After 27 years cartoonist Chad Carpenter gets his Tundra comic strip into his hometown newspaper.
Monday afternoon Chad Carpenter sat in his Alaska State Fair booth surrounded his Tundra Comics merchandise. But that’s not all that’s on Carpenter’s agenda this week. Carpenter, the Valley’s most noted cartoonist, will see his Tundra Comics appear in his hometown newspaper, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, for the first time.
And The Valley Frontiersman and Chad are throwing a party:
There will be a launch party at Bearpaw River Brewing Company Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m.
During the launch party, the first 20 people who walk through door will receive free admission and parking tickets to the Alaska State Fair and a grand prize for two tickets to see Jim Gaffigan live on the fairgrounds Sunday.
The Anchorage Daily News was the first paper to pick up Carpenter. Now, Tundra Comics prints in about 650 newspapers across the U.S. The strip was born right here in the Valley in 1991, after Carpenter found himself in the “right place at the right time.”
Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman Publisher Dennis Anderson said. “I had quite a few readers ask me to publish his comic strip but because of contractual obligations we couldn’t in the past. We were able to work through that hurdle.”
Apparently the Valley Frontiersman is in the Daily News’ circulation area (Wasilla being part of the Anchorage metropolitan area) and the Daily News had exclusive rights to the strip in their area. Recently the two papers “were able to work through that hurdle”
The Valley Frontiersman celebrates with a feature article (and a party).