Syndicated cartoonist is living his dream at last

"To become a syndicated cartoonist," said Kieran Meehan, "has been my dream since childhood." Now, with the comic strip "A Lawyer, a Doctor and a Cop" — which runs in the Deseret Morning News — Meehan is seeing his dream fulfilled.

But he didn't realize his dream until he had put in his time.

During a phone interview from his home in Glasgow, Meehan said he left school at 16 to work in an advertising agency, then he spent a decade studying art and painting through evening classes. Finally, he started producing editorial cartoons, single-panel cartoons and comic strips — for the Reader's Digest, Scotland on Sunday, King Features and the Los Angeles Times Syndicates.

For the latter, he produced a satirical strip titled "Meehan Streak," beginning in 1997.

His most recent gig was with the Glasgow Evening Times. It has been a sporadic, shoot-from-the-hip kind of existence. The 53-year-old Scottish artist said that with every comic strip, the laugh at the end is far more important than the message.

It was Jay Kennedy, editor in chief of King Features, who proposed the new strip to Meehan. "I featured the three professions in a strip I did called 'Main Street,' " said Meehan, "but Jay encouraged me to take them further. It's only been going since September. I started with 12 newspapers and now I have 19. I've had a positive reaction from the editors."

Besides the Deseret Morning News, he's talking about such newspapers as The Denver Post, The Detroit Free Press, The Tucson Citizen, The Oregonian and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Meehan feels more secure than he has with his previous work. "It takes perseverance more than anything else. Drawing was always a refuge for me, because I was so bad at everything else."

As a child, he was heavily influenced by Disney — and he also loves "Calvin and Hobbes" — although his style is quite different — "it's a realistic style. I consider it pretty sophisticated."

Will some readers be offended at the humor directed at doctors, lawyers and cops?

"I don't think so. The people who have criticized it so far are the clients of the psychiatrist or the lawyer. Most people who dislike lawyers are lawyers themselves!"

He's also not worried that he'll run out of ideas. "If that happens, it's nobody's fault but my own." Rather, he sometimes worries that the strip may not be given a chance to develop a following.