How we got here

[Tafkas]

This comic began as a marketing tool for Steve's mail order coffee company. It was envisioned as a monthly insert to go with the orders, to be called "Suburban Sourdough"
The coffee company didn't get off the ground but the comic began developing a life of it's own. We renamed it "Buck & Edna" after the main characters and tried to sell it as a weekly strip in the Sunday magazine We Alaskans of the Anchorage Daily News. We met with the editor who told us he wasn't interested because we didn't show enough of the sleazy side of Alaska.
We decided after that to go for a daily schedule and try the other daily paper, The Anchorage Times. When we had a big stack of well-organized material we sent a letter to the editor asking for a meeting. The Times changed editors while our letter was enroute so it was one of the first things the new editor got to consider. A meeting was set up and we impressed him with our product and organization. Buck & Edna debuted in the Anchorage Times on Sunday, November 4th, 1990.
Our last cartoon ran on Wednesday, June 3rd, 1992 after which the Anchorage Times stopped it's presses for good. It had been bought by the syndicate which owned the Daily News to end the circulation war.
Steve and I decided to move on to other projects and Buck & Edna was set aside.
By December of 2004 I had been laid up for a year with a back injury and was looking for something to help me pass the time.(and keep track of the days; painkillers can make the days run together)
I had begun reading some webcomics and decided to color the daily Buck & Ednas and try to figure out the world of webcomics. I changed the name of the strip to Camp Alaska to evoke the mystique of the Last Frontier.

[Alaskawolf]

hey there its great to read your comic

http://fairbanksforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1108
i just posted about it on a couple of forum and Live journals


its nice to see an Alaskan point of view in webcomics

[Tafkas]

Glad you like it, and thanks for spreading the word!

[Soulhunter]

Well, I woke up after talking to a friend for a while and went online to check my friends forum, no new posts. So I went to my livejournal and started reading the post that people made about their days where they live.

Well, long story shot, the wolf told me. Went to the start and started reading, I don't get a lot of the jokes but that might be because I live in Minnesota but its still funny.

I will read some more when I get back from work.

[Kabuki0420]

I had begun reading some webcomics and decided to color the daily Buck & Ednas and try to figure out the world of webcomics. I changed the name of the strip to Camp Alaska to evoke the mystique of the Last Frontier.

So are we looking at new strips by this point, or scans from colored strips from back in the '90s or combinations thereof or something else? I'm curious, since I noticed it seems to go back & forth between strips that look like they were drawn directly into the computer, then some that look like straight-up scans, and then some that seem to have been scanned in & retouched/recolored.

Or, let me guess, if you told me you'd have to kill me.

[Tafkas]

All the Sunday strips were done in color using pen & ink, watercolor, gouache, acrylic, water-soluble & regular colored pencils, brush markers and airbrush.
The Monday-Saturday comics were all black & white. I scanned them in and colored them in Corel Photopaint for the web.
Some of them were never published because the Times was shut down. Two of the dailies have cameos of a character from another webcomic. There are roughs that were never finalized that may yet see ink.