Always in Demand . . .

. . . even Prince Valiant's bath time gets interrupted!

Art: Hal Foster (1946).
Source: From one of the Prince Valiant comic books my father collected in 1954-55 and which were published and distributed by Associated Newspaper Ltd. of 60-70 Elizabeth Street, Sydney.

John Cullen Murphy on Prince Valiant: "It's My Duty. I'm Responsible For It"

I've mentioned previously that my interest in Prince Valiant started when, as a child, I discovered my father's collection of Prince Valiant comics books.

When my Dad collected Prince Valiant as a teenager in the 1950s, the strip was being drawn by its creator Hal Foster and the Prince of Thule was a brash, rough-and-tumble young man, eager for battle. To be honest, when reading those strips as a child, I couldn't really relate to that Prince Valiant. I mean, I wasn't and I'm not any of those things.

The Prince Valiant that I came to know and sought to emulate as a teenager and young man was actually middle-aged. He was drawn by Hal Foster's chosen successor John Cullen Murphy (right), and his adventures were chronicled by Murphy's son Cullen. Interestingly, as you'll read in the interview below, Foster was somewhat critical of Murphy for drawing Valiant with "too much emotion." Apparently, he thought his creation should be forever stoic! I'm glad Murphy did what he did with the character. Prince Valiant, as drawn and written by the Murphys, still had great adventures and traveled far and wide, but he was also a family man. He displayed compassion, fortitude and wisdom, along with courage, resourcefulness and daring.

How into Prince Valiant was I as a young man?

Well, I made my own Prince Valiant t-shirt – one that bore the red stallion head of the House of Thule. I'm pictured wearing it above at Uluru in 1986. Later that year I had a Prince Valiant-themed 21st birthday celebration (left) in Armidale, where I was completing my Diploma of Teaching. The next year I had my very first article published. Its focus was the 50th anniversary of Prince Valiant!

So, yeah, I was very much into Prince Valiant, thanks in large measure to John Cullen Murphy and his son Cullen.

Following are excerpts from an interview that Brian M. Kane conducted with John Cullen Murphy in 2003. By this time Murphy had been drawing Prince Valiant for 33 years.

(NOTE: The entire interview can be found in Kane's excellent book The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion.)

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Brian M. Kane: What did you think of Hal Foster’s work?

John Cullen Murphy: I first noticed Hal’s work when I was 18. I loved it. His compositions were extraordinary. He could really do the big panels. I think he was a little weak on horses, though, and great big close-ups.


Brian M. Kane: What made you decide to approach Hal in 1968?

John Cullen Murphy: [Big Ben] Bolt [the boxing comic strip Murphy had been illustrating since 1950] had lost a lot of readers. By that time [the strip's original writer] Elliot [Chaplin] had left and it was being written by a lot of different guys so the stories weren’t that good. I’d wanted to get black people into the strip because the heyday of Jewish and Irish prizefighters was past, but the executives wouldn’t do it. They thought we’d lose more readers.


Brian M. Kane: When did you leave Big Ben Bolt? Was it before or after you’d started on Prince Valiant?

John Cullen Murphy: After. I continued with Bolt for another three or four years.

Above: A Hal Foster preliminary rough and Murphy’s redrawn and finished panel.

Brian M. Kane: Hal was giving you pencil sketches of each page every week to work from. Did you ever find working with him constricting?

John Cullen Murphy: No, because they were just rough guides. A few years later after I started doing the pages [Hal’s wife] Helen told him, “You’ve got this guy doing the pages, why bother sending him layouts?” After a while Hal quit sending the layouts but continued writing the strip. I think Helen was trying to ease Hal’s workload.


Brian M. Kane: Did he give you any advice about the characters? Posture? Body language? Did he share any personal insights that are not obvious to the casual reader?

John Cullen Murphy: He thought I drew Val with too much emotion. He’d say: “He’s a prince. He needs to be stoic.”


Brian M. Kane: Something that Hal could relate to coming out of a late-Victorian/Edwardian upbringing. Was it hard for Hal to let go of Prince Valiant?

John Cullen Murphy: Very much. It was his baby.


Brian M. Kane: Was it harder for him to give up Val or Aleta?

John Cullen Murphy: (Laughs) Well, he did use Helen as a model for Aleta. Younger, of course. She was a fine lady.


Brian M. Kane: Your first Prince Valiant strip was page 1760, November 1, 1970, but you couldn’t start signing your name on the page until February 17, 1980. Did it bother you that the general public didn’t know you were drawing the strip for almost ten years?

John Cullen Murphy: Not really. Everyone knew I was doing it.


Brian M. Kane: All the cartoonists?

John Cullen Murphy: That’s right, and even some of the fans too. Hal told me he once got a letter from a fan asking him when he’d started using Murphy on the strip.


Brian M. Kane: Have any of the mythic overtones of Celtic history played a part in your development of Prince Valiant as a character and as a strip?

John Cullen Murphy: Not intentionally. Some of the stories have taken place in Ireland, but you never know what Cullen might write into the strip.


Brian M. Kane: What has been the proudest achievement in your professional art career?

John Cullen Murphy: That I’ve been able to keep working all this time. I’m not the most talented person, but I always did my best. I was able to put eight kids through college.


Brian M. Kane: Before we finish I just want to get back to the good Prince. How many papers is Prince Valiant currently in wouldwide?

John Cullen Murphy: They keep telling me it’s in 350 papers.


Brian M. Kane: Other than shrinkage, what other trends have you noticed in the past 50 years of working on the strips?

John Cullen Murphy: Shrinkage is the worst. It’s all right for gag strips but not Prince Valiant. The coloring is not as good as it used to be. The color they had in the papers in the early 1900s is better than what they have today.


Brian M. Kane: Where do you see the future of adventure strips?

John Cullen Murphy: I don’t know, maybe they’ve reached their nadir. Maybe they will come back. I’m told that there are some good strips in Europe.


Brian M. Kane: You seem to have a great love for Prince Valiant – something that goes beyond just a steady income or a weekly paycheck.

John Cullen Murphy: It’s my duty. I’m responsible for it.

Brian M. Kane: What’s the best thing about working on Prince Valiant?

John Cullen Murphy: It’s something new every day. There are an infinite variety of possibilities for stories.


Brian M. Kane: Granted that Hal created Prince Valiant, but after thirty years haven’t you really made it your strip now?

John Cullen Murphy: No. If it’s anyone’s then it’s more Cullen’s than mine. He takes it very seriously. He spends a lot of time on it and he doesn’t have a lot of time to spare.


Brian M. Kane: I did some calculating and you only have a little over two years to go before you do as many pages as Hal did.

John Cullen Murphy: Something like that. I know I’m close.


Brian M. Kane: Are you trying to break Hal’s record?

John Cullen Murphy: I really haven’t thought about it.


Brian M. Kane: Let me put it this way. Once you have done as many pages as Hal did, would you do one more?

John Cullen Murphy: Sure, why not?

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John Cullen Murphy retired from drawing Prince Valiant in 2004; his last strip was published on March 14. He died just months later on July 2, at the age of 85. Two years earlier he had begun collaborating with his chosen successor Gary Gianni, who took over drawing Prince Valiant full-time in 2004.

Cullen Murphy shared with Gianni that once his father had retired he was no longer as interested in working on the strip. He nevertheless stayed with it after his father's death until September 2005 when Mark Schultz took over writing Prince Valiant.

A Tale of Terror

Prince Valiant's son Nathan, however, is not impressed: "Mother has already spun that yarn for me, as they tell it in the Misty Isles. Down there they call the menaces Scylla and Charybdis – but it's basically the same story."

Concludes Prince Valiant: "The world has grown too small when a ripping good tale like that no longer inspires awe. Children today are far too jaded."

"Such is the eternal divide between generations," the chronicler of Prince Valiant (Mark Schultz) declares.


Art: Gary Gianni (#3588, November 13, 2005).
Text: Mark Schultz.
Source: Prince Valiant: Far from Camelot – Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008).

The Charm of the Singing Sword

After observing him in battle, Val's companion Slith believes he's discovered the "secret" of the Singing Sword: "So quick is your eye you see things practically in slow motion," he tells Val. "The charm of the Singing Sword has nothing to do with it."

Prince Valiant, however, disagrees: "Listen, worm! The Singing Sword bears a charm for him who uses it in a good cause. I prefer to believe that!"


Art and text: Hal Foster (from installment #130, August 6, 1939).
Source: From one of the Prince Valiant comic books my father collected in 1954-55 and which were published and distributed by Associated Newspaper Ltd. of 60-70 Elizabeth Street, Sydney.

Savior of Turfan

After re-establishing a trade route from Europe to Cathay, Prince Valiant is hailed "Savior of Turfan."

Art: John Cullen Murphy (May, 1988).
Text: Cullen Murphy.
Source: The Sun Herald (Sydney, Australia), August 26, 1990; from the collection of Michael J. Bayly.

Looking Good

Gary Gianni is the third and current illustrator in the 74-year history of Prince Valiant. He took over full time from his predecessor John Cullen Murphy in 2004, the two having first began collaborating in 2001.

In 2008 Gianni wrote and compiled The Prince Valiant Page, an indispensable resource in which he explains "the mechanics of going about illustrating Prince Valiant" via "thoughts jotted down during the production sequences, descriptions of materials and techniques, [and] a word about models and other reference sources." It also includes a richly illustrated look at Gianni's work leading up to Prince Valiant. In short, it's a wonderful resource, full of great illustrations and insightful observations about the creative process. Following (with added links and images) is an excerpt.

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. . . As with many kids, my early interest in drawing (and reading) rests largely with a fascination of comic books. Even before learning to read, I was enthralled by the comics of artists such as Jack Kirby. His visuals enabled me to follow a story line simply by studying the drawings.

Despite my admiration, there's little evidence of my own work being influenced by the masters of the comic field. The high-octave graphics of talents like Kirby seem to be missing altogether. The desire, however, to tell stories through pictures and render the liveliest figures imaginable stem from the art of these remarkable men.

But what is the difference between an illustrator and a comic book artist anyway? Or, for that matter, a cartoonist? The issue is dangerously nuanced and the similarities outnumber the differences. In an interview in the 1970's, [Prince Valiant creator] Hal Foster sidesteps the question neatly.

"I can't cartoon. I am an illustrator. But where the cartoonist ends and the illustrator begins is pretty hard to say."

As Hal Foster conceived it, the Prince Valiant comic strip is a narrative with illustrations accompanying the text. He rarely took advantage of the storytelling techniques found in comic strips. The snub-nosed style of Chester Gould or the cinematic approach of Milt Caniff or Will Eisner would be incongruous on Prince Valiant's stage. Indeed, Prince Valiant is more opera than film. A lyrical Victorian fragrance underlies the historical realism. Foster and [his successor John Cullen] Murphy were concerned with the careful rendering of the detailed tableaus. Groupings of figures are integrated within stately environments . . . For these reasons some critics will argue Prince Valiant is not a true comic strip.

But what of that?

When commenting on the differences between jazz, rock and classical music, composer musician "P.D.Q. Bach" observed, "All musical forms are created equal." Invoking Duke Ellington, he added, "It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing and if it sounds good it is good."

. . . Or, for our purposes, "if it looks good – it is good."

– Gary Gianni

The Prince Valiant Page

p. 25

4/1/12 UPDATE:
Thomas Yeates: The New Illustrator of Prince Valiant

Image 1: From the February 18, 2007 installment of Prince Valiant by Gary Gianni.
Image 2: Photographer unknown.
Image 3: Gary Gianni.
Image 4: From the December 5, 2004 installment of Prince Valiant by Gary Gianni.
Image 5: From the website of Gary Gianni.

The Comics Reporter's Review of the Newly Released Prince Valiant, Vol. 3 (1941-1942)

Following is a review of Prince Valiant, Volume 3 (1941-1942), which was released by Fantagraphics Books on March 21, 2011. This review was written and first published by The Comics Reporter.

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In his fine introduction to this new Prince Valiant collection, Dan Nadel briefly invokes Jack Kirby as a cartoonist who picked up on the way of making comics by which Hal Foster became a star, methods practiced by only a handful of others. According to fellow practitioner Burne Hogarth, Foster employed classical ways of drawing and made them work at a size and with an elegance of line that the images retained their power but also kept the eye skipping across the page. Kirby/Foster is an enlightening if offbeat comparison; in addition to the similarities in figure and panel work that Nadel describes, the power each could suggest within a single image, both cartoonists used page design and narrative rhythm to control their work's tone, to cut into what otherwise might be an interminable journey from point A to point B.

In devouring the latest in Fantagraphics' fine, modern-day collections before the introduction, I was actually reminded more of Kirby's fellow Silver Age comic book titan Steve Ditko. Foster's young man seethes and overreacts and even plays the fool in the same way that Ditko allowed Peter Parker the human foibles inherent to those in the process of becoming an adult. (Spider-Man never got mad enough to lop off anyone's hand that I can remember, so point to Valiant there; they did operate in different centuries with their own definition of "responsibility," however.) As long as the readers are invested in the energy with which Valiant seizes after goals both major and minor, we remain intrigued by his story. My memory of Prince Valiant as it progressed in later years makes me wonder if Foster ever got all the way past the bold and obvious appeal of this specific version of his character, to the point that future, similar adventures felt like a retreat for Valiant as opposed to continued growth, explaining also why the story would be shifted to Valiant's son.

There was a time not many decades ago when Hal Foster was considered the greatest cartoonist in the world, end of story, by a significant subset of people that took comics seriously -- my father among them. Like my father, many of the people who thought this have now passed on. This latest collection effort allows those younger than, say, 60 years old, to take a second look at the work without hackles raised, minus the powerful impulse to push back and tear down a conception born of a restrictive view of what art does well and why. With fresh eyes, savvier readers will likely recognize the obvious appeal of the bigger, splashier images but also pick up on the impressive hammer-to-nail effect that Foster could summon from a nine-panel grid. Most readers will see or at least sense the essential economy with which Foster tells his stories, how the more complex imagery serves a specific thematic function either by making unshakably lucid some sensual aspect in play or by drawing a moment that encompasses several smaller instances in a way that stops the eye and makes it consider an effect greater than the sum of those parts. Even untethered from rigidities caused by favoring realistic rendering over all other expressions available to the the form, it's hard not to be come away impressed by Foster's prodigious skill set.

Foster staged individual scenes extremely well. He never wasted a closeup, and he also knew where each man in a group of men might stand in proximity to a threat according to their personality as individuals and as a group. Foster could show a realization moving across the faces of dozens and in what order they came to enlightenment, and he could put a grin on Valiant's face that said everything it needed to about his role in the action to come. Seeing all this work under one cover makes one realize how much Foster accomplished in the context of a delivery system that for most people meant work that slipped from view and memory seconds after being consumed, only to have to muster its entire energy the next time around. Nadel mentions that Foster may have doubted his own greatness, but each time I see and attempt to catalog the various techniques he put into play every time he worked on a page, I come away with enough faith in his ability for the both of us.


Related Off-site Links:
A Review of Prince Valiant (Vol. 1): 1937-1938 – Read About Comics (July 20, 2009).
A Review of Prince Valiant (Vol. 2): 1939-1940 – Graphic Novels Reviews (December 13, 2010).

Valiant Stands Accused

The perils of rescuing a damsel in distress!

Art: John Cullen Murphy (September 1980).
Text: Cullen Murphy.
Source: The Sun Herald (Sydney, Australia); from the collection of Michael J. Bayly.

Harpies!

A memorable illustration by Gary Gianni – the current illustrator of Prince Valiant.


NEXT: Like Locusts

Art: Gary Gianni (#3681, August 26, 2007).
Text: Mark Schultz.
Source: Prince Valiant: Far from Camelot – Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008).

First Love

Prince Valiant's first love was the fair maid Ilene of Branwyn, whose parents Val rescues from a band of outlaws.

When Val asks for Ilene's hand in marriage, her father the Thane of Branwyn informs him that she has already been promised to Prince Arn of Ord.

Prince Valiant vows to find his rival and defeat him. Traveling to Ord he encounters and jousts with Arn on a narrow bridge above a swirling river. Arn is unhorsed and topples into the water. He is saved from drowning in his heavy armor by Val who declares: "If you are to die this day, it will be by my hand in fair fight."

The two lads are soon at it . . . with cries of "Ilene or death!"

Their duel is halted by the arrival of a Viking raiding party, which they battle and defeat. From a wounded survivor they learn that Ilene has been captured by Thagnar, the Viking sea rover.

Forgetting their quarrel in the face of Ilene's peril, Valiant and Arn rush to the coast. Armed with Arn's charmed Singing Sword, Prince Valiant buys time by holding the bridge at Dundorn Glen against fifty Vikings.

With rage in his heart and the terrible "Singing Sword" in his hand, Val writes his name large in the memories of his foes.

The Vikings draw back in amazement, but, weakened by a score of wounds, Prince Valiant collapses and is taken to Thagnar's encampment. Here he is reunited with Ilene. The two are soon at sea, prisoners of Thagnar.

With Arn in pursuit, Val strikes Thagnar, reclaims the Singing Sword, and cripples the longship's steering sweep. At Ilene's urging he jumps overboard and swims to Arn's ship. Together, Valiant and Arn defeat the crew of Thagnar's second ship, but the Viking rover himself has repaired his ship and escaped with Ilene.

Arn and Val's search for the woman they both love ends in tragedy with the discovery of Thagnar's shipwrecked vessel – and a jeweled clasp that had belonged to Ilene.

Later the two princes are consoled by Sir Launcelot.

Do not grive for Ilene – fate has spared her much unhappiness. Had she been found you were pledged to fight to the death for her hand; the winner would live on knowing he had brought a bride with his friend's life, and gentle Ilene would be the wife of a murderer, forever blaming herself for being the cause of it all.

Back in Britain, the two friends part company; but not before Arn gives Val the charmed Singing Sword, "to be used in good King Arthur's cause."

Years later, when considering a name for his first-born son, Val shares the tragic tale of Ilene with his wife Aleta. They then decide to name their son Arn. Pictured above is how Prince Valiant creator Hal Foster recaps the story of Val's first love in April 1948.


Image art and text: Hal Foster.
Image 1: From installment #75, July 17, 1938.
Image 2: #67, May 22, 1938.
Image 3: #68, May 29, 1938.
Image 4: #71, June 19, 1938.
Image 5: #75, July 17, 1938
Image 6: #78, August 7, 1938.
Image 7: #82, September 4, 1938.
Image 8: #85, September 25, 1938.
Image 9: April 1948.

Source of images 1, 3, 4 and 5: Prince Valiant #1, Pioneer Comics, June 1988.
Images 2, 6, 7 and 8: Prince Valiant (Vol. 1): 1937-1938 – Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books, 2009).
Image 9: From one of the Prince Valiant comic books my father collected in 1954-55 and which were published and distributed by Associated Newspaper Ltd. of 60-70 Elizabeth Street, Sydney.