Hal Foster
| Hal Foster | |
|---|---|
Foster at his drawingboard, 1962.
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| Born | Harold Rudolf Foster August 16, 1892 Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada |
| Died | July 25, 1982 (aged 89) Spring Hill, Florida, U.S. |
| Area(s) | Writer, Artist |
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Notable works
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Prince Valiant, Tarzan |
Harold Rudolf Foster (August 16, 1892 – July 25, 1982), better known as Hal Foster, was a Canadian-American comic book artist and writer best known as the creator of the comic strip Prince Valiant. His drawing style is noted for a high level of draftsmanship and attention to detail.
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Foster rode his bike to the United States in 1919 and began to study in Chicago, eventually living in America. In 1928, he began one of the earliest adventure comic strips, an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan. In 1937, he created his signature strip, the weekly Prince Valiant, a fantasy adventure set in medieval times. The strip featured Foster's dextrous, detailed artwork; Foster eschewed word balloons, preferring to have narration and dialogue in captions.
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Foster was a staff artist for the Hudson's Bay Company in Winnipeg and rode his bike to Chicago in 1919 where he studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and soon found illustration assignments. The illustrator J. C. Leyendecker was an early influence on Foster.
Foster's Tarzan comic strip, adapted from Edgar Rice Burroughs's novels, began October 20, 1928. Foster returned to do the Tarzan Sunday strip beginning September 27, 1931, continuing until Burne Hogarth took over the Sunday Tarzan on May 9, 1937. He soon grew tired of working on an adaptation and began planning his own creation.
William Randolph Hearst, who had long wanted Foster to do a comic strip for his newspapers, was so impressed with Foster's pitch for Prince Valiant that he promised Foster a 50-50 split of the gross income on the strip, a very rare offer in those days. Prince Valiant premiered on February 13, 1937, continuing for decades. In 1944, Foster and his wife Helen moved from Topeka to Redding Ridge, Connecticut. In 1954, the couple was seen on television's This Is Your Life. In 1971, the Fosters retired to Spring Hill, Florida. In 1967, Woody Gelman revived some of Foster's earlier work for his Nostalgia Press.
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Wikipedia