TRIUMPHANT RETURN

On February 13, 1937, readers opened their newspapers to find the story of a young prince fleeing desperately from his native Thule and the evil usurper Sligon. He finds refuge in King Arthur's Britain, and the saga of Prince Valiant begins. The strip was the creation of Hal Foster, an illustrator in the grand tradition of Arthur Rackham and Howard Pyle. Astonishing as it seems today, each episode took up an entire glorious broadsheet page—half a generation later, in the 1950s, when I was a kid, it seemed like Imax. My father took over the illustration in 1971, and, with Hal's encouragement, I started writing scripts several years later. My father and I collaborated for 25 years—charting some new directions, but with deep admiration for the original. Fantagraphics Books is now reissuing the first two years of "Prince Valiant" in their rich Sunday finest—reproduced from color copies in special collections. A witch named Horrit once prophesied that Val would never know contentment, but fans of the strip will find it here.

CULLEN MURPHY