Prince Valiant, Vol. 5: 1945-1946 Hardcover – June 19, 2012

With Volume 5 Foster has married Val to Queen Aleta and the series is the better for it. Scenes of fighting, friction, and adversity are now interspersed with scenes of sacrifice, tenderness, and humorous comments on couples (which are as funny today as they were in the 1940’s). But don’t think that Valiant has gone soft, this volume sees him engage in an epic siege of Samarmand; a bruising trial by combat against a giant of a man; and my personal favorite story - Val’s bringing a heretofore hostile band of bandits into the employ of King Arthur as scouts.I thoroughly enjoyed this volume and highly recommend it to aficionados of visual fiction.

About 40 years ago, my father get two Nostalgia Press books of Prince Valiant. I loved the strip, but the binding was terrible, and they only had about 3-4 years worth of strips. I've been looking for extend the collection every since, but reprints were all terrible and often B&W and abridged. When Fantagraphics reprinted the entire run about a decade ago, I got some, but they were hard to find and were paperback.These new books are literally something I've been looking for for my entire life.These new books have vinyl covers, which are a little cheap, but much more durable than the paperbacks. More importantly, the comics are beautiful. The printing is a little larger than the old Nostalgia books, and the coloring is better. This was obviously a labor of love. Where I have over-laps, I've compared the coloring and printing. The Nostalgia books better reflect the words in the story and often color in scenes that were all blocked in one color in the older book.I bought the first one for $80 and was immediately ready to shell out that much for each. To find them for only $14 was an added bonus.If you already love Prince Valiant, buy them without hesitation.If you've read it in the newspaper but weren't impressed, buy it and you'll understand why it is considered such a classic -- the old Hal Foster stips were soooooo much better than the ones today.

The fifth volume of Hal Foster's saga of the civilized world teetering on the edge of the Dark Ages, with his hero Valiant, delivers a heartfelt payoff as Aleta takes the stage in a role that presents her instantly likeable and admirable. Although today's newspaper strips have several series that are well done ("B.C." comes to mind) the quality of the artwork and story here in this volume contrasts sharply with the poor and shrunken strips of today. These panels covering Sundays 1945-6 are vividly printed with the craftsmanship of Foster evident on every page.The attention to detail, use of shadows and wide range of colors and shading is staggering. The embellishment on many panels is as good as you'll ever see...the crisp lines remind me of Neal Adams comic covers from late 1960s or early 1970s. Barry Windsor Smith accomplished similar levels of panel detail in a few Conan comics of the early 1970s. This volume is a visual feast with equally good, and at times moving, storytelling. The only drawback is "the Midiaeval Castle" series running along the bottom line of panels for about twelve months. This series is not bad, but less space for the main storyline.I strongly recommend you read the fourth volume prior to this one, because there will be a much better payoff for you if you know the background on how Valiant arrived at the desert edge. Even better to start in volume one. Enjoy!

It gets harder and harder to review each succeeding Prince Valiant volume. The same can be said for all of them. The artwork is breathtaking, the storytelling first rate, the production values superb.Also fascinating is how Foster introduces characters that are intended for just one story arc or even for just one or two pages. Many writers wouldn't bother developing much in the way of characterization or motivation but Foster is different. He doesn't just have an anonymous desert warrior molest Aleta. No, he has "M'Belo, harem-bred and womaen-raised has none of the chivalry of the warriors. He lays sly hands on Aleta, as she goes by in the moonlight."This volume also points out one or two things about Foster's writing that don't really work well for me. One is his frequent depiction of romantic love as a freight train which overwhelms the characters. Foster is a big fan of the "love at first sight" school of romance but I prefer the "start small and build up over a period of time" approach. No doubt Foster's approach is the best for a fast moving adventure strip.Foster's humor can also seem a little on the juvenile side as the "Sir Puny" arc in this volume demonstrates.But I nitpick. I've read the pages in these volumes a dozen times and I never tire of them. Very highly recommended. A newspaper strip has never been done any better than this.

Finally the fifth volume of Fantagraphics PRINCE VALIANT reprint is out, and it's a treasure.Covering the years 1945-1946, it shows the "ordeal" Val tries to subject Aleta to in theEast. Naturally, she thrives and gently comes to dominate her impetuous loverat every turn. I particularly love the rough and tumble encounter with the swaggering villain Donardo, who(after seizing Aleta) drops Val off a cliff, then has to keep sending warriors - one, two, then four at a time - back to rid himself of this irritating young pursuer.Foster continues to show wonderful maturation, esp. when drawing the winsome, sweetly sensuous Aleta.It's evident he's fallen in love with her also. And how easily she slips in and out ofher queenly persona ("Sir Puny").This is truly a "must have" in the strip's run. We see Valiant maturing into young adulthood while developinga relationship with a wonderfully sensible yet contrary young woman. They wed in a wood; next time they will go to wooded America for an extended period.At times, the pages' coloring looks a tad old "newsprint dark" to me; but the definition of the strip's fine lineglory more than makes up for it. This is a bargain strip collectors cannot be without.

I had German Prince Valiant books when I was little and now I am slowly buying all the illustrated yearly volumes

One of the best volumes in the best published version of Hal Foster's Prince Valliant. Durable, looks great, nice extra material. The hardcover format is great (a key deciding factor for me when deciding to buy comics). Be aware however that the format is a bit high, so some bookshelves may have to be re-arranged for the books to fit in :-) Definitely going to collect more volumes in this great series. Now that all the initial books 1-5 are released you can get a reasonable complete introduction to Prince Valliant, so now it the right time to start collecting.

As a child in the 1960s I read many of the adventure strips in the Sunday papers. Most were good but Prince Valiant was, in my opinion far and away the best. The artwork is absolutely fabulous, the stories are well plotted, the characters are believable and well rounded. This presentation is worthy of such an excellent comic, the paper is fine and the colours sharp, probably much better than when originally presented in the Sunday papers. I just can't say enough good things about Prince Valiant, each volume seems to be better than the last. Unfortunately my copy arrived damaged and since the box and packaging were fine it seems that Amazon shipped a book whose spine was substantially dented; this was very disappointing especially since when I bought volumes two, three and four all at the same time, they too were dented. I will certainly buy volume 6 when it comes out but it will be from another vendor.

Continuamos, ya por el volumen 5, con la que en mi opinión es la mejor edición de Príncipe Valiente de Harold R. Foster en color que se edita actualmente en el mundo. La edición en blanco y negro restaurada por Manuel Caldas es muy superior en la definición de la línea. Pero esta de Fantagraphics merece la pena. Lo ideal hubiera sido este color con la,restauración de Caldas, pero aún así es sobresaliente. Muy pocos "fallos". En cuanto a la presentación. Tiene una encuadernación de primera, excelente papel y un tamaño grande (la mancha de dibujo en Caldas es superior) que es lo que le viene bien al dibujo detallista de Foster.

Una bella ristampa di uno dei classici del fumetto.Splendidamente stampato, bella la carta e la rilegatura, un'ottima edizione per un grande personaggio ed un artista nell'olimpo degli autori.