''Tiger'' was an American

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

created by

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

Bud Blake Julian W. BlakeSocial Security Death Index
listing for Blake, Julian W., suburban A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

boyhood pals was distributed by

King Features Syndicate King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...

to 400

newspapers A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...

worldwide at its peak. Blake drew the strip until he was 85, two years before his death on December 26, 2005. Asked if he could continue to produce the strip, Blake told an interviewer, "Sure, I could keep doing it. But I can’t. I’ve had enough." After Blake retired, the strip continued to appear as reprints, and as of December 2005, according to the syndicate, ''Tiger'' was running in more than 100 newspapers in 11 countries.

Characters and story

''Tiger'' followed a

gag-a-day A gag-a-day comic strip is the style of writing comic cartoons such that every installment of a strip delivers a complete joke or some other kind of artistic statement. It is opposed to story or continuity strips, which rely on the development of ...

format and was designed to appeal to both adults and children. It centered on a scrappy group of school-aged kids in an unidentified, middle-class neighborhood. Parents and teachers were occasionally referred to, but no adult was ever pictured. ''Tiger'' was told from a child's perspective and retained its innocent kids' eye

world view A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural p ...

from beginning to end. *Tiger: The unofficial gang leader was a typical,

everyman The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them. Origin The term ''everyman'' was used as early as ...

kid, clad in a loose-fitting white sweatshirt with an ever-changing caption on the front and an oversized baseball cap which covered his eyes. *Punkinhead: Tiger's precocious kid brother, naïve but occasionally insightful, who wore a red hooded sweater, sneakers with perpetually untied laces, an incongruously long, polka-dotted necktie and an ever-present

cowlick A cowlick is a section of human hair that stands straight up or lies at an angle at odds with the style in which the rest of an individual's hair is worn. The most common site of a human cowlick is in the crown, but they can show up anywhere. Th ...

. *Hugo: Pudgy and none-too-bright, Tiger's best friend Hugo sported a red crewcut, a single baby tooth and an unquenchable appetite. *Bonnie: A pushy, wisecracking neighborhood girl with black bobbed bangs and a loud, sarcastic demeanor. *Suzy: The frequent target of Bonnie's barbs (along with Hugo), the soft-spoken Suzy wore long blonde tresses, black leotards and white Mary Jane shoes. *Julian: The smart, bespectacled neighborhood bookworm. *Stripe: Tiger's agreeable, faithful, lazy and ever-present spotted mutt.

Awards

The

National Cartoonists Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

named ''Tiger'' the best humor strip in 1970, 1978 and 2000, with an additional nomination in 1998.

Assessment

Comics artist

Joe Kubert Joseph Kubert (; September 18, 1926 – August 12, 2012) was a Poland, Polish-born Americans, American comic book artist, art teacher, and founder of The Kubert School. He is best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Sgt. Rock and Hawkm ...

said of Blake, "I know his work, and I've always enjoyed it. He was a wonderful artist and a wonderful cartoonist."''The Star-Ledger''. "Nutley's Bud Blake, drew ''Tiger'' comic", December 30, 2005.
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Collections and reprints

Charlton Comics Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1945 to 1986, having begun under a different name: T.W.O. Charles Company, in 1940. It was based in Derby, Connecticut. The comic-book line was a division of Charlton ...

published eight issues of a

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

version of the strip, from March 1970 to January 1971. *''Tiger (No. 1)'' by Bud Blake (1969) Tempo Books *''Tiger Turns On (No. 2)'' by Bud Blake (1970) Tempo Books

References

External links