The eleventh volume of Fantagraphics award-winning Prince Valiant series concludes our heroes’ adventures in Cornwall, and marks the first appearance of Arvak the Red Stallion. At the Council of Kings, Prince Valiant stands alone in the decision to avoid a ruinous war. Val returns to Aleta, and the two are summoned to Camelot, where Queen Guinevere becomes jealous of Aleta’s popularity. Meanwhile, Val leads a bloody campaign to secure the Eastern marches and learns the tragedies of war. As the book ends, Prince Valiant begins searching for Gawain. There may just be another adventure afoot. Bonus features include a gallery of Foster’s rare and never-before-reprinted advertising art from the 1920s. Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant is the most illustrious heroic saga ever written and drawn for the Sunday newspapers. In full, glorious, restored color, this is the finest reproduction of this enthralling, romantic adventure serial ever published.

Fully half of this latest volume of Hal Foster’s epic masterpiece — again scanned from superb syndicate proofs — is devoted to the remaining chapters of “The Winning of Aleta,” a 20-month (!) epic in which Valiant obsessively pursues his bride to be. Not surprisingly this is followed by a sequence called “Matrimony,” which ends with a newly wed queen adjusting to the luxurious, exciting court life at Camelot.But Val’s marriage does not signal an end to his adventures, quite the contrary. In “War in the Forest” Val is sent out to spy on encroaching Saxons — unknowingly aided by Aleta, who, disguised as a small knight (and dubbed “Sir Puny”) helps prevent disaster. But the 1946 strips end with Val and Aleta unable to return to Camelot and the displaced couple journeying to Thule Half the strips in this volume also include the delightful “The Medieval Castle,” Foster’s chronicle of two young boys growing up during the time of the First Crusade — but by the end of the 1945 strips this series has ended and the Valiant portion resume its full-page glory.