Prince Valiant: Far From Camelot Paperback – October 21, 2008

The product arrived on time and it was in perfect condition. No complaints!Master graphic artist Gary Gianni and his friends don't disappoint in continuing Hal Foster's brilliant creation, with both great style and substance. The storylines are strong, original and compelling.Foster would be pleased with his outstanding successors. This is a fantasy/scifi comic strip,so those those readers who read it as actual history must be corrected. Prince Valiant is pure fiction. But what great fiction it is!If you want to read true, factual history, read and study the Encyclopedia Americana.

Gianni and Schultz pick up the reins from the Murphy's to continue Hal Foster's creation. Gianni's artwork is reproduced very nicely in this book, which covers three and a half years. The stories are well told and a fine addition to what has gone before.

This reprinting of the first four years of Prince Valiant under the new helm of Gianni and Schultz is an eye-opening experience. Unlike many of you, I do get the Val Sunday page in my local paper, and I've been enjoying Gianni's art despite the criminally small quarter page presentation. What I failed to recognize reading the strip in weekly installments was the superb craftsmanship of Mark Schultz's script.Under the ridiculous strictures of a strip that tries to advance the storyline in a quarter page (even while sacrificing some of that space for a weekly synopsis) one doesn't expect all that much from a writer, and I confess that on Sunday mornings I failed to recognize the artfulness of the plot that Schultz was weaving. The reprint book gives me the chance to read the entire story at one sitting, though, and under these conditions it's plain that Schultz is a master at working under these severe restrictions.The story is a long one, a four year adventure in which Val and son Nathan set out from Camelot to find some respite from the boredom of court life. What starts as a simple desire to slay a dragon (!) turns into an epic adventure that eventually takes the pair as far afield as Africa. Against all odds, Schultz manages to keep this epic under control even when following up to three separate plotlines when the adventurers occasionally become separated.Schultz not only writes a corking good adventure, a real page turner that begs to be read in one marathon bout, but his work is meticulous. His story is peppered with foreshadowing devices that sometimes don't play out for months in newspaper time. Adventure comic strips have always worked under the convention that characters are introduced and last only until they've fulfilled their role in the plot -- plot threads likewise can conveniently disappear without a trace. Schultz, though, surprised me over and over by having long-forgotten characters and hanging plot threads reappear and weave themselves back into the story, a plotting device that we might expect in a novel but is a marvelous and unexpected surprise in a comic strip.After the sumptuous production of The Prince Valiant Page I was all set to hate this reprinting. The large format reproduction in that book is not used here. But given that Gianni is creating artwork that can withstand tiny reproduction, the mini-tabloid format in this Andrews McMeel production is perfectly suitable to the project. Of course I found myself wishing that Gianni had the elbow-room to produce a more detailed vision of Prince Valiant, but for that we must fault the syndicate and the newspapers that insist on offering the strip in microscopic formats, not the book publisher.

No one lives forever so the master and creator of Prince Valiant Hal Foster needed someone to continue PV's adventures and Gary Gianni was a true heir not only in the art work but also in the story telling. The art work is still superior than most but not quite as good as Foster's some of this may be due to declining production work in newspapers over the years. It no ways compares with the seemingly stick drawings of Nate Cosby's PV. The stories are more compact than Foster's were but again this was mainly due to the publisher's dictates. This PV does still have it all - sword fights, witches, sea monsters and others, ancient tales and treasures, lost cities and huge battles. Seeing this superb volume makes one wonder why don't we have more reprints of the Gianni era?

I don t like too much this comic book. First of all is paper back. I don t like this but this is not the biggest problem. This is just not the Prince Valiant i like. The first &6 Fantagraphics books of Prince Valiant are on the top of the list of my favourites comic books. Further Foester work is rapidly loosing his storytelling quality. This book is solid but in no way it can reach the quality of first 6 books. But i just one to know what is new in modern Prince Valiant.

What's with the colorThe new authors of Prince Valiant have done a great job. Schultz's text comes off much better than in the weekly papers and clearly demonstrates the planning and the thought that goes into it. Gianni's drawings are terrific. Much seems to be lost though in the coloring. Some of his preliminary pencil sketches and inked drawings are in THE PRINCE VALIANT PAGE by Gary Gianni. When compared to this color reproduction one wonders if the artist would not be better served if they eliminated the color. I have followed this series since the early 50s and I still this this is a great,great continuation of the series and I look forward to more. Congratulations to the authors.

a big fan of fantagraphics entire run of Foster's Prince Valiant and have been having angst re: when they finish Foster and Murphy, would they leave me high and dry with about 20 some years not collected. So this addition is very welcome. Would have like to have seen the publication in a bigger format. But I will take it on its own merits.

I've grown up with the "prince" since 1940 when I delivered him in the Sunday newspapers for years. This series, using the original plates, is very vivid with true colors [ vs. muted in newspapers ] and for a great display of the storyline and drawings which are unrivaled. I intend to pass on the my children and grandchildren of what true art, storyline, and family values should be.