Distributed by King Features Syndicate, ‘Pros & Cons’ centres around occupational humour and the three main characters whose personal lives are often defined and coloured by their day jobs. Each day’s strip features a stand-alone joke about the world of a lawyer, a doctor or a cop.
The back story that drives the strip’s humour is the friendship between the three characters that grew out of their connection to Sophie Defoe, the sister of Detective Stan Defoe. She is the proprietor of Defoe's Diner which the main characters regularly frequent. In addition to Sophie Defoe, ‘Pros & Cons’ features Samuel Rhodes, a defence lawyer, Lyndon Peel, a psychiatrist and Detective Stan Defoe.
I’ve always been attracted to occupational humour because, as a cartoonist, you’re starting with something other than a blank page. People are familiar with doctors, lawyers and cops, but not so familiar that you can’t surprise them with a twist, tinged with reality. Despite the huge popularity of medical, legal and cop shows on TV, these professions have rarely been explored in comic strips and never together in one strip. I hope to give readers an opportunity to see the humour in three different worlds through each of these characters.