Foster, Harold R. (Harold Rudolf), 1892-1982

Harold R. (Hal) Foster (1892-1982) was a Canadian-American cartoonist. His most famous creation was the Prince Valiant strip.

Born in Nova Scotia in 1892, Foster studied at the Chicago Art Institute, supplemented with night classes at the National Academy of Design and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. His artistic influences included E.A. Abbey, Howard Pyle, Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, James Montgomery Flagg, and N.C. Wyeth. Foster worked as a staff artist for the Hudson Bay Company and then as an illustrator before getting involved with graphic adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan novels. Foster's sense of realism, composition, draftsmanship, and his fluid anatomy brought a new "fine art" feel to adventure comics. Another Foster trademark that appeared for the first time in comics was the use of captions instead of word balloons.

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