May 4th, 2017

Feature Spotlight: Pros & Cons

by Tea

When Kieran Meehan’s Pros & Cons launched in 2005, it was originally entitled “A Lawyer, A Doctor, & A Cop”, which was a reference not only to the tried-and-true legacy of “walked into a bar” jokes, but also referred to the main characters of the strip: criminal defense attorney Sam Rhodes, detective Stan Defoe, and psychiatrist Lyndon Peel. It was renamed in 2008 to its shorter, punnier title.

 

Kieran began his work with King Features as a regular contributor to “The New Breed,” a comic which featured the work of many of the best up-and-coming cartoonists in rotation. After working extremely successfully as a cartoonist on “The New Breed,” Kieran was given the opportunity to create his own syndicated strip featuring the types of characters he’d experimented with in his previous cartoons.

 

 

 

The result was a comic about three acquaintances– and sometimes even friends– who know each other via tenuous professional relationships: Samuel often ends up defending the people Stan arrests, and Lyndon treats. Lyndon is occasionally called in as an expert witness on cases that both Samuel and Stan are involved in. But the real glue between their relationship is their love of Defoe’s Diner, a diner owned by Stan’s sister, Sophie.

The trio often meets there to eat, chat, and unwind, and Sophie’s no-nonsense, down-to-earth demeanor is a great foil for all three of the men when they get a little too wrapped up in their own professional worlds– she’s a great reminder that there’s a world outside work.

Pros & Cons is great for hitting workplace humor from a lot of different angles– from the psychiatrist’s couch to the interrogation room, from the courthouse to the diner counter, so many different types of work are represented, and the characters are each flawed but likeable in their own way. Pros & Cons builds ongoing relationships between the characters that draw us in for the long haul, but also relies enough on daily punchlines that it’s never hard to dive in as a new reader! Check it out today!

You can read Pros & Cons on Comics Kingdom here 
Or on the Pros & Cons website 
Follow Kieran on Twitter