Bud Blake, 87, Created ‘Tiger’ Comic Strip
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Bud Blake, who died Monday at 87, was the cartoonist responsible for “Tiger,” the long-running comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate.
Occupying a sort of middle ground between “Peanuts” and “The Family Circus” in terms of the profundity of its content, “Tiger” featured strong graphics and wry humor. Blake both wrote and drew the strip for nearly 40 years.
“Tiger” was named the year’s best humor strip in 1970, 1978, and 2000 by the National Cartoonists Society. Although Blake retired two years ago, the strip still appears in reruns in more than 100 newspapers in 11 countries, according to King Features. At its height, it ran in about 400 papers.
Blake grew up in Nutley, N.J., and studied art at the National Academy of Design. A talented wood carver, he dropped out of high school to work at carnivals, fairs, and the Jersey boardwalk as a demonstrator for a penknife company, creating figurines out of balsa. At age 18, he found work as a paste-up artist at the Kudner Agency, a New York City advertising firm.
After serving in the Army during World War II, Blake returned to Kudner and eventually became the agency’s art director, managing accounts for Buick and Goodyear. Dissatisfied by the grind of agency work and a lengthy commute, he quit Kudner in the mid-1950s. After a three-month vacation to Spain, Blake began to work as a freelance artist, both for advertising companies and as a cartoonist for magazine such as Business Week, Family Circle, and Woman’s Day. His early cartoons were untitled single panels, later distributed as the “Bud Blake Panel,” the author of the cartoon Web siteToonopedia.com, Don Markstein, said. Beginning in 1959, he had a daily single-panel feature titled “Ever Happen to You?” that was syndicated by King Features for several years.
In 1965, Blake started drawing “Tiger.” The strip’s characters included Tiger, his little brother Punkinhead, a chubby best friend named Hugo, and a few girls. Blake liked to say the characters were composites of people he had known as a child. One, a bespectacled know-it-all, was named Julian, Blake’s given name but perhaps more significantly that of Blake’s son, who is a physicist.
Having summered for many years in Maine, Blake moved there permanently in 1988, following the death of his wife.
Julian Watson Blake
Born February 13, 1918, in Nutley, N.J.; died December 26 at Maine Medical Center in Portland; survived by his son, Julian, daughter, Marianna, and a grandson. He married the former Doris Gaskill in 1941.