What’s Going On In Prince Valiant? Did Prince Valiant get back home yet? September – December 2018.

If you’re interested in the plot of Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant you’re reading a correct web site. If it’s later than about March 2019 I probably have written a more up-to-date plot recap. That should be available at this link. So are recaps of the last two years of the comic strip’s action.

Also, on my other blog I read the comics for their mathematics bits. You might like that too. I’ve also just finished 26 posts explaining mathematical terms that were mostly fun to write. Could be fun to read.

Prince Valiant.

30 September – 23 December 2018.

My last recap of Prince Valiant came at the end of Senator Krios’s story. He was caught trying to sell out the Misty Isles to (Byzantine) Rome, and fled his homeland. The last panel of the strip from the 30th of September promised “The Return”, and I guessed that might be Valiant getting back to his own strip.

So it was: the 7th of October a ship carrying Valiant and his party came to the harbor of the Misty Isles. Valiant leapt from the boat to swim ashore, apparently a tradition. And he met up with Aleta who’s there to swim naked with him. So that’s a nice bit of getting-together.

And then began several weeks of what felt like a weird epilogue. Val, Karen, Bukota, and Vanni regale a fest with tales of what all they were doing out in the far east. They were finding Vanni, I gather. They started off before my first What’s Going On In post about the strip. But apparently not much before my first post. He recaps the tyrant Azar Rasa. And those refugees saved from various brigands. A couple of the many overturned rafts they survived. And then they get back to Krios.

Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 18th of November, 2018. So now let me debunk the idea that I’m of any use telling you what’s going on in these stories: until that last panel I had not picked up on Karen and Valeta being twins. I just figured, oh, Krios saw a family resemblance and reacted to that. I’m just not that good with faces. I think half of what I like in comic strips is that since everybody has one outfit I can use that to tell who’s who.

Valiant doesn’t know it’s Krios; he missed the whole treachery story. All he knows is they were at Carpathos, a few days’ sail from the Misty Isles. There in a tavern they encountered someone who looked like the Senator. Who saw them, left the gaming tables, and charged Karen. She and Valiant fought back and. At least according to Valiant he had “little choice” but to kill Krios.

I can’t fault it as a postscript. I mean, it seems like a reasonable and absurd sad finale to Krios’s life. But it feels also a bit much. After all, his scheme already failed so dramatically as to end his career, kill one of his sons, estrange him from the other, and send him into exile. Being killed in a tavern brawl seems like piling on. But it will happen. That, the 18th of November, has got to be the end of Krios’s story, for real this time.

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Mark Schultz and Thomas Yeates’s Prince Valiant for the 2nd of December, 2018. Goodness knows I don’t have the time to go archive-binging and exploring the distant past of the story strips like this, but I am holding it as an idea in case I ever do some kind of Patreon-like project. But I do regret that fact sometimes, especially when I see stuff like this battle against an army of gargoyles or bat-men.

The 25th of November started what looks like the new story. It begins with news Queen Makeda, of the House of Ab’saba, will be visiting. This promises to set off all sorts of complicated feelings from Bukota, what with how he’s exiled from Ab’saba. This all I didn’t know, but the strip gave the background. His heroism protecting Makeda from a rebel army didn’t negate his previous, jealousy-fueled, attack on her bodyguard. So he was exiled as ambassador to Camelot which I infer is how he fell in with Prince Valiant and all. Bukota puts all his feelings into sparring on the Royal Training Fields and trying to keep a stoic face as his queen arrives. This gets foiled as she notices him. And that’s the point our story has now reached.

Next Week!

Watch me try to summarize three months’ worth of Joe Staton, Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy while still keeping up with everything Christmas expects me to do! I’m not going to make it!