Today's Prince Valiant strip is the last by John Cullen Murphy, who has been drawing the venerable feature since the early seventies when its creator, Hal Foster, retired. Murphy had been drawing his own newspaper strip, Big Ben Bolt, and I guess sensed that its demise was near. (He handed it off to assistants in 1975 and it ended in 1978.) Around 1970, hearing Foster needed a hand, Murphy approached him and found that the veteran illustrator, at age 78, was thinking of handing the main illustration chores off to another. Other artists subsequently sought the job so a practical audition was held with the three best applicants each hired to draw one Sunday page over Foster's rough layouts. Gray Morrow, Wally Wood and Murphy each did one, and Murphy got the job.
Foster wrote and did increasingly-loose layouts for him until 1980. By that time, Murphy's son Cullen had begun to assist with the writing, as had author Bill Crouch. When Foster retired in full in '80, Cullen took over the writing, which he has done to this day and which he will continue to do with his father's successor, Gary Gianni.
For those of you scoring at home: Prince Valiant strips are numbered sequentially. Foster did #1-1756 before he began filtering in the tryout strips by Morrow, Wood and Murphy. Thereafter, Foster did some strips, Murphy did some over his layouts and there were at least three by another artist who has never been identified by historians. Murphy's audition was #1760 and then he did more and more. Foster last did finished art on #2000 and ceased his involvement with the layouts as of #2244. Murphy's last, the strip that runs today, is #3451 so he seems to have done around 1,657 Prince Valiant strips as opposed to Foster's estimated total of 1,789. Two amazing achievements.