Comic artist Harry Paul "Hal" Forrest was born on July 22, 1892 in Philadelphia, PA. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1911 to 1915 while supporting himself as an illustrator at the Chicago Tribune. His first comic, "Percy the Boy Scout," ran in the Philadelphia Telegraph. An interest in aviation led to his attempt to join the British Royal Flying Corps in 1914 as World War I gripped Europe but he was rejected due to athlete's foot. Instead, he served as an infantry member of the U.S. Army's Headquarters Troop while continuing to produce gag comics, now for the Philadelphia Record.

When the U.S. joined the war in 1917 he and his brother joined the American Air Corps, and he was sent into the Signal Corps in San Antonio, TX, eventually becoming sargeant-major. In the meantime, he turned his cartooning talent to propaganda, creating military strips for the Bureau of Public Information.

As aviation began to rise in popularity in the 1920s, so did Forrest's interest in airplanes and pilots as a focus of his artistic output. He created his first major syndicated strip, "Artie the Ace," for Paramount Newspaper Syndicate beginning in 1926. After the wild popularity of Charles Lindburgh's famous 1927 solo Atlantic flight, Bell Syndicate approached Forrest to create an aviation adventure series with crime writer Glenn Chaffin. Upon its first appearance in the Oakland Tribune on May 21, 1928, "Tailspin Tommy" became an immediate success and by 1931 it was included in 250 U.S. newspapers. The comic would eventually be optioned as a series of books, comic books, and the first-ever film based on a comic strip character, a series of twelve movies produced by Universal Studios in 1934. In 1941, a serial radio show of Tailspin Tommy featured Hal himself in the September 5th episode, "Hidden Mine."

Despite these successes, Forrest developed a reputation as a difficult and competitive collaborator. Chaffin quit the comic in 1934, and Forrest took on a student inker and ghost artist, Reynold Brown. Brown's style proved superior to Forrest's and he soon felt that Forrest wouldn't give him proper credit as a result. Brown quit in 1942, and by then the world of aviation comics had grown and changed rapidly; "Tailspin Tommy" was seen as outdated and was dropped from the majority of newspapers. Forrest terminated the comic that year. 

Hal Forrest didn't work in cartooning again, though he did illustrate Joyce E. Newbill Martin's children's book, Alan and Brenda on a Clipper (1942). He died in Culver City on November 21, 1959. "Tailspin Tommy" is hailed as the first aviation comic in history (though Forrest's other, less well-known comic, Artie the Ace, in fact predates it).