Mr. Natural and Fritz The Cat (Robert Crumb). Cheech Wizard (Vaughn Bode). Dirty Duck (Bobby London). Wonder Wart-Hog (Gilbert Shelton).

All of them are great underground comic book characters. But they're not my favorite. For my money, cartoonist Bob Foster created one of the greatest underground comic characters of all time, Myron Moose.

Foster published Myron Moose Funnies in the early 1970s and they were later re-published by Fantagraphics in the late 1980s, along with Moose strips that originally appeared in Marvel's Crazy.

Foster's also had the kind of career that a lot of people would look at and go "cool!"

He's been an animator for Hanna-Barbera (among others), lived in Europe where he wrote  tons of comics - including Donald Duck - for Walt Disney Publishing and later was the editor of Walt Disney's Comics & Stories, and other Disney-based titles.

Since then, he's been a storyboard artist in animation working for places like Nickelodeon, Dreamworks and Disney.

Now Bob's just been elected President of The Animation Guild, the union that represents 3000 animation artists and writers. Congrats to the creator of the most famous Moose since Bullwinkle and good luck getting 3000 people to agree on stuff!

[Artwork: Cover to Myron Moose Funnies, © Bob Foster]