Funny graduation gift

Cartoonists pen Alaska's lighter side of life.

What do a bespectacled owl, a bachelor squirrel and burrito-loving bears have in common? They are all characters in Alaska comics, cartoon critters that personify the wacky side of life on the Last Frontier. Their creators, Peter Dunlap-Shohl, Chad Carpenter and Jamie Smith, agree that the north country is plumb-chuckle full of humorous material. From wildlife encounters to political figures, the reality of life in Alaska is fertile ground for the ridiculous and the bizarre.

Take Peter Dunlap-Shohl's owl from his comic strip, Muskeg Heights. Dr. Longhorn is based on a real owl that assaulted a skier on an Anchorage trail. The owl stripped the man of his hat, gloves, coat and ski poles. The guy was nearly naked before the attack stopped.

The squirrel in Chad Carpenter's comic strip, Tundra, offers "Tips for Frugal Bachelors," which Carpenter will neither confirm nor deny as being drawn from personal experience. (Does he or doesn't he use cats as pot holders?)

And the bears in Jamie Smith's Freeze Frame cartoon think of humans in sleeping bags as tasty, take-out burritos.

But what about the cartoonists? Are they as zany as the characters they've created? Like pets and their owners, do the comic characters resemble their creators? What about the working habits of artists who make a living making people laugh?

Muskeg Heights

Peter Dunlap-Shohl said having a cartoon appear in Alaska magazine is the culmination of a lifelong dream: He sent his first cartoon to Alaska in 1968 when he was just 9 years old. (It was rejected.) Dunlap-Shohl decided during third grade that he wanted to be a cartoonist. In fifth grade he made the decision to become a political cartoonist. It intrigued him that serious issues could be addressed in cartoons.

"It was the Watergate Era and political cartoons and drawings got me interested in the news," he said. "Besides, it seemed more of a dignified kind of cartooning. Something I wouldn't grow up and be embarrassed to say I did."

Wearing oval, wire-- rimmed glasses (much like his owl character in Muskeg Heights), Dunlap-- Shohl described himself as a "longtime, over-earnest Alaskan." He has been drawing political cartoons for the Anchorage Daily News editorial page since 1982 and described Alaska's political arena as a gold mine of cartoon material. After all, he said, where else would a mayor propose legalizing machine guns and hand grenades?

Dunlap-Shohl's daily strip, Muskeg Heights, began running in 1991 and is based on urban wildlife living together in an abandoned condominium. All of his characters except the flamingo and the cat are native to Alaska. The displaced flamingo represents all the people who live in Alaska against their will-- spouses and others who for one reason or another were compelled to move to the land of cold, dark winters. Pixie is based on a real cat-one possessing the courage, drive and stupidity it sometimes takes to live here.

"The neighbor's cat was

stalking a moose. I saw it myself," Dunlap-Shohl said. "I realized this cat was not like other cats."

Dunlap-Shohl said cartooning is not so much about drawing as it is writing. "The drawing part is the fun part."

It takes a day for him to write a week's worth of gags, and he works about a week ahead. "I like to key off the seasons and have my characters experience time's passage in sync with the readers," he said.

He attributes much of his creativity to dead-- lines.

"I thought cartooning meant sitting in your office drawing all day. What it really is, is sitting in your office sweating bullets all day until you're inspired." He draws four editorial cartoons and six comic strips every week.

The best way to be inspired is to draw, Dunlap-- Shohl said. "You act like you have an idea and just start drawing. That wakes up the creative side of my mind."

He wants his cartoons to respect the intelligence of the audience while remaining approachable. This all sounds like serious stuff from a guy who is supposed to be funny. Was he ever a class clown, a comedian? No, he said. He was a quiet kid who drew a lot.

Which is not to say he didn't have a comic sense of fun from an early age. Home alone during the 1964 earthquake, Dunlap-Shohl and his brother thought it was hilarious to jump up in one place and land in another as their Anchorage house pitched and heaved. When the shaking stopped, the homes across the street had fallen 40 feet into Cook Inlet.

"We didn't know it was dangerous," he said.

Freeze Frame

Originally from upstate New York, Jamie Smith isn't sure why he calls Fairbanks home.

"I don't know what the hell I'm doing in Alaska," Smith said. "I don't hunt. I don't fish. I don't like the cold, and I hate winter."

It's the summers that hold him, and the promise of long, solo hikes in the wilderness. His treks are the source of his creative energy for the cartoon Freeze Frame. "After being alone for 10 days, when you come upon a group of people for the first time you realize what funny monkeys humans are."

A minimalist, he ventures into the mountains without a gun, a cell phone or global positioning system. Even without a drawing notebook.

"In all humility, I'm just a tourist out there," he said. "The real mountain men are the miners and trappers and homesteaders. A real mountain man would kill me, eat me and use my skin as a canoe."

When Smith is not trekking in the mountains, he keeps office hours in coffee shops, bars and the local library. Freeze Frame has appeared weekly in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner since 1986 and was picked up last year by 8, the Anchorage Daily News' weekly entertainment guide.

Smith lives in a one-room cabin, the abode in which he said he annually loses his mind to the ravages of winter. It is also a time when he is most productive. He keeps a journal, a small notebook in which many of his cartoon ideas begin.

When summer returns, he leaves drawing behind, picks up his backpack and heads back into the wild.

"Arguably, something happens to your brain when you're out there," Smith said. "It alters your perceptions. It's almost like a drug as a creative catalyst, but the outdoors is healthier and more holistic."

So was he a comedian growing up? It turns out he was a subversive. He liked Comix, which contained underground funnies underscored with sex, drugs, rock and roll. When his high school art teacher insisted that he draw larger, he drew smaller. He quit school two weeks before his high school graduation. However, he recently joined the establishment by obtaining a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and accepting a position as an adjunct professor to teach drawing.

Smith said he's an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. "I'm worthless as far as the manly tasks required to be a genuine Alaska man. I can't even fix my own can" he said.

But he makes people laugh. He has published four books and has a fifth in progress. He is working on a children's book and recently launched Alaskatoon.com, an interactive website featuring Freeze Frame.

"It makes my existence for someone to say they still have a funny of mine hanging in their outhouse or on their refrigerator."

So, would Smith trade Alaska for warmer climes and a more sane existence? Most definitely not, he said. Like the title of one of his books, he may be "Stuck in a Rut" here. But like his classic cartoon, "Homesick Alaskan," if he were anywhere else, he'd be standing at a refrigerator with his head in the freezer.

Tundra

Working on his eighth book, Chad Carpenter admits that cartooning has gone from a hobby to a full-fledged, ulcer-causing career. Carpenter's Tundra strip appears in the Anchorage Daily News, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and several out-of-state newspapers.

"I have no other marketable skill, so I'm stuck with it," Carpenter said. Yet his affection for Tundra is clear. He has created a small empire with his cast of comic characters. Nearly every gift store in Alaska carries Tundra T-shirts, note cards, mouse pads and coffee mugs. He has also developed a Tundra video game and a traveling puppet show that he performs at book fairs and school visits.

Carpenter didn't go to art school-he attributes his skill to "years of wasted youth, spent doodling." After growing up in Alaska, he ventured to California and then Florida where he met and was inspired by Dik Browne, creator of Hagar the Horrible, and Mike Peters, creator of Mother Goose and Grimm. Peters encouraged him to do something Alaskan.

"I think he just wanted to get me out of his state," Carpenter said, laughing. In 1991 he came home to Alaska and proposed Tundra to the Anchorage Daily News.

No one is more surprised by his success than Carpenter. "I didn't exactly expect to make a living at it-Mom and Dad are just glad I'm not living at home anymore."