Where the Buffalo Roam | The Internet's First Comic Strip

The WTBR story -- and more!

The WTBR Story
The history! The intrigue! The Great Comics War!
Cast of Characters
Author Hans Bjordahl
Contact Information

The WTBR Story

Fig. A

"Where the Buffalo Roam" first appeared in Boulder's Colorado Daily in 1987, where it chronicled the seamy underside of undergraduate life with such gritty and hilarious accuracy that for years, the primary accolade afforded the author was, "Dude! I love the way you draw barf!" (Fig A.)

As it matured, however, WTBR's reputation quickly grew. Its unique take on both college and post-collegiate life powered two collections, appeareances in several college papers, a pioneering Internet presence and an independent film based on the strip's characters and humor (the status of which changes weekly, so stay tuned). All this despite the fact that the strip ceased active production in 1994 (this Web site draws on the strip's archives for its content).

WTBR has experienced a bewildering array of definitive moments, coining such phrases as "parking nazis," "shroom patrol," the "alliance for the vertically challenged," "artist in the real world," "frontal nudity mondays" and "woop! woop! woop!" in the process. WTBR's proudest moment, however was undoubtedly its participation in the Colorado Daily's Great Comics War of 1990, in which local cartoonists Holley Irvine ("Ozone Patrol"), Tom Oling ("40th Parallel," now "USS Utopia") and Terry Krueger ("SOS") commandeered the entire comics page to render an appalling tale of intercomic warfare in a thinly veiled commentary on the Persian Gulf War.

Cast of Characters

So what is Hans Bjordahl up to these days?

The past few years, Hans's main creative pursuit has been the co-creation, editing and ongoing management of a little Web site called Mr. Cranky Rates the Movies. Yes, THAT Mr. Cranky, the internationally famous movie critic who savages all films on a one-bomb to four-bomb scale. Hans cannot claim the identity of Mr. Cranky himself, nor can he reveal it, as that is a closely guarded trade secret. Alas, despite half a million visitors a month, Mr. Cranky has yet to free Hans from the need for a respectable day job.

By night, Hans lives in Seattle with college-nemesis- turned-lawfully-wedded-wife Holley Irvine (yes, they are both well aware of how precious this is). Together, they co-wrote the comic strip Café Angst for the Denver Post for three years. Hans also wrote a column titled "Actual Reality" for the Boulder Weekly for a couple of years before fleeing to Seattle.

He has two cats, one dog, likes long walks in the park, and longs to be taken seriously as an actress.

Contact information

To offer feedback on "Where the Buffalo Roam" or contact Hans Bjordahl, please email hans@shadowculture.com.