Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, with its thrilling continuities of a fictitious knight in the court of King Arthur, set a new standard for the serial drama when it debuted in 1937. Foster's noble character of royal descent was even beloved by genuine royalty: The Duke of Windsor, who reigned as King Edward III until his abdication in 1936, once described the strip as "the greatest contribution to English literature in the past 100 years."
There had been continuity strips, and even strong elements of adventure, before Hal Foster started drawing comic strips, but approximately 35 years after the birth of the artform, it was Foster who introduced illustrative techniques—and the sensibilities and standards of such illustrative greats as Howard Pyle—to the comics page. Realistic depictions and sophisticated compositions had been curiously absent before him. He is still considered, 20 years after his death, to be comics' supreme classicist, and the strip continues to live on in over 100 newspapers across America.
Fantagraphics' deluxe, full-color editions of Prince Valiant run chronologically, and Volume 46 features the years 1976 and 1977, reprinting some of the last strips written and roughed-out by Foster (who passed away in 1982). The strips are finished by Foster's prodigious assistant, John Cullen Murphy, who had been quietly assisting Foster for several years and actively took over the bulk of the drawing chores in 1971, immediately developing a fan following himself—initial plans to end the series around 1971 were changed due to overwhelming fan demand, and there are no plans to end the series now. Each volume in the series presents close to a year's worth of strips per volume in an oversized format showcasing the strip's spectacular color pages.
