Bruce Shanks worked as an editorial cartoonist for the Buffalo Evening News. There he won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for "The Thinker" (August 10, 1957), which showed "the dilemma of union membership when confronted by corrupt leaders in some labor unions". Shanks began his employment with the Buffalo Evening News as a copy boy. His first cartoons appeared in the sports pages. One character created by Shanks was Olaf Fub, a name dervied from "Buffalo" spelled backward. A drawing of Fub and the phrase, "Olaf Fub sez ..." continued to introduce the commentary of Evening News writers on local events even well after Shanks' death. Another character who appeared frequently in Shanks' editorial cartoons was the everyman character John Q. Public. That name was created by Vaughn Shoemaker, another editorial cartoonist. Shanks' cartoons were widely distributed by syndicators throughout North America and the world at the height of his career. Beside the Pulitzer, Shanks won eight Freedoms Foundation awards and several Page One Awards from the American Newspaper Guild. During World War II, Shanks served in the United States Army from 1942 until 1945.
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