The irony does not escape Chad Carpenter. “When I was a kid, my least-favorite comics were single-panel comics—like the ones I now draw,” he admits. Multi-panel strips were a better value, with more room for character. Berkeley Breathed was an influence, along with Walt Kelly, but it was a Garfield book by Jim Davis that convinced young Carpenter to make cartoonery a career.
The artist rarely accepts commissions, butprevious jobs with Alaska Business for the April 2012 and December 2018 issues assured Carpenter that an encore would be painless. This third cover might finally propel Carpenter to the success that has eluded him after self-syndicating Tundra in more than 600 newspapers, winning a 2007 Silver Reuben Award for Best Newspaper Panel, publishing twenty-eight books, and producing two feature films.
Carpenter confesses, “I haven’t invested wisely enough to be able to retire, so desperation fuels my creativity.”
