Showing posts with label Prince Valiant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prince Valiant. Show all posts

Coming Up: Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Hal Foster's Prince Valiant

Out Oct. 2, 2015.
Hal Foster is in five artistic Halls of Fame―more than any other cartoonist or illustrator. Fantagraphics’ recent reprints of the Prince Valiant strip have received international acclaim, and now we are printing the Holy Grail of comics art.  

Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant Artist’s Edition is a 192-page collection scanned from Foster’s rare, original pages and printed in full color, capturing every nuance of Foster’s masterly brush strokes.

From Foster’s very first Prince Valiant page to his very last, the public will be treated to a selection of some of the most iconic and beautiful comic art ever made. Full color illustrations throughout.

Fantagraphics announces Prince Valiant Vol. 3 1941-42

I need to catch up on these annual collections of Hal Foster's legendary comic strip. They look glorious. Here are details on the latest volume, out next month:

With this volume, Foster reaches (by common critical consensus) the peak of his drawing and storytelling prowess – a peak at which he will remain for most of the run of this glorious strip.

Almost the entirety of 1941’s strips feature a single ten-month epic entitled “Fights for the Singing Sword,” a globetrotting adventure fueled by Valiant’s obsessive search for his bride-to-be Aleta throughout Northern Africa, with stops in Jerusalem, the Arabic deserts, and, inevitably, a harem which Val must infiltrate. Then finally, in “The Misty Isles” Valiant meets Aleta face to face but upon learning that she has had his crew killed (deservedly so, actually, but still), he flees in anger, vowing never to see her again.

“Homeward Bound,” Valiant continues his travels, with stops in Athens (where he meets the boisterous Viking Boltar, who will become his friend for life), North Africa, and Gaul (where Valiant liberates Gawain), before finally returning to Camelot. But his joyous return is short-lived as an alliance of Picts and Vikings threatens Britain’s security, and thus Valiant must journey forth with, as his ultimate destination, “The Roman Wall.”

The final pages of this volume boast a special feature: a gallery of images that were censored for being too sexy or violent (or subject to other editorial interference) prior to publication, plus another gruesome example of Foster's art being altered for publication, all with commentary by series editor Kim Thompson.