For many years now I have been dutifully collecting up the visually impressive reprints of the great Hal Foster's Prince Valiant from Fantagraphics. The tomes are handsome, filled with the Foster's brilliant images. As the books have continued to come out, we have come through the years to the point when I as a young reader was first taking note of series in my local Sunday color section (one of the best and last ones in the country for years and years). What I couldn't realize in the years of 1969 and 1970 was that Hal Foster was looking to retire, to ease his way out of the artistic chair and in the grand tradition of vintage comic strips, turn over the reins to a successor.
In the pages of this seventeenth volume we get those try-out pages from artists Wally Wood, Gray Morrow, and the man who ultimately took over the strip John Cullen Murphy. Above you can see one of Wood's contributions to the run. It's an amazing little trip back into time to when I was a boy to see these yarns and this art by talents I know and respect from the pages of the comic books. Now as a man on the edge of retirement myself, I guess I feel some measure of the blend of anticipation and regret which goes with anyone leaving what they've done for many many years, what has become their life. I see these pages from another perspective.
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