The Sunday Funnies - The Medieval Castle!

For a short time Hal Foster told another story beneath the main Prince Valiant tale. It was set some centuries later during the First Crusade and it attempted to tell a somewhat more realistic story about two boys growing up in a castle and facing the challenges of their times. We follow two noble families who feud and war, then make peace, then make an exchange which proves to bring lasting peace to the region. We see mischief and bravery and suffering and happiness and sadness. We see a romanticized view of life in the Medieval times. It was titled The Medieval Castle and unfortunately it lacked the excitement of the primary strip. So why did he sacrifice a third of Prince Valiant's valuable comics page real estate for this handsome but somewhat humdrum tale. Well it has to the do with a little thing called World War II. 

The strip was a "footer", in other words it occupied the bottom tier of what had been Prince Valiant's page. The war was calling upon Americans to sacrifice many things and many raw materials became much sought after. One of these things was paper. A paper shortage was something William Randolph Hearst wanted to plan for and so despite his vow to Hal Foster that Prince Valiant would always have a page, he knew he might not be able to uphold that agreement. So he let Foster himself cook up a strip of his own to fill in the bottom, a strip which if newspapers decided trim the strip could eliminate and not affect the primary saga in any direct way save for its potential for some grand visual spectacles. 

Later The Medieval Castle was adapted into a moderated prose form and offered up as a kid's book of sorts. The story was about two young fellows who grow up in castles and must learn how to manage themselves and the people they might some day have responsibility for. The themes were not that different than the ones in Prince Valiant but done with greater realism and alas much less excitement. The Medieval Castle strips ran for a little more than a year and are available in volumes four and five of the current Fantagraphics series. 

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