Magnificent!
That's all I can say. I've taken a nice long leisurely stroll through the original Prince Valiant pages by Hal Foster from 1937 and 1938, guided by Brian Kane's Prince Valiant Companion, and I've enjoyed it immensely. Kane's guide allowed me to read the series not as a endless sequence of pages but as discreet stories within the larger epic. Some are long, some are shorter, but all have an internal integrity that makes the reading experience rich indeed.
This fist volume from Fantagraphics makes use of orignal materials stored at Syracuse University to give us the finest reproduction yet for these classic comic strip adventures. The book's size allows the reproductions to really communicate a sense of the original. I really an jealous of those who were there at the beginning to read these as they unfolded week after week. It's no wonder this strip has endured for decades.
When I came to Prince Valiant he was married and his son Prince Arn was the adventurous one. Valiant was not then a man I could connect with really in the same way. But seeing the young Val going through his trials and tribulations to win respect and love and honor, I gain a greater understanding of what the whole concept of the series was and is.
These are nicely priced and exquisitely produced volumes and I anxiously await the next one this spring.
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