Ken Anderson and the "Prince Valiant" Spooks

What's this? Another post on Ken Anderson's artwork?  Sure. Why not?

According to the Life of Saint Anthony, written by Athanasius in the fourth century, the desert monk was assailed by demons trying to trip him up. They had the annoying habit of appearing to him in various strange forms. It's one of those stories that lends itself to wild visualizations, and sure enough, if you do a search for "Temptation of St. Anthony" you'll soon be up to your neck in nightmarish and surrealistic artwork. As you might expect, Hieronymus Bosch did a Temps of Tony. A couple of them, actually. But the most famous Saint Anthony may be Martin Shongauer's:

The word "iconic" is nauseatingly overused nowadays, but in Shongauer's case it is exactly correct.

Incidentally, you might recall that Marc Davis borrowed some critters from an old Temps of Tony for a Séance Circle concept sketch.

Anyway, the basic artistic motif eventually escaped from its hagiographical context and gave birth to various and sundry depictions of protagonists from different walks of life being assaulted by clouds of demonic apparitions.

 "Alright, alright, ALL RIGHT, I should have used a semicolon . . . Sheesh."

The temptation element remains, however. Sometimes the hero is a noble knight trying to keep his nerve.

And that trail leads us, finally, to a 1938 Prince Valiant comic strip:

Well, now. Isn't this interesting. Apparently Ken Anderson was flipping through some PV comics one day, saw this, and decided it could serve as a sort of model sheet for spooks he might possibly need in order to populate his Haunted House. He must have had an eye out for this sort of thing. There aren't quite 999 here, but it's a good start.

Yep. Busted.

 But we mustn't be too quick to criticize Anderson. God himself borrowed from this same Hal Foster artwork when he designed John Fetterman.

It's kind of fun to know that neither of the men most responsible for Disney's Haunted Mansion (Ken Anderson and Marc Davis) had any compunction about stealing ideas from comic strips and comic books. Why not? It's not as if some jackanapes is going to discover their petty larcenies some day and magically broadcast them to the Whole Wide World.

(Hat tip to two Threadsters for discovering the Prince Valiant artwork and bringing it to my attention: MasterGracey and Vicarious Corpse).

 

 

 

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