Kevin and Kell: Comics for Omnivores
by Jeff Mellen
What happens when you mix the dynamics of the food chain, woodland
creatures, and the IT industry? You get Kevin and Kell,
an original web-based comic strip by Bill Holbrook. Equal parts
sitcom and Rich Tennant's The 5th Wave, Kevin and Kell feeds
off of the weird juxtaposition of its characters, along with the media
and technological savvy of its intended audience.
The strip focuses on a nuclear woodland family, the Dewclaws.
Kevin is the rabbit patriarch, a stay-at-home dad who used to moderate
online forums and now is chief of his own ISP, Hare-Link. Kell,
a wolf, is oddly enough Kevin's husband, a career predator who has
risen to senior management at Herd Thinners, Inc. They each
bring one stepchild into their marriage-- Kevin has Lindesfarne, a
17 year-old hedgehog, while Kell brings Rudy, a smart-mouthed 14 year-old
wolf. In the early episodes of the strip, Kevin and Kell had
a baby, Coney, a precocious carnivorous rabbit. Rounding out
the cast is a wide variety of supporting characters, such as Fenton,
Lindesfarne's computer-whiz boyfriend and bat; Kell's drooling boss
R.L. and brother Ralph; Candace, the tech-support border collie, and
Fiona, Rudy's girlfriend who struggles with her parents' divorce.
The early Kevin and Kell strips, first drawn in fall 1995,
focused a lot on the unorthodox makeup of the family, the dynamics
between herbivores and carnivores, and for a time, fairly unoriginal
computer humor. However, as it has matured and new characters
have emerged, Bill Holbrook's narrative has switched to the evolving
interactions between animals. For example, Kell's brother Ralph
was originally a running joke; he would arrive in disguise to greet
and eat Kevin, while Kevin would calmly knock him over the fence,
or shave him into a poodle shape. However, Ralph began to develop
a personality, working at Herd Thinners doing web site work, and ultimately
having to work for Kevin after he funneled some of Herd Thinners'
online revenue into his own savings. At the same time, Kell
was having a dispute with senior management (the temporary CEO was
Kevin's scheming rabbit ex-wife). There is a very nice strip
on January 14, 2001 where Ralph and Kell share these feelings of glass-ceiling
frustration--a strip that would have seemed out of place when Holbrook
began the series.
This is not to say that there isn't any of the comic's original zaniness
left. One recent storyline unfolds when Fenton the bat flies
around with Lindesfarne, and they accidentally crash into the deorbiting
space station Mir. The quills that Mir takes off of Lindesfarne
rain down from the sky, and as it is Valentine's Day, turn into Cupid's
arrows. As a result, dozens of couples in the town below share
romantic walks on Valentine's Day. There is also a fair share
of anthropomorphism. In the early days, Kevin's computers would
always be characters themselves; the Carnivore forum computer attempted
to eat the Herbivore computer, and Kevin used a fire extinguisher
to put a stop to the flaming on his message boards. In a recent
panel, Rudy's room spit out a hairball due to his "teenage shedding."
Most of Kevin and Kell's humor, for good reason, stays framed
within the world that Holbrook created. When he strays from
this world to make an external comment about current events, it's
very hit-and-miss. For example, his December 3, 2000 strip on
stealing content from online publishers (A robber breaks into the
Dewclaws' home and claims "Appliances yearn to be free,"
before Kell eats him) is an excellent point that sums up the feelings
of many artists. However, his critique on Inauguration Day,
where George W. Bush (as a "bufferfly ballot") is sworn
in, seems very out of place. Doonesbury already corners
the market on political anthropomorphism; Holbrook's analyses of the
state of the digital world are always more on target.
All in all, Kevin and Kell is a refreshing print comic that
just happens to be on the web, and talk about the web. It's
a shame that it doesn't get more exposure than it does; its format
is perfectly suited to the wider circulation of newspaper comics (perhaps
for this reason, there have been four books released), and as Fox
Trot has shown, a technology-centric strip combined with good
family humor can be successful. In its current form, however,
it's a fun read, its characters are well-drawn, and its storylines
are always inventive. It'll put a smile on your face.