Hal Foster\nBorn August 16th 1892 - July 25th 1982\nEducation Chicago Academy of Fine Arts\n\nBorn 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.\n\nFoster\'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.\n\nWilliam 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 1967, Woody Gelman revived some of Foster\'s earlier work for his Nostalgia Press.\n\nIn 1970, Foster was suffering from arthritis and began planning his retirement. He had several artists draw Sunday pages before choosing John Cullen Murphy as his collaborator and permanent replacement in 1971. Murphy drew the strip from Foster scripts and pencil sketches. Foster stopped illustrating (and signing) the Prince Valiant pages in 1975. \n\nAwards:\nReuben Award in 1957\nStory Comic Strip Award in 1964\nElzie Segar Award in 1978\ninducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1996\nelected to membership in Great Britain\'s Royal Society of Arts, an honor given to very few Americans.\nJoe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creators Hall of Fame\nSociety of Illustrators\' Hall of Fame in 2006\n\nInfluence:\nAmong the many other artists who have cited Foster as an important influence are Carl Barks, Wally Wood, Joe Kupert, Steve Ditko, Mark Schultz, William Stout, Bill Ward, and Al Williamson.\nFrank Frazetta called Foster\'s work on Tarzan “perfection\".\nJack Kirby stated that the character design for Etrigan the Demon was an homage to Foster.\n\nonline gallery: http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/foster.htm

Hal Foster History of American Illustration