| FoxTrot | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Bill Amend |
| Website | https://www.foxtrot.com |
| Current status/schedule | Sundays-only; daily until December 30, 2006 |
| Launch date | April 10, 1988; 36 years ago (1988-04-10) |
| Syndicate(s) | Universal Press Syndicate/Universal Uclick/Andrews McMeel Syndication |
| Publisher(s) | Andrews McMeel Publishing |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Family, Pop Culture |
FoxTrot is an Americancomic strip written and illustrated byBill Amend. The strip launched on April 10, 1988, and it originally ran seven days a week. From December 31, 2006 onwards,FoxTrot has only appeared on Sundays.[1]
The strip revolves around the daily lives of the Fox family, composed of parents Andrea (Andy) and Roger and their children, Peter, Paige, and Jason. It covers a wide range of subject matter, including spoofs of pop culturefads,nerd culture, complex math, and popular consumer products.
CartoonistBill Amend states that after he submitted strips for three years, in 1987Universal Press Syndicate (UPS) offered him a contract.[2]FoxTrot was first syndicated by UPS on April 10, 1988.[3][4]
On December 5, 2006, Universal Press Syndicate issued apress release stating that Amend's strip,FoxTrot, would turn into a Sunday-only strip and the comic confirming it was on December 25 2006 just 20 days later. Amend stated that he wanted to continue doing the strip, but at a less hurried pace.[5] This news was followed by a week-long arc of the characters discussing a "cartoonist" semi-retiring to Sundays only, and what methods he would use to phase out the daily strips. The last daily strip was shown on December 30, 2006.[6] At the end of its run as a daily comic,FoxTrot was carried by more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide.[1] Since moving to one comic every week, Amend has said that it's harder to remain topical because Sunday's deadline is 30 days ahead of publication, compared with just 10-day deadlines the rest of the week.[7] Amend and fellow cartoonistStephan Pastis joked that Amend switched to a Sundays-only schedule "so he could spend 18 hours a day playingWorld of Warcraft."[8]
FoxTrot takes place with the daily lives of the Foxes, a suburban family, composed of father Roger, mother Andrea (Andy), and their children: Peter (age 16), Paige (14), and Jason (10), who live together.[9] The Fox family lives in asuburban setting. Amend has said he has never specified where the Foxes live, and he has shown them taking vacations to thedesert and variousamusement parks andcampgrounds.
Amend majored inphysics atAmherst College,[10] and his knowledge on the subject is sometimes reflected inFoxTrot's frequent inclusion of complexmathematical or physics formulae, usually written by Jason, whom Amend described as "largely an exaggerated representation of [his] own geeky nature."[7] Jason is also used to express Amend's knowledge of computer languages.[11]
Recurring characters include Jason's petiguana Quincy; Jason's friend Marcus and his classmate Eileen Jacobson; Paige's friend Nicole and her classmate Morton Goldthwait; Peter's blind girlfriend, Denise, and his friend Steve; and other friends and classmates of the children and Roger's co-workers. Like many comic strips,FoxTrot employs afloating timeline "for specific reasons and to create specific dynamics between [Peter, Paige, and Jason]."[12]
The strips have been printed in 45 different books, all byAndrews McMeel Publishing. Of the 45 books, 31 are collections and 14 are anthologies. The anthologies are composed of the two or three previous collections and include Sunday strips in color.
During the late 1990s, the character of Jason Fox was licensed toWolfram Research as a product mascot for itsmathematica software package.[13]
