Book Review - Hal Foster: Prince of Illustrators, Father of the Adventure Strip by Brian M. Kane

I absolutely adore early newspaper comic strips by the great masters like Milt Caniff, Roy Crane, and Hal Foster. And I find the story behind the comics and their creators tend to be worth exploring.

Hal Foster: Prince of Illustrators, Father of the Adventure Strip by Brian M. Kane is a biography of the man and his work. It is available in both hardcover and paperback editions.

The Good

Telling of the Story. Biographies can be incredibly fascinating or painfully dull depending on who is doing the storytelling, and this author did a good joy of keeping the story moving while including a lot of information, details, and background information to set the story in the proper time and frame. While there is a ton of info, I never felt bogged down by it because of the quick page, conversational tone, and numerous visuals.

Artwork. This book does an incredible job of including a lot of photos and artwork, especially photos and artwork that have probably never been seen outside the family or since they were produced. I was really impressed with all the Christmas cards, sketches, doodles, advertisements, paintings, etc. and the quality of their reproduction.

 

The Bad

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What I Would Like to Have Seen

While I appreciate all of the extra matter included, it would have been nice to see a few more examples of the actual comics Hal Foster was so famous for. There were a few panels in black and white from his color comics run on Tarzan, but no full page comics which would have been really nice to see.

Overall

Hal Foster: Prince of Illustrators, Father of the Adventure Strip by Brian M. Kane is a biography of the man and his work. It is available in both hardcover and paperback editions. Biographies can be incredibly fascinating or painfully dull depending on who is doing the storytelling, and this author did a good joy of keeping the story moving while including a lot of information, details, and background information to set the story in the proper time and frame. While there is a ton of info, I never felt bogged down by it because of the quick page, conversational tone, and numerous visuals. This book does an incredible job of including a lot of photos and artwork, especially photos and artwork that have probably never been seen outside the family or since they were produced. I was really impressed with all the Christmas cards, sketches, doodles, advertisements, paintings, etc. and the quality of their reproduction. I highly recommend this book and give it 4 out of 5 eReaders.