent beast.” I’m gagging. It’s disgusting to think women find being mistreated by men to be appealing—a sexist view of the time akin to the scene in Gone with the Wind when Scarlett is happy and smiling in the morning after Rhett rapes her. While Valiant and Aleta usually make an attractive couple and Aleta knows how to keep her husband in line, this was not one of her finer moments.

Of course, Valiant and Aleta will patch things up when he returns, but not until after he travels the land to find out information about the Holy Grail. I was both happy with the results of his Grail Quest and also disappointed that there were not more adventures along the way—there is no one achieving the grail—no Galahad or Percival having mystical experiences—but I can only hope this is not the last we have heard of the Holy Grail in the strip and Foster plans to do more with it gradually. The main highlights of Valiant’s quest is his meeting St. Patrick and later the Beaker folk, an ancient people who have been at Stonehenge one thousand years before the Druids. Ultimately, St. Patrick tells Valiant that no one knows whether it’s true that St. Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to Britain, so the Grail is probably not a chalice but “ a symbol of faith, courage and hope.” The knights, by questing for it, are spreading the message of Christianity throughout Britain, and that is what is most important. When Valiant returns to Camelot, King Arthur accepts this and decides the quest is a good thing despite how it hurts the Round Table.

This volume ends with Valiant and Aleta returning to her kingdom of the Misty Isles so her people can see Prince Arn, whom she wants to succeed her. Some tension returns between Val and Aleta at this point because Valiant wants Arn to rule Thule after him. The summary for Volume 13 at the end of the book tells us the couple will soon have another son, so I imagine this issue will be resolved.

I admit some of the strip has become boring to me, but yet, I read on, wanting to discover what happens next. As long as Fantagraphics keeps producing these books, I’ll likely keep reading and blogging about them.

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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, and the upcoming Lilith’s Love and Arthur’s Bosom. He has also written the nonfiction scholarly work King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition. You can learn more about Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com.

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Prince Valiant, Vol. 10: 1955-1956 — From Portages to Pentecost

This tenth volume of Prince Valiant is full of the usual adventures, fabulous artwork, humor, and variety we’ve come to expect from Hal Foster’s greatest comic strip. While I would not say it is one of the best or worst in the series to date, it has several notable moments and some awe-striking images.

Prince Valiant, Vol 10 – witches and war just barely start to describe the adventures in this volume.

The story begins with Prince Valiant, Aleta, and companions leaving the Misty Isles. Because they wish to return to Thule, they decide that rather than sail through the Mediterranean and then up through the English Channel to the Baltic, they will journey to Constantinople, through the Black Sea, up the Dnieper River, portage overland, and then sail into the Baltic Sea.

It is a long journey full of danger, excitement, and dress buying—after all, Aleta insists they stop off in places like Constantinople and Kiev so she can buy new clothes and get a good bath. In the process, she often puts Valiant and his companions in some sticky situations, but her sense of humor and ability to flirt quickly get her out of them. At one point, she even finds herself married to the local khan, whom she then convinces to dance to his death for her, making her queen of the land—that is, until Valiant shows up to rescue her. No one seems to care that Aleta committed bigamy—after all, she was forced into it and played along with the monarch to buy time while never really stepping over her boundaries. If any woman in literature ever knew how to get herself out of a sticky situation with aplomb, it is Aleta.

The portage scenes were truly striking. Not only is the image of a giant Viking ship being rolled over land and slid through mud beautifully drawn, but the thought of such an undertaking is completely mindboggling, yet I am sure Foster is not exaggerating in depicting such an event.

Once the Valiant family is safely back in Thule, we get a good sense of how much Prince Arn has grown. Foster doesn’t give his age, but in the illustrations, he looks to be between about eight and twelve. And he is ready for his own adventures. Thule has issues with having enough food to feed all its people, but over its mountains lie pleasant valleys, perfect for farmland. Arn decides that finding a mountain pass to those valleys will be his first big adventure, and he wants to have it by himself, though eventually, he agrees to take Garm, a grown squire, with him. The two go into the mountains, but winter is coming on, so before they know it, they get trapped in a storm and have to build a shelter. They have quite the time trying to survive before they safely return home.

These winter scenes in the mountains are some of Foster’s most dramatic in this volume, and they reflect his knowledge of winter climes, given his Canadian background. There is also one striking image of sailing into Thule, which Foster notes is based on drawings done during a visit to Norway in 1955. Foster truly did visit the places he drew—he cared that much about accuracy, and it is reflected throughout this volume.

Of course, Valiant can’t sit around in Thule forever, so as spring approaches, he decides he’ll return to Camelot for the tournament at Pentecost. This adventure results in his discovering a new champion at Camelot whom he will aid in winning a fair maiden for a wife, and by a strange twist of events, he’ll also pick up a new squire, Alfred, whom I suspect will figure in future volumes.

Volume 10 concludes with some additional advertisements and commentary on Foster’s work for the Northwest Paper Company and his drawings of Canadian Mounties that there wasn’t room to include in Volume 8. In addition, it is clear from these images that Foster was inspired by many of his winter scenes for this work in later depicting winter scenes in Prince Valiant, including in Volume 6 when Valiant is shown snowshoeing in North America.

For me, seeing Prince Arn growing up is perhaps the most fascinating part of this volume. As the strip progresses, the characters do grow up and age, and while that aging is a bit delayed compared to real time, that’s all the better because then Prince Valiant and his companions stay young longer, and as a result, we have a strip now approaching its eightieth anniversary.

Fantagraphics has already produced Volume 11 of the series with plans to release Volume 12 in December so stay tuned for more reviews.

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Tyler Tichelaar, Ph.D., is the author of The Children of Arthur series, which includes the novels Arthur’s Legacy and Melusine’s Gift, and he has written the nonfiction book King Arthur’s Children. You can learn more about him at www.ChildrenofArthur.com.

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