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Prince Valiant (Fantagraphics)

From CartoonWiki

Template:Short description Template:Infobox comic book title

Prince Valiant is a series of hardcover books, published by Fantagraphics Books, that collects the Prince Valiant comic strip, written and drawn by Hal Foster. The release of the series began in August 2009.

Background

Template:Missing information Template:Main Prince Valiant, written and drawn by Hal Foster, was a Sunday newspaper comic strip published weekly in full color from February 13, 1937, to the early 1970s when the strip saw a change of writer and artist. The strip itself has continued to the present day and has since its start belonged to the comic syndicate King Features.[1]

Format

The series are collected in hardcover volumes with matte paper stock and sewn binding. A single volume includes two years of Sunday strip pages as well as some supplementary content, such as interviews and introductions. In total this amounts to about 120 pages per book.

Reproduction

All comic strip content in this series is reproduced from Foster's original engraver's proofs, in full original; and the original coloring has been restored in a reproduction for the first time. Previous collections of Prince Valiant have never had such good material as a base for reproduction.[2][3][4] These proofs were ones preserved by Foster himself and, after his passing, donated to Syracuse University, which provided Fantagraphics with scans of these proofs for this collection. Recent advancements in digital color technology now permit a better and more faithful reproduction compared to previous Prince Valiant collections, e.g. the Nostalgia Press' collection from the 1960s and Fantagraphics Books previous trade paperback collection published between 1984 and 2004. These earlier collections did recolor the comic strip but not accordingly to the appearance it had in newspapers when first published. The line work of these older collections also appear subpar to that in this latest Fantagraphics' Prince Valiant collection.[5]

Sizing

While the volumes of this book collection measure Template:Convert, the original newspaper publication of the comic strip were usually printed on a full broadsheet page, where it appeared measuring Template:Convert. The largest reproduction of Prince Valiant, yet, is in the Artist's Edition book: Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, , also published by Fantagraphics Books, measuring Template:Convert.[6] Hal Foster originally drew a whole Prince Valiant Sunday page on paper stock measuring Template:Convert, which makes this collection series' area size equal to about 16 percent of the original art size.[7]

Extras

The supplementary material features interviews with comic historians and with Hal Foster himself, original artwork,[8] essays,[9] biographical sketches byTemplate:Clarify Hal Foster, as well as galleries of dropped panels (those deemed too risqué or violent). In the fourth volume, spanning the years 1943 to 1944, the comic strip tale The Medieval Castle, a separate strip Foster drew, is included. This strip was a tale he drew when he split up the page he was allowed for the Prince Valiant strip during the Second World War, due to a paper shortage and newspaper space being at a premium, splitting his full one-page spread between three-quarters of a page for Prince Valiant and one-quarter for The Medieval Castle, in order to make it easy for editors to remove the non-Prince Valiant strip to free-up space for something of greater importance in wartime. The plot of The Medieval Castle revolves around the childhood and life of two young princes in a medieval castle.[10]

Recognition

Volumes and box sets

The volumes are sold separately as well as in box sets. The suggested retail price of a volume was $29.99, at the beginning of the publication; but the price was later raised to $34.99 per volume. The suggested retail price for a box set is $99.99.[14][10][15]

Volumes
Volume Release date Title Author ISBN
1 2009-08-18 Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937–1938 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
2 2010-07-20 Prince Valiant Vol. 2: 1939–1940 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
3 2011-03-21 Prince Valiant Vol. 3: 1941–1942 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
4 2011-10-03 Prince Valiant Vol. 4: 1943–1944 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
5 2012-07-02 Prince Valiant Vol. 5: 1945–1946 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
6 2013-02-13 Prince Valiant Vol. 6: 1947–1948 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
7 2013-09-07 Prince Valiant Vol. 7: 1949–1950 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
8 2014-02-15 Prince Valiant Vol. 8: 1951–1952 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
9 2014-07-19 Prince Valiant Vol. 9: 1953–1954 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
10 2014-12-09 Prince Valiant Vol. 10: 1955–1956 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
11 2015-07-04 Prince Valiant Vol. 11: 1957–1958 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
12 2015-11-23 Prince Valiant Vol. 12: 1959–1960 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
13 2016-06-21 Prince Valiant Vol. 13: 1961–1962 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
14 2016-11-15 Prince Valiant Vol. 14: 1963–1964 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
15 2017-07-11 Prince Valiant Vol. 15: 1965–1966 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
16 2018-01-09 Prince Valiant Vol. 16: 1967–1968 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
17 2018-06-12 Prince Valiant Vol. 17: 1969–1970 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
18 2018-11-20 Prince Valiant Vol. 18: 1971–1972 Hal Foster Template:ISBNT
19 2019-06-27 Prince Valiant Vol. 19: 1973–1974 John Cullen Murphy Template:ISBNT
20 2019-11-19 Prince Valiant Vol. 20: 1975–1976 John Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
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21 2020-05-05 Prince Valiant Vol. 21: 1977–1978 John Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
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22 2020-10-06 Prince Valiant Vol. 22: 1979–1980 John Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
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23 2021-05-18 Prince Valiant Vol. 23: 1981–1982 John Cullen Murphy
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Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
Template:ISBNT
24 2021-12-07 Prince Valiant Vol. 24: 1983–1984 John Cullen Murphy
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Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
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25 2022-06-28 Prince Valiant Vol. 25: 1985-1986 John Cullen Murphy
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Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
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26 2023-01-31 Prince Valiant Vol. 26: 1987-1988 John Cullen Murphy
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Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
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27 2023-12-05 Prince Valiant Vol. 27: 1989-1990 John Cullen Murphy
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Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
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28 2024-04-02 Prince Valiant Vol. 28: 1991-1992 John Cullen Murphy
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Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
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29 2024-12-10 Prince Valiant Vol. 29: 1993-1994 John Cullen Murphy
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Cullen Murphy
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Hal Foster
979-8875000027

Box sets

Box sets
Volume Release date Title Period ISBN
1 2017-12-19 Prince Valiant Vol. 1-3 Gift Box 1937–1942 Template:ISBNT
2 2018-12-18 Prince Valiant Vol. 4-6 Gift Box 1943–1948 Template:ISBNT
3 2020-12-01 Prince Valiant Vol. 7-9 Gift Box 1949–1954 Template:ISBNT
4 2021-12-07 Prince Valiant Vol. 10-12 Gift Box 1955–1960 Template:ISBNT
5 2022-12-06 Prince Valiant Vol. 13-15 Gift Box 1961–1966 Template:ISBNT
6 2023-12-05 Prince Valiant Vol. 16-18 Gift Box 1967–1972 Template:ISBNT

References

Template:Reflist

External links

Template:Prince Valiant Template:Fantagraphics archive collections Template:King Features Syndicate Comics Template:Portal bar