Shadowy Figures

In his quest to retrieve the “Singing Sword,” Prince Valiant confronts a horde of shadowy figures gliding and slithering out of the stones of an ancient hilltop ruin.

Art: Thomas Yeates (from page 4539, February 4, 2024).
Source: Comics Kingdom.

The Strangest Swordfight of His Life

Art: Thomas Yeates (from page 4307, August 25, 2019).
Text: Mark Schultz.
Source: Comics Kingdom.

A Grim Tug-of-War

Art and text: Hal Foster (from page 511, November 24, 1946).
Source: Prince Valiant (Vol. 5): 1945-1946 – Hal Foster (Fantagraphics Books, 2012).

Back to the Wall

Art: Hal Foster.
Source: From the cover of a 1953 German collection of Prince Valiant strips. (With thanks to Axel M. Wulff.)

At the Ready

. . . for an attack from the skies!

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

Old Beyond Years

Prince Valiant encounters Merlin for the first time in many years. "From the powers of night I asked for immortality," says the wizard, "but forgot to ask for youth."


Art: John Cullen Murphy (November 1983).
Text: Cullen Murphy.
Source: The Sun Herald (Sydney, Australia); from the collection of Michael J. Bayly (1986).

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.

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.

Valiant to the Rescue

Above: A panel from the November 13, 1977 installment of Prince Valiant.

While in Beirut with their family, Karen and Valeta, the twin teenage daughters of Prince Valiant and Queen Aleta, are kidnapped by Assur, "son of a Sheik from beyond the Jordan." Prince Valiant, armed with the "bright blade" of the Singing Sword, quickly pursues and rescues them.

At first glance, this illustration could be misconstrued to imply that the various artists and writers involved over the years in the creation of Prince Valiant have been careless and insensitive in their portrayal of people from non-European cultures. Yet to think this would be a serious mistake. In the preceding adventure, for example, Prince Valiant's allies and friends were Sheik Abdul El Mohammed and members of his family and household, while the protagonist was a hot-headed and arrogant Teutonic knight named Gunther (pictured below).

Furthermore, as Frank Plowright notes in The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide (1997), from its earliest days, "the plots [of Prince Valiant were] . . . never condescending towards other nations in the manner typical at which they were created."

One of the earliest examples of this can be observed in the Hal Foster created character of Ramud of Tunis (pictured at right, from the August 5, 1945 installment). Brave and resourceful, Ramud is a vital ally in the rescuing of Valiant's future wife Aleta from the tyrant Donardo.

This respectful and even-handed portrayal of people from diverse cultures is a characteristic of Prince Valiant that continues to this day.

Above: Prince Valiant and Neshem of Ab'saba – friends and allies in
the quest to return King Solomon's gold to Africa (#3674, July 8, 2007).

Images 1 and 2: Art: Hal Foster and John Cullen Murphy. (Note: At this point in Prince Valiant's run, John Cullen Murphy, who had been quietly assisting Hal Foster since 1970, was well into his first decade of drawing the strip over Foster's writing and roughs.) Text: Hal Foster. Source: The Sun Herald (Sydney, Australia), March 1980; from the collection of Michael J. Bayly.
Image 3: Art and text: Hal Foster. Source: The Prince Valiant Scrapbook (King Features Syndicate, published by Bill Crouch, Jr., 1981).
Image 4: Art: Gary Gianni. Text: Mark Schultz. Source: Prince Valiant: Far from Camelot – Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008).

A Valiant First Effort, Wouldn't You Say?

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NOTE: The following was first shared at The Wild Reed on August 28, 2010.


Did you know that the first article I ever had published had nothing to do with theology or politics or gay rights? Rather, it was about the adventures of a fictitious Viking prince in the days of King Arthur!

I remember I bought a nice jumper (that’s a sweater for my American friends) with the $40 I was paid for this article – one that was published in The Canberra Times in April 1987. It was also an article that I submitted to the professional writing class I was taking at that time at the Canberra College of Advanced Education (now the University of Canberra). My instructor awarded me a “credit” grade, and noted that my article was “topical, interesting, and well-researched . . . [with] a genuine enthusiasm evident throughout.” He also observed that I “occasionally lapse into over-long sentences” – a habit that dogs me to this day!

In a future post I’ll share how I first became interested in the subject of this first ever article of mine. But for now I simply share (with added links and images) what I wrote back in the Australian autumn of 1987, when I was just a beardless youth of 21.

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Valiant Prince Turns Fifty

By Michael Bayly

Canberra Times

April 1987

An old witch once prophesied that a certain young and adventurous prince would never know contentment in his life. Whether or not the witch’s prophecy has been fulfilled is hard to ascertain, as contentment, like wealth, is one of those difficult concepts to measure.

Yet to the thousands of faithful readers, the writer and artist who labours to bring the prince to an exquisite degree of life, and the syndicate which has the right to publish this life in over 300 newspapers worldwide, I dare say the prince in question is a source of great contentment indeed.

He is, of course, Prince Valiant – knight of the Round Table and heir to the throne of Thule, who this year celebrates fifty years of existence. Valiant, of course, is not fifty years of age. It has just taken that length of time for the two writer/artists who have been involved in his creation to chronicle his life so far.

Prince Valiant, the comic strip, was created by Hal Foster in 1937. Foster, an accomplished commercial artist, was not new to the world of comics. He had previously written and illustrated Tarzan and the Apes. Yet it would be Prince Valiant, with its rich illustrations and detailed attention to the King Arthur legend, which would bring Foster international renown.

“God in his wisdom endowed me with certain imperfections,” Foster once declared, “but I have made Prince Valiant as I wish God had made me. He’s sort of my body with muscles.”

Prince Valiant was introduced to the Sunday comic pages as a five-year-old boy, the son of the Viking king, Aguar, and his Roman-born wife. Fleeing the sword of a usurper, Aguar and his household settle into exile in the Fens district of Britain. It is here that the young prince’s mother dies and the witch, Horrit, makes her grim prophecy.

In a matter of weeks, the strip depicts Valiant’s aging to his late teens, thus beginning to chronicle the lad’s many adventures.

“The most fun was establishing the legend of Prince Valiant in the early strips,” said Foster. “The hardest thing . . . has been to keep Val human. He has to be good and virtuous but I try to keep him human also. He has faults and frailties like everyone else.”

Leaving his father’s household, the youthful Prince Valiant attaches himself to the court of King Arthur. Roaming across Britain, Europe, and the Holy Land, often as squire to the noble Sir Gawain, Valiant bravely, though sometimes recklessly, fights for the oppressed and for his own renown against invading Huns, Goths, and Saxons. During one adventure he is presented by Prince Arn of Ord with the Singing Sword. “Invisible is he who uses it in good cause,” Arn tells Valiant, who quickly validates the claim.

In time he is rewarded and becomes a knight of Arthur’s legendary Round Table.

“The medieval period gave me scope, that’s why I picked it,” Foster once said. “I have a leeway of almost three centuries [as] with the decline of Roman civilization in the fifth century, written records ceased being kept.”

It was inevitable that Prince Valiant should meet his match, yet it was not in the guise of a warrior or sorcerer but a petite, golden-haired maiden – the young queen of an Aegean kingdom. Aleta, Queen of the Misty Isles, had been falsely accused of witchcraft and murder. Prince Valiant, having dragged her from her throne, vows to take her as his captive back to Camelot and to justice.

“Who had enslaved whom?”, Prince Valiant would ask himself years later, for it soon became apparent that the two were hopelessly in love. And so after an epic adventure involving Valiant rescuing Aleta from a fiendish tyrant, the two young lovers were married.

Foster once stated that he originally wanted to do a strip which would permit him to do fantasy. “I wanted to show magicians, ogres, dragons, and knights. However, after Prince Valiant began, the characters in the strip became too real to do much fantasy.”

Yet what the strip may lack in fantasy, it more than makes up for in adventure. In the decades following his marriage, Valiant embarks on some of the greatest quests of his career. His young bride by no means disappears into the background. On one occasion, Aleta is abducted by Ulfran, the famed Viking raider. In pursuit, Prince Valiant is led to the shores of the New World where he defeats Ulfran and is reunited with his wife. The winter is spent in America with Valiant’s Viking crew and friendly Indians. It is here that Arn, Valiant and Aleta’s first child, is born.

Prince Arn, named after Valiant’s adolescent friend, was the first of five children. Twin daughters, Karen and Valeta, came next; then Galan, heir to his mother’s throne; and finally Nathan. This youngest child almost never knew his family, having been abducted moments after his birth by agents of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Prince Arn eventually rescues his infant brother and restores him to his rightful family.

Although much of Prince Valiant’s appeal lies in its skillfully written and illustrated adventures, there is something else equally responsible for the strip’s classic status. For as well as the brute strength of his opponents, the scheming evil of despots and sorcerers, and the treachery of the strip’s arch-villain, Mordred, Prince Valiant, the man, also confronts a variety of situations that call him to draw upon his strength of character and a moral code that, more often than not, challenges him to put others first. He is not a pillaging Viking thug but a gallant, if at times proud, nobleman intent on establishing peace and justice. Not an easy task in the brutal epoch of the Dark Ages.

Even before Hal Foster’s death in 1982, Prince Valiant was being illustrated by John Cullen Murphy [left], the two artists having first began collaborating in 1970. The text of the stories, written by Murphy’s son, may be more detailed but the fundamental qualities remain, and thus the strip’s popularity.

Combining elements of adventure, romance, and Arthurian lore, Prince Valiant has enthralled readers for half a century – a feat with which Valiant himself would be quite content.

– Michael Bayly
Canberra Times
April 1987

Above: This panel from a 1989 strip is a rare depiction of Prince Valiant
and his entire family. In it, Valiant and Aleta's son Galan is being presented
by King Arthur with Uther Pendragon's sword for his "exemplary service in Cathay."

Pictured from left: Prince Valiant's eldest son Arn and his wife Maeve,

youngest son Nathan (foreground), Aleta, Galan, twin daughters Karen and Valeta,
King Arthur, and Prince Valiant.

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Of course, Prince Valiant continues to this day! – as, since 2004, the strip has been illustrated by Gary Gianni (right) and written by Mark Schultz.

For an excellent overview of the history of Prince Valiant, I highly recommend The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion by Brian M. Kane.

The Prince Valiant Page by Gary Gianni is also an informative and entertaining resource – one that looks at the artistic style and method of Gianni, the third and latest artist to illustrate Prince Valiant.

Finally, for the latest installment of Prince Valiant, click here.

Above: "A dragon! A dragon awaits Prince Valiant!"

Val and his youngest son Nathan are given a mysterious warning

by "three weird sisters" in a 2005 story by Gianni and Schultz.