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(More customer reviews)The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion (DPVC) is an essential volume for the Hal Foster or Prince Valiant fan, comic strip collector, pop culture historian, or anyone who just loves great stories and art.
Prince Valiant, published continuously since 1937 as a Sunday comic strip, has long been considered one of the definitive adventure-based newspaper comic strips (rivaled, possibly, only by Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon). It's founder (writer and artist) Hal Foster, ranks with Raymond, Herriman, McCay, Segar, and a handful of other creators, as the all-time giants of the art form. Foster hand-picked his successor, John Cullen Murphy, who continued the tradition after Foster's retirement (and is probably the most under-rated and under-appreciated comic strip artists in the history of the medium). Think about this...for nearly 60 years, Prince Valiant was drawn by these two artists (with only a handful of try-out pages by Gray Morrow and Wally Wood included in the run). Recently, Mark Schultz (writer) and Gary Gianni (artist) have assumed the mantle of continuing the Valiant tradition.
Brian Kane, "THE" expert on all things Hal Foster and Prince Valiant, has put together what is truly the definitive study of this seminal comic strip. Well written and lavishly illustrated, this is a beautiful tome which nicely complements Kane's prior book, "Hal Foster: Prince Of Illustrators".
If it's Prince Valiant related, it's included in this book: story arc identification and summaries; important events and developments in Val's life; commentary on story arcs, individual strips, and more, including identification of continuity issues; artist identification and listing for each page; Foster and Murphy art reprints, many in vivid color; new PV art by current comic artists; short bios and career retrospectives of Foster and Murphy (Brian, if you're looking for your next project, I'd love to see a full-treatment biography of John Cullen Murphy, who certainly deserves it); and much more.
The short take: If you have any interest at all in Prince Valiant, Hal Foster, John Cullen Murphy, or adventure comic strips, don't let this volume pass you by.
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The ultimate book for Prince Valiant fans and collectors.Out of print for over a decade, The Prince Valiant Companion has become a Holy Grail for collectors of the series. Now, in anticipation of the seventy-fifth anniversary of comics' longest-running adventure strip, and to celebrate their own just-launched reprinting of the strip's classic earliest years, Fantagraphics is proud to present an expanded version of this hard-to-find collector's item. Compiled by award-winning Foster biographer Brian M. Kane, The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion beautifully and definitively showcases the careers of artists Hal Foster, John Cullen Murphy, and Gary Gianni. In addition to updating the original version's story synopsis section with over thirty years of material, The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion also contains rare and new articles. Included in this volume is a never before reprinted newspaper feature from 1949, Foster's final interview conducted by Arn Saba, an extensive interview with John Cullen Murphy, and a new interview with the current Prince Valiant creative team of Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz. The Companion also contains a new, in-depth article by Kane on Foster's artistic influences, as well as a foreword by comics historian Brian Walker, and an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ray Bradbury. A special feature of The Companion is a sixteen-page color section of carefully selected strips from the entire run of the comic. Showcasing this section are eight pages by Foster, scanned and digitally restored from original color engraver's proofs that had been carefully stored and preserved for over forty years. For the first time ever, collectors will be able to see Prince Valiant as Foster intended it to be seen, with all of his fine inked line work intact. Rounding out this section are four John Cullen Murphy pages from the Murphy family's collection of proofs, and four Gary Gianni pages that were selected by the artist and digitally recolored under his supervision. Proceeds from the sale of The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion will go to The Friends of Hal Foster Society to aid in the creation of the Prince Valiant statue in Foster's birthplace of Halifax, Nova Scotia. 16color and 144 black-and-white illustrations
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