Number 1703: Prince Valiant and the Holy Grail

There were seven issues of Prince Valiant in Dell’s Four Color series, this being #849 (1957), the second-to-last issue.

A religious theme runs through “Quest For the Grail.” The quest being to the Holy Land, looking for the Holy Grail. The chalice is held hostage by some “pagans” (a euphemism for Muslims). There is a sequence of Prince Valiant being crucified on a battlement. There is no cross, but the position Val is put into is the same. Usually comics, and especially Dell Comics, avoided religion, but here religion is the linchpin of the plot, right down to Val filling in symbolically for Jesus. In Val’s case, he gets to climb down.

Prince Valiant is a Viking, as is his pal Boltar, who is part of the search party. Boltar apparently still believes in the Viking gods and is not a Christian. It begs the question: with all of the many religious philosophies alive today, does anyone still pray to Odin or any Norse gods? Just wondering.

The Dell issues of Prince Valiant were drawn by Bob (“Bob Fuje”) Fujitani. The script for “Quest For the Grail” is credited by Grand Comics Database to Paul S. Newman. I do not know if there is anything on record of the feelings of Prince Valiant creator, Hal Foster, on the comic book handling of his character.

Two years ago I showed another Dell Prince Valiant. Just click on the thumbnail:

Number 1337: Prince Valiant and the Island of Thunder!

As a Sunday comics Prince Valiant fan, even as a youngster in the '50s, I mostly scorned the Dell Comics version of Hal Foster’s weekly masterpiece. They were not reprints of Foster’s pages, but original stories. Looking at them now I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge. I think artist Bob Fujitani captured Foster’s distinctive style.

This issue, the Prince Valiant one-shot, Four Color #900 (1958), was the last of the original adventures of Prince Valiant from Dell. They had begun in ’54 with an adaptation of the Robert Wagner/Janet Leigh movie version. Overstreet credits Fujitani with all of the artwork on the one-shots, but the Grand Comics Database has no information on a writer or cover artist for this issue.