Prince Valiant, Vol. 50: Vikings on the Isle of Man

All good things must come to an end, and with this 50th volume in the Prince Valiant series the most ambitious comic strip reprint project ever attempted comes to a close. We celebrate with an extra-long final installment, which covers the last story arc that Valiant creator Hal Foster wrote and laid out for artist John Cullen Murphy before retiring from the series.

In this installment, Arn and two companions are sent on a mission to find out if Vikings are planning to invade the Isle of Man. Danger abounds, and yet all's well that ends well and the end of the album (and of our series) finds Valiant's entire family reunited one last time in the glory that is Camelot!

With its thrilling continuities of a fictitious knight in the era of King Arthur's Court, Prince Valiant set a new standard for the serial drama when it debuted in 1937. 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, 21 years after his death and 66 years since Prince Valiant debuted, to be comics' supreme classicist, and the strip continues to live on in over 100 newspapers across America.