The Fabuleous Fifties

Tiger Bright

Okay, from my previous posts you may have gathered that I am a big fan of unknown or unreprinted material from newspaper strips from the fifties and sixties. One of the greats who started in that period is the recently deceased Bud Blake. His strip Tiger was such a staple in many papers fro so many years, that his qualities seem to have been overlooked by the general public. He started Tiger in 1964 and kept up the quality until the very end. His crisp drawing style is an inspiration to many and his gags were always fresh.

Blake started life as a cartoonist in the fifties. He did spot cartoons for many magazines, but few people know he also did a daily cartoon for almost a decade before hitting the big time with Tiger. The daily cartoon had different names, under which he tried different types of humor. Best know is the latest incarnation Ever Happen To You, in which he portraited the pitfalls of daily life. But the series probably started out as That Sinking Feeling, with the earliest samples I have dating from 1955. Between that, I have cartoons names Office Hours, Home Sweet Home, Summer Daze and Oh, Happy Day.

All my samples come from an online newspaper micro-fiche collection, which usually doesn't leave much intact of photo's and rawings. But Bud Blake's lin eis so clean that most cartoons survive the proces. I will show you a sampling here and more later on. If anyone from Fantagraphics is looking in, or maybe Nat Gertler (who did those wonderful It's Only A Game books, reprinting Charles Schulz' forgotten panel gag strip from the late fifties)... here's your next project.

I'll start with an early sunday from Tiger, for those of you who don't know that strip too well. This one's from June 5, 1965. Unfortunately, I forgot to downsize the Tiger strip, so You are stuck with a very large and slow loading scan if you click on it.