Prince Valiant (Fantagraphics)


Prince Valiant is a series of hardcover books, published by Fantagraphics Books, that collects the Prince Valiant comic strip, written and drawn by Hal Foster. The release of the series began in August 2009.

Background

Prince Valiant, written and drawn by Hal Foster, was a Sunday newspaper comic strip published weekly in full color from February 13, 1937, to the early 1970s when the strip saw a change of writer and artist. The strip itself has continued to the present day and has since its start belonged to the comic syndicate King Features.

Format

The series are collected in hardcover volumes with matte paper stock and sewn binding. A single volume includes two years of Sunday strip pages as well as some supplementary content, such as interviews and introductions. In total this amounts to about 120 pages per book.

Reproduction

All comic strip content in this series is reproduced from Foster's original engraver's proofs, in full original; and the original coloring has been restored in a reproduction for the first time. Previous collections of Prince Valiant have never had such good material as a base for reproduction. These proofs were ones preserved by Foster himself and, after his passing, donated to Syracuse University, which provided Fantagraphics with scans of these proofs for this collection. Recent advancements in digital color technology now permit a better and more faithful reproduction compared to previous Prince Valiant collections, e.g. the Nostalgia Press' collection from the 1960s and Fantagraphics Books previous trade paperback collection published between 1984 and 2004. These earlier collections did recolor the comic strip but not accordingly to the appearance it had in newspapers when first published. The line work of these older collections also appear subpar to that in this latest Fantagraphics' Prince Valiant collection.

Sizing

While the volumes of this book collection measure, the original newspaper publication of the comic strip were usually printed on a full broadsheet page, where it appeared measuring. The largest reproduction of Prince Valiant, yet, is in the Artist's Edition book: Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Hal Foster's Prince Valiant,, also published by Fantagraphics Books, measuring. Hal Foster originally drew a whole Prince Valiant Sunday page on paper stock measuring, which makes this collection series' area size equal to about 16 percent of the original art size.

Extras

The supplementary material features interviews with comic historians and with Hal Foster himself, original artwork, essays, biographical sketches by Hal Foster, as well as galleries of dropped panels. In the fourth volume, spanning the years 1943 to 1944, the comic strip tale The Medieval Castle, a separate strip Foster drew, is included. This strip was a tale he drew when he split up the page he was allowed for the Prince Valiant strip during the Second World War, due to a paper shortage and newspaper space being at a premium, splitting his full one-page spread between three-quarters of a page for Prince Valiant and one-quarter for The Medieval Castle, in order to make it easy for editors to remove the non-Prince Valiant strip to free-up space for something of greater importance in wartime. The plot of The Medieval Castle revolves around the childhood and life of two young princes in a medieval castle.

Recognition

The volumes are sold separately as well as in box sets. The suggested retail price of a volume was $29.99, at the beginning of the publication; but the price was later raised to $34.99 per volume. The suggested retail price for a box set is $99.99.
VolumeRelease dateTitleAuthorISBN
12009-08-18Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937–1938Hal Foster
22010-07-20Prince Valiant Vol. 2: 1939–1940Hal Foster
32011-03-21Prince Valiant Vol. 3: 1941–1942Hal Foster
42011-10-03Prince Valiant Vol. 4: 1943–1944Hal Foster
52012-07-02Prince Valiant Vol. 5: 1945–1946Hal Foster
62013-02-13Prince Valiant Vol. 6: 1947–1948Hal Foster
72013-09-07Prince Valiant Vol. 7: 1949–1950Hal Foster
82014-02-15Prince Valiant Vol. 8: 1951–1952Hal Foster
92014-07-19Prince Valiant Vol. 9: 1953–1954Hal Foster
102014-12-09Prince Valiant Vol. 10: 1955–1956Hal Foster
112015-07-04Prince Valiant Vol. 11: 1957–1958Hal Foster
122015-11-23Prince Valiant Vol. 12: 1959–1960Hal Foster
132016-06-21Prince Valiant Vol. 13: 1961–1962Hal Foster
142016-11-15Prince Valiant Vol. 14: 1963–1964Hal Foster
152017-07-11Prince Valiant Vol. 15: 1965–1966Hal Foster
162018-01-09Prince Valiant Vol. 16: 1967–1968Hal Foster
172018-06-12Prince Valiant Vol. 17: 1969–1970Hal Foster
182018-11-20Prince Valiant Vol. 18: 1971–1972Hal Foster
192019-06-27Prince Valiant Vol. 19: 1973–1974John Cullen Murphy
202019-11-19Prince Valiant Vol. 20: 1975–1976John Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
212020-05-05Prince Valiant Vol. 21: 1977–1978John Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
222020-12-01Prince Valiant Vol. 22: 1979–1980John Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster

Box sets