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Thursday, February 09, 2012

Obscurity of the Day: Breezy



Melvin Tapley's longest running feature was one for which he didn't quite take credit. If anyone was fooled by the oh-so-devious pseudonym T. Melvin, though, it would be quite a surprise. Especially when Breezy often appeared on the same page as one of the strips for which Tapley did take credit. 

Breezy was an unassuming wise guy kid strip with little special slant to its black audience noticeable. Certainly Breezy was a bit more jivey than your typical kid-strip kid, and he wore that high style zoot hat, but basically just an everyday kid who could be of any race.

Syndicated by Continental Features, it's earliest known appearance is in the Atlanta World on August 1 1943. The strip ran in quite a few black papers over the years, and may have been produced steadily right through early 1948, the latest I've encountered it.
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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous3/11/2014 2:51 PM

    Breezy ran in the Florida Times until February 11, 1956; by then it had become a two-tier weekly strip. I don't know whether it continued on in syndication after that date

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  2. Allan Holtz3/11/2014 3:40 PM

    I am not aware of a newspaper titled "Florida Times". I don't think you mean the Florida Times-Union, since they would never carry a strip like Breezy. Perhaps you mean the South Florida Times?

    --Allan

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  3. nat@gertler.com12/13/2021 8:17 PM

    I've found three periods of Breezy -- the single-tier, then the four tier, then the two tier. The two tiers mostly seem to be edited-down versions of the four tiers. The problem for me is that so far, I've only found one actual four tier, so I'm not sure where they mostly ran yet. I find the two-tier reruns until at least 1960.

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