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Tom Duck and Harry's Alaska Connection

The Pictures:

  • Left:  Tom Duck and Harry, Ohio Gothic - that's Harry on the right.
  • Center:  Me with the world's  largest marmot - that's the marmot on the right - in the visitor center at  the top of the Mt. Roberts Tramway, Juneau, Alaska, May 2006 - marmot courtesy of the Goldbelt Native Corporation, which operates the tramway.  (Yeah, I know it's a doctored stuffed polar bear.) 
  • Top right:  Me with a regular sized marmot in the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, Tongass National Forest, Juneau, May 2006 - again, marmot on the right.  Alarmingly, the face of the glacier, which was visible from the visitor center when we visited in 1987, was no longer in site in 2006, having receded significantly. 
  • Bottom right:  Too Far North:  A Northern Cartoon Odyssey,  produced and published by me and the Welds, Northcountry Communications, Inc., in 1987; the initial (and only) press run of 1,000 copies sold out.  My share of the profits enabled my family to pay for our trip back home.  Scroll down to see sample cartoons from the book and their updated 2020s versions, which you can now also see in the new 2nd edition of Too Far North, as well as in a companion book, Living Too Far North:  Drawing Humor from a Winter in Alaska.  Both books are available in pdf format elsewhere in this website.

Why Alaska?

My wife convinced me that if we ever wanted to see Alaska and the Northern Lights, we would have to go in the winter and we should do it before the kids got into high school.  She was right and we did, spending a school year in the tiny crossroads hamlet of Gakona Junction (so small it would have said "Welcome" on both sides of the sign, had there been room for one), uphill from the Native villages of Gakona (which means "rabbit" in Athabaskan) to the northeast and Gulkana to the southwest.

Samples from the 1st & 2nd Edition of Too Far North

The cartoons below were originally drawn in black and white in the winter of 1986-87.  Some were published in the Copper River Country Journal in "The Bush League" comic strip prior to their inclusion in our book, Too Far North, which we published that spring.  Most were drawn in the wee hours of the night after our five kids were asleep, on copier paper with drawing pen in our small cabin.  We assisted our friends, Linda and Jeremy Weld, who published the Journal, in the production of the book, including flying in a small missionary plane to Anchorage to buy paper and printing, cutting, collating, and assembling the 1,000 or so copies, which I then peddled to lodges and news services on the Alaska Road System.  We sold most of that first and only print run, and our portion of the profits paid for our return drive to Virginia following the end of winter and the school year in Alaska.


In early 2020, at the onset of the Covid-19 worldwide pandemic, the Welds determined they needed to revive the Journal (which they had ceased publishing some two decades previously) to provide a source of information for their isolated Copper River Valley community with its small-town size population scattered in small hamlets in an area about the size of West Virginia.  Only this time it would be as a website.  In the process they asked if they could use the old cartoons and the regional map in the new website.  I decided to update the map and to add color to it at the same time.  After it appeared on the site, it was picked up by the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve for publication on their website.  The Welds suggested coloring the cartoons, as well.  In the  samples below you will see some of the originals, along with some of the recolored ones and one previously unpublished.


I have now produced a significantly expanded, updated 2nd edition of Too Far North, as well as a companion book, Living Too Far North:  Drawing Humor from a Winter in Alaska.  The latter includes all the cartoons plus a running commentary on each and on the vagueries of life in that rural environment.  There is also a bit of information on our family's trip and sojourn there.  These are accessible in pdf on this website at www.tomduckandharry.com/my-alaska-books.  


For additional information, see "My Brush with Alaskan Humor... or What's So Funny about Running into a Moose?" elsewhere on this page.

This is the book's 1987 cover, which could have been subtitled, "The Joads Head North."  Our van looked like this when we moved to Gakona Junction from our temporary stay in Fairbanks, although that move was 200 miles to the south.

    Click the maps for enlarged versions.

    [Click the maps for enlarged images]

    Map of Copper River Country

    I created this black-and-white map in December 1986 for a wall calendar insert in the print edition of the Copper River Country Journal.  I produced the second, updated version for the Country Journal 2020 website in March 2020 and further revised it in 2022.  The staff from Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve requested permission to post the updated version on their website.  The map may also have helped persuade state officials to consider the Copper River Basin as a separate entity when publishing aggregated regional data and statistical findings.

    Where's Waldo?

    Assuming you've got even more time to waste on this website, a la Where's Waldo, make a list of all the additions, subtractions (a few), and other alterations you can find in the new version. 

    Click for Waldo's list

    My Two Alaska Books: Too Far North and Living Too Far North

    Too Far North: A Northern Cartoon Odyssey, 2025 2nd edition

    Read my online book, Too Far North, which is an expanded version of the original 1987 print edition of the book.  It includes all 61 cartoons from the original book, now colored and updated, plus 25 additional ones, some previously unpublished.

    Living Too Far North: Drawing Humor from a Winter in Alaska, 2025 2nd edition

    This online book is a running commentary commentary on life in rural Alaska and on all the cartoons in the new edition of Too Far North.  It also contains some background information on our year's trip to and winter sojourn in the Last Frontier.

    My Brush with Alaskan Humor...

    or What's So Funny about Running into a Moose?

    My Brush with Alaskan Humor or What's So Funny about Running into a Moose?

    By David Mudrick, June 2007, revised June 2022

    With selective memories of Gakona, AK  -  Until we lived there, I thought AK should have stood for Arkansas, but now I know it's the sound you make trying to inhale at minus 55 degrees F.


    In May 2007 I received an email asking permission to use portions of my book, Too Far North, A Northern Cartoon Odyssey,  in an exhibit of Alaskan sequential art (aka cartoons).  We had  produced it over twenty years before in Gakona, Alaska, with publisher friends Linda and Jeremy Weld, in the dead of winter.  The exhibit was held in June 2007 in a small gallery between College and Ester, on  the Parks Highway, "the road" that runs between Fairbanks and Anchorage.  In the mid 1980s, this area would have been too small to call "podunk," especially in midwinter when there's not enough unfrozen liquid around to dunk anything, rich or po'.  Nevertheless, I couldn't  have been more honored, even if it were in the New York Museum of Modern Art.   (Well, that's probably not true, but I don't have to worry about finding  out.)


    My wife and I, along with our then five kids, were wintering in Alaska to see the Northern Lights, with plans to return to Northern Virginia after the school year and spring breakup.  As winter  progressed, we needed to raise enough funds to stay fed and get home.  I had been drawing cartoons for our friends' new bi-weekly news magazine, Copper River Country Journal, which they published through their company, Northcountry Communications, Inc.  We decided to publish the book, which was a collection of those cartoons and others.  The cartoons were usually executed in ball-point pen on copier paper, by lantern light after the kids were asleep.

    My greatest compliment at the time came from a Journal reader in Tok who wrote, "This is real Alaskan humor."  If so, then, what is real Alaskan  humor?  Certainly, it  runs the same gamut as any other humor genre, perhaps more often on the cruder side to meet the preconceptions of  tourists.  However, with the penetration of The Last Frontier by technology, just about anything can be had or viewed there, now, whereas when we were there, satellite broadcast was sometimes the only way to communicate.  The satellite dishes were pointed almost to the horizon, which was a visual and visceral indication of just how far into northern latitudes we had come.


    My cartoons focused on the more quirky aspects of rural Alaskan life as we experienced it.  No, I never really saw a house made entirely of duct tape, but I suspect more than one exists.  No, swans do not return for the  summer in "S"s, but rather in the same "V"s as other migratory waterfowl.  No, my kids never fought over the Sears catalog as a source  of indoor recreation, but they did decorate the cabin with paper snowflakes and listened to the output of our home entertainment center, which consisted of an AM-FM clock radio that picked up two stations and a Fisher-Price cassette recorder.  (The story of the gentleman phoning Sears to order a case of toilet paper, and when being asked for the catalogue number replying, "Lady, if I had the catalogue, I wouldn't need the toilet paper!" is probably anecdotal, but not too far off the mark.)

    Alaskan humor reflects the same vagaries of the human condition found elsewhere, though Alaskans may be reticent to admit it.  More than  elsewhere, Alaskan humor must also pay homage to the larger population of two-, four-, and six-footed, pawed, clawed, winged, or otherwise appendaged denizens of the state, not to mention the finned or flippered river and sea folk.  Unfortunately, like mosquitoes, puns can exist that far north.  Even more unfortunately, but unlike mosquitoes, puns do not die off in winter.  


    Having a moose in it doesn't make it Alaskan  humor, although having a flying saucer cross the galaxy, only to run into a moose on "the road," just might.  This also was the only way I could work road kill moose into a humor context, since those encounters were often fatal for both the moose and the occupants of the vehicle.  To add insult to injury or death, you or your survivors wouldn't benefit from the windfall of moose meat.  There was a list of indigent families waiting to get a phone call that their moose was available, perhaps 200  miles away in Talkeetna.  We had more than our share of close encounters of the moose and caribou kind, and they were only a laughing matter after the fact, if at all.

    Oh, yeah, the Northern Lights.  We did see them.  They can stay almost  motionless for hours and then suddenly start dancing at breathtaking  speed, so you have to decide in advance just how long you will stand there watching.  Otherwise, your brain might freeze and you might forget to go back inside.  We also saw them from the doorway of our north-facing latrine.  The door was no obstacle to viewing as it had blown off in the fall during a week of 100-mph Chinook winds.  Of course, when using the latrine in the winter, you have to let the seat drop hard first to remove the two inches of hoarfrost.


    Springtime was another source of humor, when kids would measure the depth of ice-melt puddles by wading into them.  The water was always at  least a half inch above the tops of their "breakup boots."  By that time we were packing to return home, and the nights were now too light to see the Aurora, but the local fauna springing back to life all around our cabin sounded like a Tarzan movie.  On the drive back "outside," after  surviving the winter with little more automobile trouble than a broken valve lifter, we experienced a cracked windshield and a flat tire within two hours on the Yellowhead Highway, the first major paved road we hit in British Columbia:  Good ol' Alaskan, or maybe just northern, humor.

    ________________

    Sorry, but we had to include the above cartoon, which is not from the book and probably isn't real Alaskan humor, either.


    For penance, here are some better things to think about:


    • Click here to visit the home of the world's largest marmot, the Mount Roberts Tramway in Juneau, Alaska, although we can't promise that the giant marmot is still there.


    • Click here  to visit the home of the regular sized marmot, the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in the Tongass National Forest, Juneau, Alaska.


    • Click here to visit our favorite Alaska travel site, Bearfoot Travel Guides, produced in Alaska by Linda and Jeremy Weld of Northcountry Communications.

    See Also "The Alaskan Adventure of Tom Duck and Harry" by Clicking These Strips

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    Tom Duck and Harry

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