FoxTrot | |
---|---|
Author(s) | Bill Amend |
Website | FoxTrot.com |
Current status / schedule | Sundays-only; daily until December 30, 2006 |
Launch date | April 10, 1988 |
Syndicate(s) | Universal Press Syndicate |
Publisher(s) | Andrews McMeel Publishing |
Genre(s) | Humor, Family, Satire |
FoxTrot is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Amend. As of December 2006, FoxTrot was carried by more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide. The strip launched on April 10, 1988.
In 2006, Amend announced that he would cease drawing FoxTrot seven days a week and the final daily strip ran on December 30 of that year. Beginning the next day, and every week since then, FoxTrot has strictly appeared on Sundays.
The strip revolves around the daily lives of the Fox family, composed of parents Andrea (Andy, 42) and Roger (45), and their children, Peter (16), Paige (14), and Jason (10). It covers a wide range of subject matter, including spoofs of pop culture fads, nerd culture, and popular consumer products.
Amend states that after he submitted strips for three years, in 1987 Universal Press Syndicate offered him a contract.FoxTrot was first published on April 10, 1988, under the syndication of Universal Press Syndicate.
On December 5, 2006, Universal Press Syndicate issued a press release stating that Amend's strip, FoxTrot, would turn into a Sunday-only strip. Amend stated that he wants to continue doing the strip, but at a less hurried pace. 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 printed on December 30, 2006.
FoxTrot centers on the daily lives of the Fox family, composed of father Roger, wife Andy, and their children: Peter, Paige, and Jason, who live together in the same house. Additional characters include Jason's pet iguana Quincy; Jason's friend Marcus and his classmate Eileen Jacobson; Paige's friend Nicole and her classmate Morton Goldthwait; Peter's 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 a floating timeline, where time passes but the characters themselves never age.
The Fox family lives in a suburban setting. Several storylines in the strip have focused on summer vacation trips to various places. Early on, the Fox family spent summer vacation at "Uncle Ralph's Cabin". Later vacations by the Fox family have included trips to Hawaii, Washington D.C., the desert, various amusement parks (see Bury My Heart at Fun-Fun Mountain for an example), and campgrounds. In a series of strips though, references are made implying that they live in or near Chicago. However, Amend has denied this and claims that he has never given a particular location or name for where they live.