Prince Valiant, Vol. 47: Queen of the Amazons

Prince Valiant (Paperback) #47

by Harold Foster

The greatest adventure epic since Beowulf continues in this perennial full-color series.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. In Vol. 47 (1977-1978), while traveling through the Middle East, Queen Aleta is ambushed, but saved at the last minute by a mysterious woman who brings her to a hidden valley—home of Petropolis, the City of the Amazons. In his search for Aleta, Valiant discovers the same secret passage, but so do his followers, perhaps endangering the peaceful isolation of the Amazon people... At this point in Prince Valiant's run, Hal Foster's assistant, John Cullen Murphy, who had been quietly assisting Foster for several years, was well into his first decade of drawing the strip over Foster's writing and roughs. Continuing Foster's tradition of meticulous artwork, Murphy was developing his own fan following. 48 pages full-color.

Author Biography: Hal Foster created Prince Valiant in 1937. He passed away in 1982. John Cullen Murphy, a six-time recipient of the National Cartoonists Society's "Best Story Strip," continues to draw Prince Valiant, while his son, Cullen Murphy, writes the strip in between serving as the Managing Editor for The Atlantic. He lives in Connecticut with his wife Joan.

Genres: Comics, Fantasy, Graphic Novels

48 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

Reviews

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars or 4? Some days Foster's writing seems to have lost a step and other days is it as sharp as ever. John Cullen Murphy takes some shortcuts in the first half of this book that he does not take in the second. 3 stars for the first half, then and 4 for the rest. I round down because slightly better collections in this series get 4 stars.

[Hisham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the Prince Valiant strip. I admire the quality of the art, but the amount of text for each picture seems overdone. It doesn't help that it tells long term stories in a weekly strip where it is easy to lose track of the narrative.

For this volume, we get three main storylines. The first has Prince Arn journey to a minstrel convention. The second has Prince Val journey with a Teutonic knight to the Levant on a quest for revenge. The third story features the "Queen of the Amazons" as Queen Aleta helps defend a matriarchy from an invasion out of Persia.

All of the stories are well told, but at the same time are not particularly memorable.

[Little Timmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The incredible artwork of Hal Foster makes these a true treasure to read. Being able to go through a year's worth of the Sunday strips is fantastic. Awesome story and incredible art make these books get my highest recommendation.