Foxtrot

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FoxTrot is a daily American comic strip by cartoonist Bill Amend centering on the daily lives of the Fox family. Syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, it began syndication on April 10, 1988, and is now carried by over 1,000 newspapers world-wide. Twenty-seven FoxTrot books have also been published and have sold over two million copies to date.

About the strip

Characters in FoxTrot

Main characters

Roger

Roger Fox is the father of Paige, Jason, and Peter and the husband of Andy. Head of the household on 1254 North Elm Street, he is forty-five years old and works as a B level manager in an unspecified corporate job. He was born in Chicago and majored in English at Willot College (a parody of Williams College, the rival school of Bill Amend's alma mater, Amherst College).

Roger's incompetence and bad looks are running gags. Roger is an avid fan of golf and chess but is bad at both of them. He frequently gets caught in sand-traps and loses balls in water-traps; the one time he made a good shot it turned out to be in the opposite direction from the hole. In early strips Roger was a good chess player and frequently beat Andy, but his skills have gone down hill since. He owns an anthropomorphic chess-playing machine which goads him into playing and then beats and mocks him (in recent strips the machine has been replaced by the family computer). Roger, described by Bill Amend as “still trying to catch up with the technology of the 1970s”, is bad at using computers in general. He has spent hours trying to put a floppy into a computer that didn’t have a disk drive, must often be told where the on button is, and once caused his entire office to crash their computers while leading a computer training seminar. Roger’s boss, Mr. Pembrook, had chosen him to lead the seminar because of Roger’s excellent computer based reports, not realizing they had actually been completed by Jason. In later strips Pembrooke seems to have caught on and frequently piles assignments on Roger just before the weekend, so that Jason will edit Roger’s apparently mediocre work. Roger is no more successful in his frequent independent ventures than in his regular work. He has tried and failed to make money at day-trading, online poker-playing, and wine-making and has only succeeded in leading himself further into debt. Envious of his more successful classmates after attending a high school reunion, Roger attempted to write a novel. The resulting spy thriller, which starred himself as a flawless James Bond figure, was so bad that Andy openly wept when the main character didn't die. Roger is a bad cook (incinerating burgers and burning off his eye-brows with his attempts to barbecue) but an enthusiastic food lover. Consequently, he is mildly overweight and is frequently nagged by Andy to eat healthily and exercise. Roger is very concerned about his lack of hair and has tried wearing toupees and giving his hair pep-talks in an effort to make it grow back. Otherwise, Roger is largely oblivious to his flaws. He enters each new golf game and each new business venture as confidently as the last and mistakenly believes that his children look up to and admire him. He once used a computer program to make a photo of Andy look more attractive and, when Andy retaliated by changing a photo of him into Viggo Mortensen, couldn’t see the difference between it and himself.

Roger tries unsuccessfully to involve his family in his interests. He drags Andy to the golf course at five in the morning and forces Peter to caddy for him. He is frequently shown begging Andy, Paige, and Jason to play chess with him (the latter two sometimes demand that he pay them first). Like the father in Calvin and Hobbes, he has poor taste in vacations and insists that his unwilling family accompany him on camping trips to their Uncle Ralph’s cabin. He has also taken them camping in the desert (in August, during a record heat wave) and to the mosquito infested "Skeeter Falls" (without bothering to pack any bug spray.)

For all his faults, Roger is a loving and supportive father and much more tolerant of his children’s aggravating behavior than Andy is. He is the only member of the family who believes Peter is any good at sports and, when he found out he was actually a bench-warmer, still spent the entire game cheering for him, much to Peter and Paige’s surprise.

Andy

Andrea "Andy" Fox is the mother of Peter, Paige, and Jason and the wife of Roger. She is forty-two-years-old and was an English major in college. Earlier strips portrayed her as a freelance writer or columnist for a newspaper. Although references to her job crop up occasionally, they became more and more rare over the years until the point where she nearly appears to be a stay-at-home mother. Her children still turn to her for help on their papers and English homework.

Andy is most often the straight man to her family’s antics but her efforts to control them are a source of humor in and of themselves. She makes them eat health-food (including lima bean cobbler, tofu curry, and beetloaf) which she either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that they can’t stand. She is horrified by Peter and Paige’s procrastination on their homework and by their lack of respect for Shakespeare. A proud member of M.A.G.G. (Mothers Against Gory Games), she confiscates Jason and Peter’s violent video games and is offended that Donkey Kong does not wear pants. She refuses to “waste” money on heating and keeps the thermostat so low that it freezes soft drinks, milk, hot chocolate, electronic devices, steam rising from a cup of coffee, and oxygen. She is extremely competitive with her own mother, who is less strict and therefore much better liked by Andy’s children.

Ironically, Andy has little restraint when it comes to herself. She scarfs down Halloween candy and Christmas cookies and has become obsessed with Bitty (Beanie) Babies, the film Titanic, the game Nintendogs, and many other things. She procrastinates almost as badly as her children, playing Myst and watching soap operas when she should be writing her column.

Peter

Peter Fox is Andy and Roger’s oldest child, a 16-year-old high school junior. He almost always wears a blue and white baseball cap with the letter A on it (a possible reference to Amend's alma mater, Amherst College, or the baseball team, the Atlanta Braves), a grey sweatshirt, and blue jeans. During the summer, he works at a movie theatre, where he cleans the bathrooms, collects tickets, and often spends his entire paycheck on food from the concession stand.

Peter fantasizes about being a football/baseball/basketball star and about being the lead guitarist in a rock band like his idol, Bruce Springsteen. However, he is bad at both sports and music, getting cut from the team or made a bench warmer and tormenting his family with his horrible guitar-playing. Like his father, he is oblivious to his incompetence, believing that his coach’s insults are only jokes and brushing off his family’s attempts to stop him from playing his guitar. Peter eats constantly and drinks special milkshakes in a failed effort to gain weight. His father and mother, who are always trying to lose weight, are envious of him and Andy is frustrated that he eats food she spent hours cooking in only seconds. Other recurring gags include Peter’s frighteningly bad driving and his ongoing dandruff problem.

Peter can be callous- he once tricked Paige into thinking she had a secret admirer and could not understand why she was so hurt when she found out it was a joke. However, he can also take things deeply to heart, as evidenced by his emotion upon seeing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. In very early strips, he was unpopular with girls but late in the strip’s first year he met and began dating Denise. He is a loving and attentive boyfriend, writing her mushy Valentine’s Day poems and once sacrificing his own grade on a test to help her study. He briefly broke up with her because he thought it was unhealthy for them to date only one person during high-school, but was talked out of it by Andy and, after much groveling, Denise accepted him back.

Paige

Paige Fox is Andy and Roger’s middle child, a 14-year-old who recently became a high-school freshman. (Interestingly, neither Peter nor Jason’s grades changed when Paige’s did.) She is always portrayed with her hair in a pony-tail, although other characters sometimes suggest she change her hair-style or claim she has changed it.

Paige is a poor student and prefers shopping and chasing after boys with her friend Nicole to studying. She once borrowed a copy of “Great Expectations” from her mother to smash a spider with, rather than use and potentially damage the copy of Cosmo Girl she was reading. When she found out during a trip to Washington D.C. that the National Mall was not a shopping center, she cried. During her frequent naps, she normally dreams about a dashing Frenchman named Pierre but in real life has only succeeded in attracting the class geek, Morton Goldthwait, who she spends much of her time avoiding. She has tried learning to cook to attract boys but the food she makes is inedible and the process of cooking it fills the house with smoke. Because Paige naps in class and procrastinates almost as much as Peter does, she sometimes hires Jason to tutor her and help her with her homework (especially in geometry). However, Jason often gives her incorrect, “joke” answers, such as telling her that Shakespeare's first name was "Chet". Paige may or may not be scared of Jason’s pet iguana, Quincy. She yells at Jason for bringing Quincy near her, but seems not to mind Quincy when Jason is gone.

Jason

Jason Fox is Andy and Roger’s youngest child, a 10-year old fifth grader.

He is the smartest person in the family, and is often required to help Roger with his taxes and work assignments and Paige with her homework. He is particularly gifted with computers, having created his own operating system, repeatedly hacked into government computers, and brought down the entire internet with his “Darth Jason” virus. He has an A+++++ average in school but aggravates the teacher with his overly complicated answers and is frequently in trouble for disrupting class.

Despite his intelligence, Jason is often unrealistic. He thinks that the X-Files is a documentary and entertains many outrageous and unsuccessful money-making schemes. He has developed plans for a dinosaur-themed hotel in Las Vegas, a skyscraper comic book shop, and a Star Wars-themed amusement park complete with life-sized Death Star ride and tried to sell his mother a photocopied sketch of his own comicbook super-hero, Slugman, for over a hundred dollars. He seems to believe that his parents can afford to give him thousands of dollars if he only begs them enough. Appropriately for a child his age, he believes that Santa is real.

Jason spends much of his time tormenting his family. He frightens Paige with his iguana, tampers with Roger’s food, and tricks Peter into taking unpleasant food related bets. Jason’s other hobbies include playing video and computer games such as Doomathon and World of Warquest, and making websites about and dressing up to attend Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, and super-hero movies. In one strip, he says that he likes Wikipedia posting a picture of Paige under the warthog and rabies sections. (A feat which fans of the strip imitated.) Unlike his father and brother, Jason has no interest in sports and, despite their efforts, misunderstands basic sports concepts.

Jason is best friends with Marcus Jones. Although Jason claims to hate girls, he has a crush on Eileen Jacobson. Jason has competed with both Marcus and Eileen for good grades but lost both times because of his overconfidence (although he usually gets better grades than either of them, which is perhaps where his overconfidence comes from). He acts queasy when he sees Eileen Jacobson and hacks into government computers to delete records of his calls to her to keep it a secret he likes her.

Quincy

Quincy is Jason's pet iguana. Unlike most comic strip animals, Quincy is not usually anthropomorphic. He enjoys chewing up Paige’s things (her clothes, her Backsync Boys photo, and even her ponytail) and vomiting on the carpets and furniture. He is afraid of cats, even small kittens. He owns an Iguana Ball which he got for a present but often ends up either falling down the stairs, or getting kicked by Paige, who knows how to play soccer.

Supporting characters

Other recurring characters

Steve Riley is Peter's best friend from high school. He owns several electric guitars and an amp set that Peter sometimes borrows, much to Roger and Andy's dismay. In addition to sharing Peter's passion for microwave burritos (especially in the wee hours of the morning), Steve also has a job at Luigi's, the local pizza parlor.

Denise Russo is Peter's girlfriend. Denise's parents have been heard to speak, but have never been shown on Peter's visits to Denise's house. Denise is clearly the one in control of the relationship, and knows exactly how to get what she wants from Peter, whether it's just for him to put his arm around her or to take her out to dinner at La Maison Rouge, the most expensive restaurant in town. Peter attempted to break up with her once in late 1989 so he could see other girls and "gain experience in the field of dating," but his attempt ended in failure when he discovered he missed her. Denise is blind, which is an occasional source of humour or more serious storylines in the strip. Peter once punched one of his classmates for joking that all his dates with Denise were "blind dates." On Denise's first date with Peter, she asked to "read" his face with her hands, explaining that it was "like reading Braille, in a way." When Peter asked what it said, she replied, "R...O...B...E...R...T...R...E...D...F...O...R...D.". Jason has occasionally claimed to be Peter while speaking to her on the phone or in person, but has never managed to fool her.

Nicole is Paige's best friend, also fashion-obsessed but somewhat more level-headed than Paige. She seems to have better luck with boys than Paige (which doesn't say much), which has caused problems in their relationship a few times (such as when Nicole was the only one of the two to find a prom date).

Pierre is a perfect French lover who only appears in Paige's daydreams. Usually his appearance occurs at the same time Jason does something she would freak out at. For example, if Paige is dreaming of kissing Pierre, in actuality it might be Jason holding Quincy up to her lips. Usually, all Paige says to Pierre's antics is "Ooo, Pierre!" Pierre fans should look to pages 187-192 of Enormously FoxTrot; there is a special collection of Paige and Pierre art panels. However, Pierre has not made a new appearance since the strip of July 5, 1998.

Marcus Jones is Jason's best friend, with whom often he emulates science fiction, usually Star Trek, and bothers Paige (though he does not bother her as much as Jason does). He is the non-family character that appears the most in the strip. He also enjoys video games, and he plays Dungeons and Dragons (and Houses and Humans) with Jason on occasion. Like Jason, Marcus enjoys school and TV, dislikes being outside and doesn't seem to like girls, but his dislike of girls isn't as strong as Jason's. Marcus has four sisters (Doreen, Lisa, Lana, Cybil). His mother is a nurse, and his father is a scientist of some sort but except for Marcus himself, they are all unseen characters.

Eileen Jacobson is sometimes Jason's , sometimes semi-friend, whom he doesn't want to admit he secretly likes. A Harry Potter fan (a character Jason is loath to admit he's also a fan of), Eileen did not appear in the comic until 1995, when she got a higher grade than Jason on a math test (they got a 104 and a 102, respectively), and ended up going out for ice cream with him. Eileen also showed up when Jason and Marcus went to summer camp. She has made quite a few appearances since and Jason eventually admitted he liked her. However, Jason's constant insistence on hiding their relationship began to annoy Eileen, and as a result, she became angry at Jason and they decided to stop being a couple. It seems she still has feelings for Jason, though, since she has tricked Jason into spending time with her in exchange for something Jason wants (for example, the time Eileen made Jason be her partner on a field trip to the science museum in exchange for a holo-foil Charizard Pokémon card; or when she had him go ice skating with her). After Marcus gave her his World of Warquest screenname, she helped Jason out in the game and finally let out that she was a girl, and later admitted the whole story, all through the game. Jason acts "queasy" when he sees her and hacks government computers to delete the record of his calls to her to keep it secret that he likes her.

Morton Goldthwait is the "biggest geek in school", according to Paige. Apparently, the entire science department calls him "Sir". He has a crush on Paige and hasn't given up, despite what she thinks of him, even inviting her to a Halloween party at his house one year. He took the SATs as a freshman and was mad that he got a 1590 (one raw score below perfect at the time the strip ran). He was also a counselor at Camp Bohrmore over the summer, and ruled his cabin with an iron fist. Jason and Marcus both had the misfortune of being assigned to Goldthwait's cabin when they went to Camp Bohrmore. Until he learned of Morton's crush on Paige, Jason had planned to set Morton up on a date with Paige as revenge.

Miss O'Malley has been the teacher of Jason's and Marcus' class since 1991. She was the replacement for Jason and Marcus' former teacher, Ms. Grinchley. Considerably younger and more "on the ball" than Ms. Grinchley, she appears to have a marginally better handle on Jason as well, much to his dismay. Of course, this seems to encourage Jason to try even harder to get under her skin. Sometimes Jason succeeds (as when, since he wasn't sure which math chapter Miss O'Malley had assigned for homework, he proceeded to do a problem set from every math and science textbook he could find), and sometimes he fails (as when he brought Quincy in for show-and-tell, thinking Quincy would frighten Miss O'Malley, and she instead thought he was cute).

Katherine "Katie" O'Dell: Katie is the toddler daughter of the eccentric Mrs. O'Dell, for whom Paige often babysits. She is portrayed as being a typical hyperactive toddler who makes a fuss and spits her food out (all over Paige's face) when she is fed, and who is obsessed with "Blue's Clues." The little girl has turned out to be too much for Paige to handle on many occasions. Once, Katie overheard an expletive uttered on the "Jerzy Spaniel" (a takeoff on "Jerry Springer", the only time it was nicknamed) talk show while Paige was watching, and proceeded to say the offending word over and over, causing Paige to swear in front of Katie. Katie begins to repeat both words and Paige manages to get into major trouble with Mrs. O'Dell (she was only paid a penny for that babysitting session). On another occasion, Katie chopped up her pretty new dress with a pair of scissors while Paige was napping, and Paige ended up having to buy Katie a new dress with her own babysitting pay. She is one of the few characters that has actually aged in the strip.

J. P. Pembrook is the CEO of Roger's company. – He relies on Roger to do his million-dollar deals because of his past successes. Unbeknownst to him – they are done by a ten-year-old (Jason). We never see his face, only his hands; given his ruthless personality, that may be a good thing. He has won the Iron Fist Award and the Golden Gallows Award, according to trophies seldom seen on his desk. His first two initials seem to be a nod towards financier J. P. Morgan. He has a son, J.P. Junior, whom Roger once entertained by dressing up as a clown.

Fred is a coworker of Roger's. Fred often plays golf with him (and always wins), and Roger apparently considers Fred to be well informed about all things popular.

Other infrequent recurring characters

Grandma: Andy's mother, whom everybody loves and calls perfect, especially in comparison to Andy herself. Needless to say, this doesn't make Andy herself feel very good, and their feud has been going on since Andy was in seventh grade (when Andy would be scolded by her mother in front of her friends, and her friends took her mother's side). Grandma's real name is not known (since she is Andy's mother, her last name wouldn't be Fox, but rather Andy's maiden name). The two appeared to have made peace on their first meeting, but affairs have relapsed since then.

Phoebe Wu: A friend of Eileen. They met at Camp Bohrmore in 1997. She kept a journal for her time at camp, even saving samples of the food there. Although initially bitter rivals with Jason and Marcus, the four eventually formed an "Ultra-Secret Friendship Club" while at camp, something the two boys have had varying cause to regret since then.

Eugene Wu: Phoebe's arrogant and egotistical brother. His friends call him The Brain - or at least, they would, if he had any friends. He once arrived in Jason and Marcus's neighborhood along with his sister Phoebe and succeeded in breaking Jason, Marcus, Eileen, and Phoebe's friendship club by stealing Phoebe's camp journal and planting clues incriminating various members of the club. It is implied that an IQ test showed that Phoebe is technically smarter than Eugene, and as a result Eugene struggles to prove that he is not inferior to his sister (according to him, this is because of the margin of error on the test).

Miss Rockbottom: Paige's gym teacher. Paige once called her a "power-hungry neo-Nazi fascist tub of lard," but believes she took it as a compliment.

Dr. Ting: Paige's biology teacher, who has come to rely on her lab reports as a source of weekend entertainment. It was suggested that he and the other teachers make less than minimum wage.

Hawkins: A camper at Camp Bohrmore when Jason attended one summer. He is apparently a genius hacker and has a 50-digit-long encryption code. Jason once got one of his (apparently wide-spread) viruses.

Mr. Martini/Mr. Rawthroat: The principal of Jason and Marcus' school. He is seen very infrequently, typically when Jason is in trouble. Jason did see Mr. Martini voluntarily one time to ask what happened to his comic strip that was going to appear in the school newspaper.

Fauntleroy: A bull terrier Peter had to baby sit a few occasions. Although Fauntleroy is tiny, Peter always gets numerous bites & scratches. Peter always refers to the dog as a 'canine piranha'. However, Peter never figured that the dog was merely reacting to the smell of soap he had been using earlier (all-natural beef tallow) and therefore continued to think Fauntleroy only thought of him as a human pin cushion.

Slug Man and Leech Boy are comic book characters created by Jason in a Batman parody. Slug Man and Leech Boy are almost always fighting their arch-enemy, Paige-O-Tron, the most evil robot in the universe (although they once were said to have had an "epic battle with Gargantutron [a monstrous cookie] last summer"). Jason has tried to sell Slug Man and Leech Boy merchandise several times. He has also made Slug Man wall calendars and once wallpapered his room with Slug Man comics. There is an entire Slug Man comic (The Adventures of Slug Man: "The Final Confrontation III") at the end of the FoxTrot en masse anthology, which also features a fake advertisement for Slug Man products, all made by Jason. Bill Amend has a Slug Man computer game, based on Joust, available on his Web site (see External Links, below).

Characters who no longer appear in the strip

Linda Downer: Peter's unrequited crush before he met Denise, has not appeared since 1988. Apparently a friend of Paige.

The Geometry Demon: A small winged demon who once showed up to torment Paige during her geometry homework. Paige quickly took care of him by smashing him between the pages of her book.

Miss Grinchley: Jason and Marcus' teacher before Miss O'Malley. Despite her name, she does not seem reminiscent of the Grinch. It is implied that she used to "go bonkers" in response to Jason's antics in class (which, of course, encouraged Jason to misbehave even more). Miss O'Malley replaced Miss Grinchley after she retired in 1991.

Morton: Apparently a different person from Morton Goldthwait, he called to speak with Andy during Morton's first appearance in the strip. Paige, mistakenly believing that it was Goldthwait on the phone, freaked out when Roger told the caller that "she's right here", not realizing he was referring to Andy.

Chris Morrissey: A senior student who took Paige to the prom in 1989, despite Peter's objections. Chris is a male chauvinist, as shown by his sexual harassment towards Paige at the dance and when he's driving her home. Chris ended his behaivour after Paige used a threat of spraying mace.

Mitch Kellog: A partying senior. Mitch had a party at his house in 1989 that Paige and Nicole attended. He tried to get Paige to get stoned with a bong, do lines (of cocaine), and go to bed with him, but Paige turned him down ("Mitch, I'd rather sleep with a dead sewer rat than you."), eventually having to punch him in the nose.

Larry: The janitor at Jason's school. He had to help Jason clean up his desk after drawing a Slug-Man cartoon on it, but before they cleaned it, Jason had Larry help him photocopy the cartoon.

Skip Riley: Roger's summer intern in 1990, the ultimate sycophant, who even called Roger his "light and inspiration", before jumping ship to become an intern for Charles Diggs, the head of Roger's department. The amount of time Roger and Skip spent together made Peter intensely jealous, but Roger didn't realize until after Skip had left him how much he'd hurt Peter's feelings.

Mr. Kimpshaw: The vice principal of the high school that Peter and Paige attend. He showed up one time when Peter punched Mike Barnes' nose to bleeding (in response to Mike teasing Peter about Denise's blindness). He scared the tar out of Peter by telling him that part of the punishment for his violent action would entail Kimpshaw calling Peter's parents.

Squishy and Squashy, the Talking Roadkill Brothers: The titular characters of a comic strip that Jason did for his school newspaper in 1992, with the intent of making merchandising profit off of it. They were never actually seen, but Jason has revealed that they were secretly vampires. Unfortunately for Jason, censorship prevented the strip from running.

Mindy: A girl in Peter's English class who wanted to go to the school's holiday formal in December 1993, seeing how Denise was going to visit her grandmother. Peter, having already paid for his tux, limo, and dinner reservations, was torn between taking Mindy out and not hurting Denise's feelings. In the end, Mindy ended up falling in love with Steve.

Gretchen: Miss O'Malley's unseen boa constrictor, whom Jason wrote a Valentine for in 1994. Andy stumbled upon Jason's Valentine for her and thought Gretchen was a girl in Jason's school. Upon finding out that Gretchen was a snake, Andy told Jason that she thought Gretchen was a human girl, to which Jason replied, "EEW! GROSS! ICK! What kind of a weirdo do you think I am?!"

Tommy Smith: A boy in Paige's biology class who took her to the school dance in 1994. It took him a long while to ask her because he is too shy. Nevertheless, he is perhaps Paige's only successful date.

The Tamagrouchy: Paige received a Tamagrouchy from her father in August 1997. It is similar to a Tamagotchi which requires feeding and care, except that it is has a grouchy personality. It frequently insults Paige and actually has conversations with people, which is much more advanced than a normal Tamagotchi. It has extremely complicated instructions (to give it a glass of water, you must press buttons A and C together, then hold button B for three seconds, then tap button C twice, then press button A, then button C, then press button B, then do the whole process backward). When Paige threatened to neglect it and let it die, it claimed that unlike Tamagotchis, Tamagrouchys become immortal if neglected. Paige eventually was so annoyed by the toy that she gave the Tamagrouchy to Jason to reprogram, with somewhat disastrous results for Paige.

Mrs. DeFalco: Mrs. DeFalco only appears in one 1999 strip where Jason and Marcus are looking at the candy that everybody is buying for halloween so they know where to trick or treat. Jason says to Marcus, "Looks like Mrs. DeFalco is loading up on mini snickers and smarties."

Places in FoxTrot

The Fox Family home is located at 1254 North Elm Street, with the specific city a mystery, as characters always refer to their home as "Suburbia." Older comics suggest the family lives in Kansas City, Missouri, as Peter and Roger are big Chiefs fans (now any desired team). However, newer comics suggest the family lives nearby Chicago, as Roger uses that airport for business trips, and Andy was given Chicago Bulls tickets as a gift once. Andy also went to Lollapalooza with Paige during her mid-life crisis in the early 90's. Some fans have suggested that the Foxes live in Hillsdale, Illinois (a suburb of the Quad Cities) or Hillsdale, New Jersey, as an early strip shows Paige and Andy shopping at a certain Hillsdale Shopping Center (the Hillsdale theory is supported by the fact that the high school sports teams have an "H" somewhere on their uniforms). However, when Bill Amend was asked about it, he said:

"I've never established a town name for where they live. The mall sign was meant as an homage to the Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo, CA, where I used to shop as a teenager."

Uncle Ralph's Cabin is a typical camping spot for the Fox family. The location of the cabin is never explicitly stated in the comics, even relative to where the Foxes live. However, one could assume it is fairly isolated, because the family seems to have a long drive and one time when Roger locked his keys in the car, Paige worried they would be stuck forever since they couldn't contact anyone.

Fun-Fun Mountain is an amusement park. It almost seems to be a parody of Disneyland (obviously, "mountain" is to "universe" as "land" is to "world", so this is probably a parody of the smaller of the two American Disney resorts, and Fun Fun Universe is of the bigger). There is a Hall of Vice Presidents exhibit (similar to the Hall of Presidents), and a sign in the park labels a mosquito the "Mickey Mosquito". There are roller coasters, including the Drop-O-Death, a log ride, whirling coffee cups, and a fun house. The food is extremely expensive. For example, Andy bought a snow cone for $20.00.

Fun-Fun Universe is another amusement park that seems to be a parody of a real one, and in this case it is the Walt Disney World Resort. There is a hotel that is connected to the actual amusement park by unirail, a glass-bottomed boat, and a "sky-tube." The rides mentioned include a log ride and several roller coasters.

A very important roller coaster in Fun-Fun Universe is the Voodoo Mountain Bobsled Ride. The ride is supposedly closed down every morning, but only for show. That way, riders will be "scared to death not only by the ride, but by the dread that the thing wasn't built very well." Peter believes this theory, assuming that what looks to be a worker welding the track is animatronic. Like Fun-Fun Mountain, the food for sale at the park is very expensive. Roger's Chili Fun-Fun Burger and fries cost him $41.00.

The Fox family once went on a two-week camping trip to Cactus Flats, a desert community in Arizona. According to a pamphlet, Cactus Flats was the home of the Muckatoo Indian tribe until the whole tribe died of heat stroke. The desert is also home to various snakes (including rattlesnakes), lizards, scorpions, spiders such as tarantulas and black widows, and mountain lions as well as mosquitos.

On another one of the family's camping trips, the Fox's camped at Skeeter Falls. According to Roger, Skeeter Falls is an eight-hour drive from their house. It is 100 miles (160 km) away from the nearest city and the grounds are 400,000 acres (1600 km²) large. The falls gets their name from the mosquitoes that live there. Skeeter Falls has the most mosquitoes per unit area of any place in the world during August. There is also a geyser that erupts every 24 hours, at 3:38 am, as well as rivers, mountains, and "200-foot" (60 m) trees.

Camp Bohrmore is an eight week co-ed summer science camp. The camp contains waterfalls, hiking trails, a redwood grove, a T-1 line in every cabin, computers, lasers, and a paleontology lab. This is also where Jason and Marcus met Phoebe and Eugene Wu. Morton Goldthwait served as camp counselor to Epsilon cabin which included Jason, Marcus, Hawkins, and Eugene. At camp, Eileen and Phoebe would often play tricks on Marcus and Jason, such as luring them into poison-ivy infested fields, putting snails in their bedsheets, and putting pepper in their pudding cups. However, at the end of camp, they made a truce with Eileen and Phoebe, and eventually joined their friendship club.

Boonhurst is a small town, location unknown. Roger once went there to finish a business deal on orders from Pembrook. It is evidently a less-developed city, as Roger asked Pembrook if they had finished paving the runway yet. When Roger missed his flight to Boonhurst, he was forced to go through several connections; from Chicago to Dallas to Los Angeles to Atlanta to Portland to Denver to Charlotte to Boonhurst.

Boonhurst is likely a reference to the town of Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters of Wal-Mart.

The Isles of Fun-Fun Caribbeanny Resort is an artificial Caribbean resort, probably a parody of the real-life Caribbean Beach Resort in Walt Disney World, utilizing reproduced island life with "state-of the-art water park technology." The resort has special Caribbean-themed rooms, such as the Limbo Suite, which features a low ceiling, and Calypso music in the elevators. There are many Caribbean-esque activities as well, such as snorkeling, body boarding, voodoo doll puppetry, and steel drum lessons. In fact, the resort even schedules fake hurricanes from time to time.

However, many aspects of the resort are fake (hence the word "Caribbeanny"). The ocean is just a big pool (complete with chlorine) with walls painted to resemble the ocean, and the steel drum music at the beach consists of a staff person playing the synthesizer.

Popular culture

In addition to typical "family" humor, the strip has many stories built around fandom, nerdiness and popular culture. The characters (especially Andy and Jason) frequently have new obsessions or interests which reflect the time period at which the strip was published. Andy, for example, has had obsessions with collecting "Bitty Babies" (Beanie Babies, later), the movie Titanic, the Nintendo DS game Nintendogs, and her Mango-Kiwi-colored iFruit computer in the past.

Similarly, Jason, as a stereotypical nerd, loves and frequently quotes Star Wars, Star Trek, Spider-Man, the X-Files, The Lord of the Rings and has tried to make 'remakes' of four popular movies, The Blair Witch Project, Jurassic Park, Finding Nemo and King Kong. He has also attempted to make an improved version of the popular computer games Half-Life and Myst, a competitor to Microsoft Operating System Windows 98, and sent in suggestions to Lucasfilm to digitally insert him into the Star Wars Special Edition Trilogy. He has also created a "Darth Jason" computer virus, as a product for his "Jasonzonbayhoodotcom" internet stock binge. The news network CNN is also mentioned in the strip, only rarely.

Scientific references

Amend majored in physics at Amherst College, and this is reflected in FoxTrot's frequent inclusion of complex mathematical or physics formulae, usually written by Jason Fox. The formulae are correct, though oddly flavored; Jason often uses them to describe bizarre situations, or, more rarely, they are school assignments for Peter Fox. Amend also uses Jason to express his knowledge of computer languages in much the same way that he uses physics formulae (once Roger asked for a cup of java to start his day and Jason gave him about 20 pages of code). Both these elements add a layer of superfluous complexity to the strip, and juxtaposed with the odd circumstances in which they appear, give FoxTrot a uniquely surreal air.

Passage of time

Similar to most comic strips, the characters do not age. This leads to amusing situations if a fan reads earlier strips. For example, an early 1990 storyline involves Paige making an effort to go from being a "child of the 80's" to a "woman of the 90's". As she is still 14, she now would have been born by 1991/1992.

There was an in-joke on this subject in a strip published shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which Andy told Jason that Roger had donated blood even though he was scared of needles because "We all have to grow up, kiddo." Jason replied, "Whoa, did I stumble into 'For Better or For Worse'?", referring to a comic where the characters actually do grow up.

The comic strips change along with the seasons; the kids go back to school in September, the family celebrates important holidays on their respective dates, and one will find the characters tanning themselves or throwing water balloons during the summer.

In the earlier strips, the family would only live in the present-tense: that is, the family would only refer to the present — or, as in the case of a storyline, the very near future — but never past events (save for once when Jason remarked "you're still mad about the car, aren't you?," which referred to an earlier time when he inadvertently wrecked the car playing "Mad Max"). However, more recent storylines have broken this "rule", most notably when referring to Jason's summer at Camp Bohrmore. In cases where the past must be referenced it's always "last year", even if the referenced storyline happened more than a year ago.

Parodies and subtleties

Cartoonists and Comics

If one observes closely, one will notice that in any scene where a character is reading a newspaper, there are headlines that say things such as "Cartoonist Delivers Triplets in Elevator" or "Cartoonist to join NASCAR," or "Cartoonist to direct ." This is usually accompanied by a caricature of Bill Amend himself. There are also times where one can see a Calvin and Hobbes comic on the back of the newspaper.

In scenes with large crowds, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes can often be seen in the background. In some scenes, characters from various comics can be seen in the background. On one occasion, pictures of Cathy, Dilbert, and Calvin and Hobbes were seen as pictures above a staircase, or on a picture frame; sometimes, they are even shown for what they really are, as comics in the newspaper. In one comic, Jason and Marcus are shown in a store called "Calvin's Hobbies", an obvious reference to Calvin and Hobbes.

On another occasion, Peter is shown wearing a Calvin and Hobbes T-Shirt, at a time when Bill Watterson was having licensing conflicts with his publisher.

In addition, in many older strips, the characters of Foxtrot can be seen reading "Luther and Locke" comic strips, a reference to the naming scheme used by Bill Waterson for Calvin and Hobbes (Luther and Calvin were both religious figures, and Hobbes and Locke were both philosophers.)

Another occasion, Jason had built a snowman with a cannonball shot through him. (In Calvin & Hobbes, Calvin often builds snowmen going through painful moments like being eaten or buried.) There are two other snowmen, depicting Calvin & Hobbes, building more snowmen. Jason says, "This way it's an homage, not a ripoff." Also, in a few strips, Andy gets obsessed with Dilbert, saying his success is because it's a 3-panel.

Theaters

In the cinema where Peter works you can also often see names such as Trek Wars. Other signs on walls have been seen to change message between panels. For example, in the first panel of a cafeteria scene, a paper sign in the background reads, "No food fights!" In the next panel, it reads, "Really!" In the last panel, it reads "We mean it!" The week came out, Peter dressed up as Garfield to promote the movie. Often signs in the theater are edited to have a humorous effect (such as "Mission Impossible 2: The Comic Strip Deadline").

Foods

Many products seen in the strip have altered names, such as "Chips McCoy" (Chips Ahoy!), "Brucy Juice" (Juicy Juice), "Roughels" (Ruffles), "Toridos" (Doritos, Tostitos), "Tofu Helper" (Hamburger Helper), "Cap'n Sucrose" (Cap'n Crunch), "Fax Mactor" (Max Factor), The "Humbler" (Hummer), and "Arper Shimage" (Sharper Image). The Foxes often get their pizza from "Dominics'" (Domino's Pizza, in which a few comics call it its real name) or "Luigi's" (Mario's Pizza). In one strip, Peter is eating from a bag of "Bugles," but in the next panel, the bag changes to "Trumpets," and in the last panel, the bag reads "Flugelhorns."

The fast-food restaurant that the Foxes occasionally patronize has two M's back-to-back, parodying the McDonald's logo. Roger is not allowed to go to "Costclub" (Costco, Price Club, Sam's Club) by himself, because he always buys way too much there.

Magazines

Most of the magazines shown in the comic strip are parodies of real magazines or magazine genres. For example "Fourteen" magazine (Seventeen), "Gover Cirl" (Cover girl), "Thyme" (Time), "Guy's Life" (Boys' Life), "Chick" (except with a baby bird on the cover), and (at least for a while) "Illustrated Sports" (Sports Illustrated), or, most recently "Vōg" ("Vogue").

Games

Many video games in the comic strip are combinations of two different names. Examples include Doomathon (a combination of first-person shooter games Marathon and Doom), Duke Quakem (a combination of Quake and Duke Nukem), Grand Zombie Auto 3 (Grand Theft Auto and Zombie Rally 3), Iron Mysticus (Iron Helix, Myst, and Lunicus), "Blizzardbund" (Blizzard Entertainment, Broderbund), "World of Warquest" (World of Warcraft and EverQuest), and "Zeldakong" (The Legend of Zelda and Donkey Kong). The same occurs with Jason's video game systems, his Jupiter-64 Gamestation (a combination of the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64, and the Sony PlayStation) and GameStation 2 (a combination of PlayStation 2 and GameCube). Note: The controller of the Gamestation 2 still resembles that of a Nintendo 64. (Ironically, earlier strips had Jason playing the actual Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES systems, with some games having altered names such as Mortal Karnage, Primal Instinct, and Super Earthworm Mario Country 3, while other games had their real names featured in the strip, such as the Super Mario Bros. series and Myst. Other examples of real names used in the strip are the Nintendo DS, its game Nintendogs, the Diablo series, and Star Wars Battlefront).

Andy has also joined the organization MAGG (Mothers Against Gory Games), not so much out of concern for the level of violence in the games Jason and Peter played but to make sure they stopped altogether. The list of video games approved by MAGG included such titles as "Nice City," "Pacifist-Man," "Ms. Pacifist-Man," "Eternal Lightness," and "Resident Good" (takeoffs of, respectively, "," "Pac-Man," "Ms. Pac-Man," "Eternal Darkness," and "Resident Evil").

Bands

Occasionally Paige talks about a band she adores called "The BackSync Boys," which is a combination of the boy bands Backstreet Boys and N'Sync. The strip also usually mentioned both bands as a whole. Another strip shows a poster in her room of a band named "Henson" (Hanson and the Muppets--via Jim Henson), portraying three long-haired teen-age Muppet style boys. Peter also occasionally listens to Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, and Guns 'n' Roses.

Other subtleties

The first one of these 'subtleties' to appear was a clothes dryer which had the brand name "Dry Queen 1000" on it. There is also a partial view of a bottle of bleach, and readers can see "OX" on the label, suggesting the product is Clorox. The first subtlety to be shown in a color Sunday strip appeared April 12, 1988 in the "throwaway panel" identifying the strip. It shows Jason eating "Honey Skulls" (Honeycomb) cereal.

Peter's posters in his room also are often edited to read things like "Baywitch", taken from the television show Bewitched and Baywatch (almost all of Peter's posters are a parody of Baywatch).

Also, in one early Sunday strip, The strip appears to break through the fourth wall, because on the back of the newspaper Roger is reading, the first 2 panels of that same strip can clearly be made out.

Computers in FoxTrot

The first computer to appear in the FoxTrot strip was an old Apple II used mostly by Jason to play "Star Trek" video games. By 1991, Andy bought a new computer which although not specifically named, was probably a Mac Classic II from the design and the time. The next computer "upgrade" is silent; there are no strips referring to the family buying a new computer. It is probably a Power Mac of some sort, modular, with a CPU and a monitor, and is "three years old" by the time the family opts for a new one. Again, this computer is not named, but many strips refer to it as an Apple computer. (Bill Amend is a vocal fan of Apple computers.)

The iFruit

The Fox family's current computer is an iFruit (based on the original Apple iMac), a computer Andy purchased in a 1999 storyline after Roger's disastrous attempt at earning a living through online trading ended with him selling the family's old computer.

Jason originally wanted a computer with a fancy new 3D chip, dual processors, and 'gobs' of RAM, but Andy convinced him to accept an iFruit. The iFruit can talk, criticize font selection and even change the wallpaper (of the room). Though initially mortal enemies with the geeky Jason due to its emphasis on ease of use, Jason grows attached to it, especially after matching color schemes (or "flavors", with the Fox family's iFruit being mango-kiwi) persuades his mother to buy all manners of peripherals, such as scanners and CD-ROM burners. The iFruit has also been upgraded and taken apart by Jason many times. However, the iFruit cannot handle most of the games Jason wants to play (another feature of the iMac and Macintosh computers is not being able to play Windows video games, such as Half-Life 2, or Doom 3), and wanted to get a Windows computer. The iFruit once beat Roger in chess 250,000 times in a row; the one time Roger beat it, Andy was convinced to call the repair center. Evidently, it is made of bullet-proof plastic (just like the original G3 iMac on which it is based), and is durable enough that even Roger cannot damage it, although in one strip he pushed it off the desk when Andy told him that it needed "backing up."

FoxTrot books

Collections

Beginning with Death By Field Trip, the size and shape of the regular collections changed to accommodate a new Sunday strip layout. The books were also made smaller (and less expensive) to give a larger gap between anthologies (see below). They (as well as the anthologies) are published by Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Title	Cover	Publication Date	ISBN
FoxTrot		January 1, 1989	ISBN 0836218566
Pass the Loot		January 1, 1990	ISBN 0836218159
Black Bart Says Draw		January 1, 1991	ISBN 0836218698
Eight Yards Down and Out		January 1, 1992	ISBN 0836218841
Bury My Heart at Fun-Fun Mountain		March 1, 1993	ISBN 0836217063
Say Hello to Cactus Flats		August 1, 1993	ISBN 0836217209
May The Force Be With Us, Please		March 1, 1994	ISBN 0836217411
Take Us To Your Mall		March 1, 1995	ISBN 0836217802
The Return of the Lone Iguana		April 1, 1996	ISBN 0836210271
At Least This Place Sells T-Shirts		September 1, 1996	ISBN 0836221206
Come Closer, Roger, There's a Mosquito on Your Nose		August 1, 1997	ISBN 0836236564
Welcome to Jasorassic Park		April 1, 1998	ISBN 0836251830
I'm Flying, Jack ...I Mean, Roger		September 1, 1999	ISBN 0740700049
Think iFruity		February 1, 2000	ISBN 0740704540
Death By Field Trip		April 13, 2001	ISBN 0740713914
Encyclopedias Brown and White		September 6, 2001	ISBN 0740718509
His Code Name Was The Fox		April 1, 2002	ISBN 0740721917
Your Momma Thinks Square Roots are Vegetables		April 11, 2003	ISBN 0740732994
Who's Up for Some Bonding?		August 1, 2003	ISBN 0740738062
Am I a Mutant, or What!		April 1, 2004	ISBN 0740741322
Orlando Bloom Has Ruined Everything		March 31, 2005	ISBN 0740749994
My Hot Dog Went Out, Can I Have Another?		August 1, 2005	ISBN 0740754416
How Come I'm Always Luigi?		April 1, 2006	ISBN 0740756834

Anthologies

Originally, the anthologies were made up of the previous two smaller collections, with color Sunday strips (as opposed to black and white in the smaller books). Starting with Assembled with Care, the anthologies are made up of the three previous smaller books.

Title	Cover	Date	ISBN	Notes
FoxTrot: The Works		January 1, 1990	ISBN 0836218485	Includes comics from FoxTrot and Pass the Loot.
FoxTrot en masse		June 1, 1992	ISBN 0836218973	Includes comics from Black Bart Says Draw and Eight Yards Down and Out.
Enormously FoxTrot		September 1, 1994	ISBN 0836217594	Includes comics from Bury My Heart at Fun-Fun Mountain and Say Hello to Cactus Flats.
Wildly FoxTrot		September 1, 1995	ISBN 0836204166	Includes comics from May The Force Be With Us, Please and Take Us To Your Mall.
FoxTrot Beyond a Doubt		March 1, 1997	ISBN 0836226941	Includes comics from The Return of the Lone Iguana and At Least This Place Sells T-Shirts.
Camp FoxTrot		September 1, 1998	ISBN 0836267478	Includes comics from Come Closer, Roger, There's a Mosquito on Your Nose and Welcome to Jasorassic Park.
Assorted FoxTrot		November 1, 2000	ISBN 0740705326	Includes comics from I'm Flying, Jack... I Mean, Roger and Think iFruity.
FoxTrot: Assembled with Care		November 2, 2002	ISBN 0740726641	Includes comics from Death By Field Trip, Encyclopedias Brown and White, and His Code Name Was The Fox.
Foxtrotius Maximus		September 1, 2004	ISBN 0740726641	Includes comics from Your Momma Thinks Square Roots are Vegetables, Who's Up for Some Bonding?, and Am I a Mutant, or What!.
Jam-Packed FoxTrot		August 1, 2006	ISBN 0740760408	Includes comics from Orlando Bloom Has Ruined Everything, My Hot Dog Went Out, Can I Have Another?, and How Come I'm Always Luigi?.

Other languages

FoxTrot is translated into many other languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish.

Merchandising of FoxTrot

FoxTrot books may be found on Amazon.com [here], and assorted items such as clocks, cards, mugs, and other items may be purchased at Cafepress.com [here].

During the late 1990s, the character of Jason Fox was licensed to Wolfram Research as a product spokesman for its Mathematica software package.

External links

''Links last verified on January 24, 2006

• [Foxtrot.com]
• [Universal Press Syndicate FoxTrot Page]
• [Bill Amend's Homepage]
• [FoxTrot Comic Page]
• [Biography of Bill Amend]

 

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