Kevin and Kell is a furry comedy webcomic strip by syndicated cartoonist Bill Holbrook. The strip began on September 3, 1995, and is one of the oldest continuously running webcomics. The comic's website states it is "The World's Longest Running Daily Webcomic".
The strip centers on the mixed marriage between Kevin Dewclaw, a rabbit, and Kell Dewclaw, a grey wolf. In their society, their major difference is their diet: Kevin is a herbivore and Kell is a carnivore. Their family includes three children: Lindesfarne, a hedgehog adopted from Kevin's first marriage; Rudy, a wolf/fox hybrid from Kell's first marriage; and their only biological child Coney, a omnivorous rabbit. The comic's plot revolves around species-related humor, satire, and interpersonal conflict.
Kevin and Kell reports receiving over three million page views each month. It was also published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for ten years. Holbrook has won honors from the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards and the Ursa Major Awards for the strip.
Setting
Kevin and Kell takes place in a town called Domain, populated entirely by animals. According to the comic, its world was created by an organization of birds, commonly referred to by fans of the comic as the "Great Bird Conspiracy" (GBC). Birds were the next species after humans to reach sapience. After humans left the planet, the birds traveled back in time to create a world without humans, and gave intelligence to fauna. However, their plan to remove the predator-prey relationship failed and as a result, the world created is similar to that of twenty-first century Earth, but with a greater likelihood of a violent death.
The society in Kevin and Kell rather than identifying people by race or social class has class distinctions based on diet such as "carnivores", "herbivores", "insectivores" and "omnivores." There is also a "Wild" where civilized animals can leave civilization and act like normal animals, walking on all fours and not wearing clothing. Predation is central to strips and jokes are made about it being commonplace.
Humans exist in an alternate Domain, and are referred to as creatures with no natural defenses. Most believe that they are fictional creatures, but a few, including the Dewclaws, know that they exist. This was developed further in 2003 by the introduction of the character Danielle, a human who enters the animal world via the Bermuda Triangle and transforms into a rabbit. However, she later has a son, Francis, who is born human.
The series features jokes on a variety of topics. Many draw satirical parallels between its world and ours, making fun and sometimes social commentary on politics, sports, society, class-snobbery, school, technology, pop culture and corporate culture. For example, in January 2008 the Predator's Union was described as going on strike, in a parody of the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike.
Main characters
The strip's main characters are the Dewclaws, a blended family as a result of an interspecies marriage. The comic's primary characters are Kevin Dewclaw, a rabbit, and his wife Kell Dewclaw, a wolf. They met in a web forum for carnivores, where Kevin was "lurking". They began to fall in love, but it was not until they met each other in person that Kell discovered Kevin was a rabbit. The relationship they developed online leads them to continue dating and eventually marry, despite knowing that they would be outcasts from the rest of society.
Originally, Kevin worked as a system operator on a herbivore web forum, although he later became the co-owner of his own internet service provider, Hare-Link. Kell worked for Herd-Thinners, a company that hunts down prey. Her job is to hunt down other animals. Originally she hunted down her own prey – any prey not eaten by her is later sold in grocery stores as "processed meat" – but she later became an executive and then CEO of the company, taking over from her old boss R.L., a ruthless wolf whose face is never seen apart from his drooling muzzle. Kell was eventually pushed out of her executive position in a bloodless coup by R.L., and started running her own start-up company "Dewclaw's Fine Meat Products" that exclusively doesn't hunt rabbits.