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Kevin and Kell – A Silver Anniversary

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Kevin and Kell began 25 years ago as a five day a week online comic strip.
The first daily was September 4, 1995 (below).

But Bill Holbrook, being Bill Holbrook, began the strip with a Sunday page on September 3, 1995:

Bill was, at the time, doing his On the Fastrack (1984) and Safe Havens (1988) when he discovered that he had Thursdays free. So he created a third comic strip and has been doing the three ever since.

Bill explains the Kevin and Kell relationship:

Kevin Kindle the rabbit and Kell Dewclaw the wolf met in an online chat room. After falling head over heels for each other, they decided to meet in person. It wasn’t until then that they realized they were from separate ends of the food chain.

However, the relationship they’d developed online overcame Kevin’s instinct for self-preservation, and Kell’s heart melted from such a demonstration of trust.

They eventually married knowing good and well they would be outcasts. They settled in the suburb of Domain, which borders both a large metropolitan area and an uncharted region known simply as The Wild.

Along for the ride was Kevin’s adopted hedgehog daughter Lindesfarne from his previous marriage and Kell’s wolf cub son Rudy from hers. A year later, Kell gave birth to Coney, the carnivorous baby bunny who inherited Kevin’s big ears and Kell’s meaty appetite.

Eventually Bill expanded the strip to every day of the week
when a Sunday page began appearing regularly on July 9, 2000.

The online strip even managed to get on the print comics page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, running there from January 12, 2004 to January 4, 2014.

Bill proudly proclaims some firsts for the webcomic.
First Syndicated Cartoonist to Launch a Webcomic,
First Webcomic to Make Money,
First Webcomic With a Paperback,
and what we are celebrating today:
Longest Continually Running Daily Webcomic.

As seen above Bill is celebrating the anniversary this week at the Kevin and Kell website.

That website has the complete archive of the comic strip,
and the strip has been collected in a hard copy series.
Congratulations Bill!

Does this make Kevin a silver rabbit, and Kell a silver fox?

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Comments 3

  1. I had almost forgotten about “Kevin & Kell” and now you’re making me feel really old. Back in college I used to have to walk (10 miles, uphill both ways) across campus to the computer lab to connect to internet in order to read web comics (I was more of a “Sluggy Freelance” fan back then.)

  2. Thanks so much for mentioning the milestone! I really appreciate it!

  3. I’ve been reading Kevin and Kell since it began. Or at least whenever I could catch it on the new-fangled, dial-up, non-aol Internet of 1995. Even after a quarter of a century, K&K continues to be fresh, delightful, entertaining and subversive. Back in those days, we communicated by letters made of paper, and what amazed me was that, even when I wrote to the author from here in Australia, he always diligently wrote back to me, a no-one, and made me feel special. From that stage, he had a loyal fan in me, and I resolved to do the best I could, write the funniest jokes and draw the funniest pictures I could. Twenty-five years later, as much as I may have grown, I’m still setting my standards in the wake of this marvellous trail blazer. Thank you, Bill Holbrook, for this and all your other enduring masterpieces.

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