Keaton and Company

Keaton and Company is a web comic created by Alex "Ironklaw" Mason starring a cast of anthropomorphic characters.


 * Address: http://keaton.comicgenesis.com/
 * Ran from/to: May 2004 - December 2005

Keaton and Company (abbreviated as K&Co) is a web comic about a teenage fox named Keaton Kobbstone, his friends and their assorted antics. It was based in an unnamed Canadian city modeled loosely after Ironklaw's home town of Ottawa, Ontario. It was Ironklaw's first web comic and while it never gained the reader base that his other web comic Cody had, it ran for a year and a half before being put on permanent hiatus.

History
The comic was started by Ironklaw in high school as a project for the Writer's Craft class he was in. Originally, K&Co was called Tyko and Company, and was based around Keaton's older brother Tyko. The comic was worked on extensively after it's inception and it was decided that since the author could best relate to Keaton as a character, the comic would be renamed Keaton and Company and would focus on the younger fox.

Several characters came and went (A schizophrenic rabbit and a gay squirrel, to name a few), and different concepts and plot points were toyed with (some which never made it into the comic because it was retired before they could be drawn). For a while, it was something Ironklaw toyed with while at work to pass the time and eventually he gained enough confidence to submit it to ComicGenesis (which was called Keenspace at the time).

Over the year and a half that it ran, Keaton and Company underwent several changes in terms of style and content. The comic originally began as a 4-panel gag strip in black and white. As soon as it ended up online however, the art style was tweaked and the comic was done in full colour using markers to colour the panels. Later, the colouring was done digitally. In January of 2005, the style of the comic was changed from it's original "four-panels-and-a-punchline" format to a format that used full pages. The intent in with this format was to be able to maintain the humour of the comic, but to be able to tell Keaton's story better, as well.

After a while, working on both Keaton and Company and Cody all while holding down a job became more demanding on the author's time and he decided after a lot of careful deliberation to put K&Co on what would later become a permanent hiatus. While the comic was close to his heart, so was Cody and the latter was far more popular with his reader base. The last page was uploaded on the 16th of December, 2005. The story was, unfortunately, left unfinished.

Main Characters

 * Keaton Kobbstone - The main character of the comic. A fairly typical angsty teenager who often has difficulty conveying exactly what it is he means. At the age of 17, his brother Tyko moved out of their parents' house and Keaton was promptly abandoned by his parents, who decided to go to Mexico and never come back.


 * Kelly Smyth - A raccoon and Keaton's prize girlfriend. Coming from a relatively wealthy family, Kelly is typically considered to be not only one of the most attractive girls at Keaton's school, but also one of the nicest. She and Keaton met over the internet while playing a somewhat questionable MUCK. Eventually, they arranged to meet and hit it off immediately. Kelly has two brothers. The first is her twin brother Markus and the second is her older brother Rik who is Tyko's best friend.


 * Tyler "Tyko" Kobbstone - Keaton's flippant and humourous older brother serves also as his legal guardian and mentor, replacing his parents who abandoned his little brother.. His unusual nickname is little more than an abbreviation of his name (Ty from Tyler, and Ko from Kobbstone). Tyko does not work and goes to university. Despite this, he still maintains a nice apartment and always has more than enough money left over to tend to various needs. There is no illegality involved in this however, Tyko won the "Cash For Life" lottery.


 * Caldecott "Cott" Richards - Cott is a neurotic skunk who has been Keaton's best friend for as long as either of them can remember. Cott is 3 days younger than Keaton and as such, they often celebrate their birthdays together. Also, due to the proximity in their age, they often find themselves as rivals for various things. Their most recent rivalry surrounded Kelly Smyth. They had a running bet going to see which of them would go out with Kelly first. It was made in jest because neither of them thought they would ever actually get to go out with her. When Keaton actually won the bet, Cott went a little crazy and tried to sabotage the relationship. After that fails, Cott reveals his true colours as a complete pervert and tries to glean any information possible about Keaton and Kelly's sex life, as though trying to live vicariously through Keaton.


 * Tom Phillips - Tom is one unusual cheetah. His friends and schoolmates know him for being completely unpredictable and random. He has an incredibly foul mouth which is often mistaken for Tourette Syndrome. He has been known to stalk people (especially Cott) from atop the lockers in the halls of his school (who knows how he gets up there) and then pouncing them unexpectedly. He is random and sometimes very rude but is also one of the friendliest people Keaton knows. (Tom is based on several people the author went to school with.)


 * Markus Smyth - Kelly's twin brother. Typically thought of as an Emo kid (his raccoon "mask" doesn't help), Markus tends to keep mostly to himself. This is especially true when he gets introduced to the comic. His sister is concerned about him because he's been exceptionally recluse and won't even talk to Kelly about his problems. Markus is gay and does not really come out of his shell until he admits it to Tom and Kelly. Though it's never explicitly stated, the final page in the comic alludes to Keaton's co-worker Richard being Markus' boyfriend.


 * Richard Stevens - Richard is Keaton's co-worker at McDee's (the fast-food chain Keaton works at). He and Cott get along really poorly and tend to have foul-mouthed exchanges whenever there aren't customers in the store. Cott has, in the past, called Richard "vermin".

Supporting Characters

 * Rik Smyth - Kelly's older brother and Tyko's best friend.


 * Lucas Green - Keaton's biology teacher. Some people think he's a teacher first and a person second. He's fairly high-strung and does not seem to care for Keaton very much. He's had a rivalry with his co-worker Jean-Pierre since they were kids.


 * Jean-Pierre Beausoleil - Keaton's English teacher with the incredibly French name. He is a laid-back cocker spaniel and really supportive of Keaton, acting more like one of the students most of the time rather than as a teacher.


 * Thomas Johansen - Keaton's boss and the owner of the McDees Keaton works at. When he was younger, he was a human Furry-rights activist and runs one of the only McDee's franchises that will employ furries.


 * Marie-Claude Gerard - The daughter of the assistant-manager of Keaton's McDees location. She is a fur-o-phile (as Cott called her) and she hits on just about any furry she meets. Keaton thinks she's a goon.