Hold This Tiger

Bud Blake had a killer way with shapes and lines. Blake's unheralded strip 'Tiger' ran for almost forty years in a zillion papers. You could erase all the text in a 'Tiger' strip and still know all you need to know about the characters from the superb artwork. I'm surprised Blake never worked in animation. His stuff is so kinetic and action oriented.

Imagine if 'Hi & Lois' ever got off their asses and did something. Maybe if Hi ever put down his goddamn pipe and newspaper and played catch with Chip, he wouldnt be such a surly proto-emo kid, lounging on his bed all day reading funny books.

Maybe if Hiram Flagstone wasn't so lazy, he would notice his infant daughter Trixie has been in the sun too long and is starting to hear voices.

Did you know that Lois Flagstone is Beetle Bailey's sister? I swear this is true, it was printed on the computer internet.

But I digress...

Some nice examples of 'Tiger' and Blake's earlier gag panel work here.

Check out the lettering on Blake's self-penned NCS bio.