Tiger is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 created by cartoonist

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

 Bud Blake

Bud Blake

Julian Blake , better known as Bud Blake, was an American cartoonist who created the popular, long running comic strip Tiger, about a group of suburban boyhood pals. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Tiger began May 3, 1965...

. Launched May 3, 1965, the popular, long running strip about a group of suburban boyhood pals was distributed by King Features Syndicate

King Features Syndicate

King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...

 to 400 newspapers worldwide at its peak.

The National Cartoonists Society

National Cartoonists Society

The National Cartoonists Society 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 troops...

 named Tiger the best humor strip in 1970, 1978 and 2000, with an additional nomination in 1998. Blake drew the strip until he was 85, two years before his death on December 26, 2005. 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.

Joe Kubert

Joe Kubert

Joe Kubert is an American comic book artist who went on to found The Kubert School. He is best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Sgt. Rock and Hawkman...

 commented on Blake and his strip, "I know his work, and I've always enjoyed it. He was a wonderful artist and a wonderful cartoonist."

Characters and story

Tiger followed a gag-a-day format and was designed to appeal to both adults and children. It centered around a scrappy group of kindergarten-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

World view

A comprehensive world view is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point-of-view, including natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and...

 from beginning to end.

• Tiger: The unofficial gang leader was a typical, everyman
  Everyman
  In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
  
   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
  Cowlick
  A cowlick is a section of 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. Cowlicks appear when the growth direction of the hair forms a spiral pattern. The term "cowlick" originates from the domestic bovine's habit of...
  
  .
• 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
  Mary Jane (shoe)
  Mary Jane is an American term for a strap shoe or bar shoe that typically has low heels, broad and rounded closed toes, and a single-buckle strap across the instep and/or around the ankle...
  
  .
• Julian: The smart, bespectacled neighborhood bookworm.
• Stripe: Tiger's agreeable, faithful, lazy and ever-present spotted mutt.

Collections and reprints

• Charlton Comics
  Charlton Comics
  Charlton Comics was an American comic book publishing company that existed from 1946 to 1985, having begun under a different name in 1944. It was based in Derby, Connecticut...
  
   published eight issues of a comic book
  Comic book
  A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
  
  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

Sources

• King Features biography
• Lambiek Comicpedia
• Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Tiger
• National Cartoonists Society: Bud Blake
• Associated Press article on CNN.com about Blake's death
• Cached site of 2004 article from reuben.org
• Hogan's Alley #13 (July 2005): Interview with Bud Blake

External links

• News from Me: "Bud Blake, R.I.P."