Hal Foster

Our series of special slipcased gift sets of the most visually opulent comic strip in the medium''s history, based on the King Arthur mythos, continues with Vols. 19-21 (1973-1978). In Vol. 19, Prince Valiant is sent to defend the borders against invading barbarians, but it is young Arn who takes center stage as he travels to his homeland and loses his heart to Lydia, daughter of Haakon. In Vol. 20, Aleta defeats a wizard, then Aleta''s younger sister Helene is gambled away by her husband to a Corsair mercenary, drawing Val and his Singing Sword into a deadly duel. In Vol. 21, it''s election time for the King of Minstrels. Arn and Court Jester Sir Dinadan travel to France to set things right, while Val accompanies the headstrong Gunther of Germany on his quest to recover stolen holy relics and claim a wife in Jerusalem. The mercenary army of a Persian warlord sweeps across the Middle East, forcing Queen Aleta to seek refuge in a hidden utopian city ruled by women. Val competes in tournaments in Marseille and Camelot and reunites with Sir Lancelot, but a tragic death impacts a member of Val''s family. Also in this set: Hal Foster''s complete comic-strip adaptation of Franz Werfel''s ''The Song of Bernadette'' and beautiful color illustrations for the 1930-31 Lucky Bag Naval yearbooks. And: The historical reality behind Prince Valiant''s world!

Premonitions of the future inform and confound Prince Valiant and his son Nathan. An earthquake rocks the Misty Isles. Val encounters danger among the Mayans in Guatemala. A druid civil war breaks out in Hibernia. Val arrives in Utopia and discovers a dark secret. Universally acclaimed as the most stunningly gorgeous adventure comic strip of all time, Prince Valiant ran for 35 years under the virtuoso pen of its creator, Hal Foster. Starring a daring and gallant young hero, the series features epic sword fights, elaborate scenes of pomp and pageantry, and breathless plotting that always leaves the reader wanting more. Fantagraphics'' deluxe editions, each collecting two years'' worth of Sunday strips, boast superbly restored artwork that captures every delicate line and chromatic nuance of Foster''s art.

Edited by an internationally recognized expert on Pop art and culture, this book surveys Pop across all artforms and gives equal coverage to its American, British and European manifestations. Survey: Renowned scholar and critic Hal Foster contributes the survey essay which focuses on the Pop image as it developed over the period: Reyner Banham, The Independent Group and Pop Design, Richard Hamilton and the Tabular Image, Roy Lichtenstein and the Screened Image, Andy Warhol and the Seamy Image, Gerhard Richter and the Photogenic Image, Ed Ruscha and the Cineramic Image, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and the Postmodern Absorption of Pop. Works (each image accompanied by an extended caption): Section 1: Revolt into Style (1956-60) surveys the birth of Pop culture and its images, including the Beat generation photographs of Robert Frank and William Klein, Kenneth Anger's early films, futuristic architecture by Disneyland's 'imagineers', artworks by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, the French Nouveaux realistes, Richard Hamilton and the 'British Pop' of the Independent Group. Section 2: Consumer Culture (1960-63) follows American Pop's explosion, from Roy Lichtenstein's cartoon-based paintings to Andy Warhol's Factory, the hamburger, cake and ice cream sculptures of Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Indiana's Eat/Die. Section 3: Colonization of the Mind (1963-66) chronicles the era of 'high' Pop when it became a dominant international style in art, design, architecture and cinema. Section 4: Spectacular Time (1966-67) looks at the more self-reflexive work in art, film and architecture that coincided with the publication of Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Message and Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. Section 5: Helter Skelter (1968) traces Pop's meltdown in the late 1960s: the emergence of the vernacular in architecture, with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas, the spiralling mayhem of films such as Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg's Performance, starring Mick Jagger, and the final destructive crescendo of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, as an exploding house and its contents are synched to a soundtrack by Pink Floyd. Documents. A compendium of original artists' statements and interviews, often from hard-to-find, out of print sources, key writings by critics such as Reyner Banham, Donald Judd and Jonas Mekas, extracts from key contextual writings, from Jack Kerouac to articles on Pop culture.