
There must be something in the waters of Nova Scotia that makes its residents really embrace history. Kate Beaton, one of the most prominent names in webcomics currently, made it big by sticking modern slang in the mouths of respected figureheads of history.
She’s not the only one, though. Once upon a time, a resident of Halifax became a staff artist for the venerable retailer, Hudson’s Bay Company, in Winnipeg, where he drew ads for ladies’ corests. Later, he would move to comic strips. His first job was illustrating the adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan. However, being a true artist, what he really wanted to do was work on something that was his own creation.
Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst loved this man’s pitch so much that he offered him ownership of the strip, a rarity for the earlier work-for-hire era in comics. Incidentally, this is the third time Hearst factors into this feature. It’s kinda uplifting to know that one of the world’s biggest media tycoons was deep down inside a huge comic nerd.
That cartoonist went on to pen the adventures of a knight in King Arthur’s Court, someone whose adventures are still featured in newspapers to this day. His name was Hal Foster, and that comic strip is Prince Valiant.
(Incidentally, this piece is going to lack the usual links, mainly because my main reference site for newspaper comics — the I Love Comix Archive — went down because the hosts got spooked by SOPA. Sigh.)








And yet, I must ask: wither The Red Bee?