Captured, Stripped, and Bound

. . . [In] every other story [Prince Valiant] gets captured, stripped, and bound in some ridiculous fashion. This is hugely important. If adventure heroes didn't get captured, no James Bond movie would ever have three full acts. This distressing image (from 1944 and the newly released fourth volume) suggests both DaVinci's Vitruvian Man as well as the sad future of the comics page itself: The full-page Prince Valiant strip would in later decades be shrunk and shrunk again, which Foster accidentally foreshadows here by chaining a ripped and furious Val inside the Family Circus circle.

– Alan Scherstuhl

Excerpted from "10 Reasons Prince Valiant Bests All 2011 Adventure Heroes"
San Francisco Weekly
October 12, 2011

Art and text: Hal Foster (from installment #370, March 12, 1944).
Source: Prince Valiant (Vol. 4): 1943-1944 – Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books, 2011).

Quote of the Day

I really, really, really enjoyed moderating the anniversary Prince Valiant panel. R.C. Harvey, Gary Gianni, Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates are all super-nice, articulate, talented comics-makers and they were pretty straight-forward and honest about the joys of doing that particular strip – THE comic strip, in a sense – and the frustrations of things like newspapers' falling fortunes and the physical space afforded Prince Valiant on the Sunday page.

The questions were pretty amazing from the audience at that panel, including a gentleman in charge of Hal Foster's library, who read out loud a dedication from Ray Bradbury to Foster – stupendous to hear that.

Gary Gianni is apparently doing the Game Of Thrones calendar for next year, which should be pretty great-looking.

– Tom Spurgeon

"Notes from Comic-Con International 2012"

The Comics Reporter

July 14, 2012

Related Off-site Link:
Comic-Con to Celebrate History, Heritage – Derrik J. Lang (Associated Press via The Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2012).