FoxTrot
FoxTrot is a daily American comic strip by cartoonist Bill Amend, which began syndication on April 10, 1988. It centers around the daily life (which isn't all that normal) of the Fox family. In addition to typical "family" humor, the strip has many stories built around fandom, nerdiness and Internet culture. It is syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate.
Similar to most comic strips, the characters do not age. Peter Fox will always be 16; Paige will always be 14; and Jason will always be ten years old. 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 80s" to a "woman of the 90s". As she is still 14, she now would not have been born by 1991.
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. 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 reference storyline happened more than a year ago.
Characters
The Fox family
The Fox family lives at 1254 North Elm Street, the specific city being a mystery. Characters themselves 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. This would also match the publisher of the FoxTrot books, Andrews McMeel, which is based in Kansas City. However, the newer comics (starting with "Think iFruity") would suggest the family is in Chicago, as that is the airport Roger uses for business trips. Also, a previous strip, in which Andy attended a Chicago Bulls game and met Michael Jordan provides additional evidence. It has also been suggested by fans that the Foxes live in Hillsdale, Illinois (a suburb of the Quad Cities), as in an early strip Paige and Andy were shopping at Hillsdale Shopping Center (the Hillsdale theory is supported by the fact that the high school sports teams have an "H" somewhere on their uniforms). Peter is also a big fan of the Boston Red Sox, which could mean the Fox family lives in New England.[The first published strip, which can now be found in the anthology Foxtrot The Works gives an address of North Elm street.]
Roger Fox File:Http://www.amureprints.com/documentation/characters files/foxtrot roger.gif is the father and a not-too-bright corporate slave. He is 45 years old and was born in Chicago. He attended Willot College as an English major (a parody of Williams College, the rival school of Bill Amend's alma mater, Amherst College). Roger is a fan of sports and chess, though any time he attempts to play either of them, he finds himself either breaking bones (sports) or losing (chess).[Though this was not the case in earlier strips] He often indulges in foods of all kinds (despite the dubious cuisine Andy produces, he remains perpetually overweight). Once described as "still trying to catch up with the technology of the 1970s," Roger can practically destroy a computer just by touching it and when he tries to barbecue, all too often he ends up burning the food (and himself). In the July 2, 2000 strip, the Fox children actually watched Roger grill their Fourth of July dinner as their fireworks show. His views on a good family vacation are quite similar to those of Calvin's father from Calvin and Hobbes; Roger is the only member of the family who insists on going out on camping trips. Every couple years, he takes the family to Uncle Ralph's cabin. All the other years they go on some other wacky vacation. In addition, he is an infomercial addict, often buying into the schemes of greedy sellers. He once bought a $200 pamphlet on how to get rich from "Willy Millions" (a supposed parody of Matthew Lesko). Though he's not an idiot, Roger is probably the primary cast member who is most oblivious to the world around him. Nonetheless, he has managed to be the family's primary breadwinner from day one.
Andrea "Andy" Fox is a stay-at-home mother; earlier strips showed her employed as a freelance writer or columnist for the newspaper, but nowadays she mostly just monitors her unwieldy brood. When she was an English major in college, someone used to slip anonymous love notes under her door. Her paramour, unfortunately, "turned out to be a real nerd" —but she married him anyway. She is now 42 years old and the center of the household: without her, it would (and did) "collapse in a day or two." More often than not, Andy cooks absurd "health-food" meals, such as lima bean cobbler or tofu curry. At the other end of the food spectrum, she has a monster sweet tooth and has absolutely no problem gobbling up the snacks Roger and the kids try to hold on to. A miser when it comes to heating, she insists on keeping the thermostat extremely low during the winter months, often low enough to freeze soft drinks, milk, hot chocolate, electronic devices, and oxygen. For the most part, Andy keeps the family grounded and acts as a straight man to their antics, although she has been known to crack under pressure, usually during the course of visits from her mother. In one strip Andy competes with her mother thinking that she is the world's largest "Wannabe". Many of her storylines center around new obsessions—collecting "Bitty Babies," the movie Titanic, the Nintendo DS game Nintendogs, and her Mango-Kiwi-colored iFruit computer. For a week or so, Andy went on her mid-life crisis by getting the feeling of turning 42. She went on a shopping spree with Paige that ended up not going too well.
Peter Fox, the oldest child at 16, is a junior in high school. He habitually procrastinates on schoolwork until the last minute ("I should start on my book report. Ah, there's always tomorrow. I suppose I'll need a book. How late is the library open?" or working on an essay that was due for last semester). He is a sports fan and likes to pretend he is a football/baseball/basketball star, although in truth he is generally relegated to bench-warming, if he makes the team at all. Peter also entertains fantasies of becoming the lead guitarist in a rock band one day like his idol, Bruce Springsteen. Whenever Peter plays his guitar, the rest of the family is unhappy for two reasons. Peter is very loud when he plays music, often shattering dishes and windows. The volume of his music is even worse when one considers that he is not very good at playing the guitar, and his singing isn't much better. He is capable of ingesting massive amounts of food, but never gains a pound. In fact, Peter will sometimes eat to try to gain weight. Once he ate pizza for six hours, gained 50 pounds, and then lost it overnight. Peter usually works a summer job at the local movie theater as a janitor and ticket collector, although he often blows his entire paycheck on food from the concession stand. Peter met his girlfriend Denise in the comic's first year and has been dating her ever since. Early on, his tendency to get the "wandering eye" and still lust after other girls caused a good deal of friction between him and the hotly jealous Denise, but he appears to have settled down since. He wears a blue and white baseball cap with the letter A on it which appears to be for Amend's alma mater, Amherst, a grey sweatshirt, and blue jeans almost daily. Despite his typical adolescent-macho fantasies and fixations, Peter also shows (oft-suppressed) signs of sensitivity (such as his devotion to Denise, his blind girlfriend) and being a good student.
Paige Fox is the 14-year old, junk-food-craving (though not to the extent of her mother), style-obsessed sister and a freshman in high school. She is always depicted with a ponytail. It has been suggested in the strip many times that Paige get a new hairstyle. Sometimes these suggestions follow another character's antics, such as when Peter blew bubble gum in Paige's hair or when Quincy bit her ponytail. When Amend was asked if it would happen, he said probably not, because no one would recognize Paige otherwise. Paige can get herself prom dates, though generally they are not the popular "Hot" guys at school, dates including geeky Morton Goldthwait (who Paige does not like; yet when trying to avoid Goldthwait's request to go to the prom, she showed anger when he didn't ask). Another one-time prom date was a sleezy junior by the name of Micheal, who attempted to make out with Paige before being threatened with MACE, and a boy in her science class who was cute and also liked her. In a recent strip, she remarked that Steve was cute. Most of her jokes center around the idiosyncrasies of high-school popular culture, as well as Jason's attempts to annoy her (which mostly end with her beating him up). Her frequent attempts to cook only yield charcoal and smoke. Unlike Peter, Paige does not have a single object of her affections, though her naptime dreams often feature a dashing French hunk named Pierre (though in one strip her "debate" whether to take Spanish or French for high school consisted of a dream that had a brawl between Pierre and a Spanish equivalent named Juan Carlos). However, Pierre has not appeared in the strip for a while. Math - especially word problems - is the bane of Paige's existence, and she is frequently depicted in the strip struggling with her geometry homework. Paige often has to ask Jason for help with her math, but unless she agrees to pay him a hefty sum for it, Jason will often give her incorrect or "joke" answers on purpose.
Jason Fox is a 10-year old, incredibly brilliant little brother with a massive ego. He likes to refer to himself as " Jason the great," " Jason the wonderful and magnificent," or many other variations. Early in the strip's life, his personality was somewhat different in that, while he was still intelligent, he hated school like any other normal 10-year-old, and his normal grades would be in the A-A+ range. Presently in the strip, he worships school and spends labor day weekend pacing around the house, and if he ever got a grade lower than an A++++, he would probably kill himself (as he threatened to do in a September, 1999 strip). His life mission appears to be to annoy Paige, which often results in her beating him up and breaking his glasses. Ironically, Jason is never seen without them on. Jason has frequently tutored Paige in math, though he prefers to be referred to as a "math consultant". He is smart enough to know the average temperature on Venus and to solve complex equations that most adults would find staggering, but at the same time believes that X-Files are real. He is also a genius with all things computerized, having once written his own Internet browser and, another time, crashed the entire Internet itself (by accident) with a "Darth Jason" virus. He also wrote his own operating system, "Jasondows", which is nearly impossible to uninstall. In the 7 May 2005 strip, he vandalizes Wikipedia by adding a picture of his sister to the "warthog" article (an act quickly imitated by FoxTrot readers: [1]). This was also attempted on the article for rabies, albeit unsuccessfully [2]. Jason can also be found frequently entertaining outrageous schemes to either earn or spend huge amounts of money: he once attempted to set up a dinosaur-themed hotel in Las Vegas and build a skyscraper comic book shop—only to scrap that plan, as it would take up space that was already reserved for his Star Wars-themed amusement park, including a life-sized Death Star ride. Once, he tried to give up geekiness, due to learning girls found nerds sexy, but soon found it too unnatural. Jason's favorite activities besides bothering Paige (and sometimes the others) are playing video and computer games, such as Doomathon, in which he joins an Internet league with names such as Jason_Postal_Worker, drawing Slugman cartoons, obsessing over movies such as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, and maintaining romantic tension between himself and Eileen. Though Jason has no interest in sports (and cannot tell the difference between a football and a baseball), he enjoys competing with his older brother in unusual challenges (such as TV Channel Russian Roulette and eating a meal in the fewest bites. He also gets a sadistic kick out of tampering with his father's breakfast, especially when Roger's eyes appear to be glued shut (appearing in the shape of an asterisk). By the way, Jason also believes that Santa is real as well.
Quincy is Jason's pet iguana. Quincy specializes in two fields: chewing on things (usually something of Paige's, including her clothes, her shoes, and her autographed "Backsync Boys" photo) and scaring the wits out of Paige. Jason's hypothesis that he could conjure a similar reaction out of all girls was disproven when he brought Quincy to school for show and tell, and Miss O'Malley, his teacher, thought Quincy was cute. Paige once saved him from choking on a shoelace while Jason was out of the house. Quincy is a frequent observer of the Fox household antics, but he has only ever shown three facial expressions: his standard, calm-eyed gaze; a scrambling panic when Jason throws him in the air; and dizziness after landing. He is by far the most unflappable member of the household. As a rule, Quincy does not think or in any way react in a human fashion to the events around him, making him very unusual among comic strip animals (although he did give Andy a dead cricket for Mother's Day in one comic strip).
The iFruit is a computer Andy purchaced 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. It is based on the original Apple iMac. 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 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, and is durable enough that even Roger cannot damage it.
Recurring characters who are not part of the Fox family
J. P. Pembrook is the CEO of Roger's company, who – unbeknownst to him – has his million-dollar deals analyzed by a ten-year-old (i.e. 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.
Fred is Roger's friend at work. Fred often plays golf with him (and always wins). Roger apparently considers Fred to be an authority on everything (if Fred says something's popular then it is).
Steve Riley is Peter's best friend from high school. He owns an electric guitar and amp set that Peter sometimes borrows, much to his parents' dismay. Steve also has a job at the local pizza parlor.
Denise Russo is Peter's blind 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. Once Peter attempted to break up with her, but that ended in failure.
Denise's blindness has never been exploited in the strip, but has often been a source of tasteful humor. On her 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." One strip had Peter driving fast and recklessly while Denise cringed in the passenger seat, finally saying, "Peter, if the intent of your driving is to make me GLAD I can't see..." Denise has not appeared in the strip for over a year.
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.
Literally the boy of Paige's dreams, Pierre is a perfect French lover who appears in Paige's daydreams. Usually when he appears, the last panel shows Jason doing 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!" Once Paige dreamed about Pierre at school and mentioned his name out loud just when the teacher asked for the capital of South Dakota (Pierre). Pierre fans should look to pages 187-192 of Enormously FoxTrot; there is a special collection of Paige and Pierre art panels.
Morton Goldthwait is the "biggest geek in school" according to Paige. Apparently, the entire science department calls him "Sir". He has a crush on her and hasn't given up, despite what she thinks of him. Morton even invited Paige to a Halloween party he held one year. He took the SATs as a freshman and was mad he got a 1590 (one raw score below perfect). He is also a counselor at Camp Bohrmore over the summer, and rules his cabin with an iron fist. Jason and Marcus once had the misfortune of being assigned to Goldthwait's cabin. Until he learned of Morton's crush on Paige, Jason had planned to set Morton up on a date with Paige as revenge.
Marcus Jones is Jason's best friend, with whom often he emulates Star Trek and bothers Paige (though he does not hate her as much as Jason does). He also enjoys video games, and he plays Dungeons and Dragons and Houses and Humans with Jason on occasion. Like Jason, Marcus enjoys school, dislikes being outside and doesn't like girls, but his dislike of girls doesn't seem 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. All members of Marcus' family, save Marcus himself, are unseen characters. He is African-American.
Eileen Jacobson is Jason's sometimes nemesis, sometimes semi-friend, whom he doesn't want to admit he secretly likes. A Harry Potter fan, Eileen didn't appear in the comic until 1995, when she got a higher grade than Jason on a math test, 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. 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 Pokemon card). She has also tricked him in World of Warcraft by picking a male name on the same server as him then befriending him there... and then making sure he found out it was her!
Miss O'Malley has been Jason and Marcus' teacher since 1991. She's 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. 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).
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 last summer", Gargantutron being a cookie monster that Jason made; Jason has also drawn a comic story titled "Slug-Man Battles Miss Grinchley"). 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.
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's fed and is obsessed with "Blue's Clues." Almost every time Paige has baby-sat Katie, the little girl has turned out to be too much for Paige to handle. On one occasion, Katie overheard an expletive uttered on the "Jerzy Spaniel" (a takeoff on "Jerry Springer") talk show while Paige was watching, and proceeded to say the offending word over and over, causing Paige 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. Katie also seems to be the only character in Foxtrot to grow up.
Recurring characters who do not appear often
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 (probably because Grandma is simply too interesting a character to be discarded after a single use).
Phoebe Wu: A friend of Eileen. They met at Camp Bohrmore Science Camp in 1997. She kept a journal for her time at camp, even saving samples of the food (which never was in very good shape; especialy 3 years after camp). Although initially bitter rivals with Jason and Marcus, the four eventually formed a "Ultra-Secret Friendship Club" while at camp, something the two boys have had varying cause to regret since then. Phoebe is Chinese-American.
Eugene Wu: Phoebe's arrogant 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 then succeeded in breaking the Jason, Marcus, Eileen, and Phoebe's friendship club by stealing Phoebe's camp journal and planting clues pointing to 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.
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.
Hawkins: A camper at Camp Bohrmore when Jason attends. He rarely gets out and has a 50-digit-long encryption code. Jason caught one of his viruses once, and Hawkins gave Jason his list of internet aliases, which includes The Night Ninja.
Mr. Martini: 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 dog Peter had to baby sit a few occasions. Although his head is smaller than a baseball, Peter always get numerous bites & scratches, as the dog is said to be very vicious. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Tamagrouchy: Paige received a Tamagrouchy from her father in August 1997. It is similar to a Tamagotchi, requiring to be fed and played with, except that it is grouchy. It often insults Paige, and actually has conversations with people, which goes beyond what a normal Tamagotchi could do. 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, them press button A, then button C, then press button B, then do the whole process backward). It will also annoy Paige. Once, it pretended it was on Moscow time when Paige was trying to go to sleep, and it whined that it wanted breakfast. 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 it to Jason to reprogram it, with somewhat disastrous results.
Places in FoxTrot
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 Fox's 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. There is a lake where the family can swim and go fishing. Jason often tries to trick Paige into believing that there are frightening creatures in the water.
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 "Mickey Mosquito," which sounds similar to Mickey Mouse. There are roller coasters, including the Drop-O-Death, a log ride, whirling coffee cups, and a fun house. The food is expensive. For example, Andy bought a snow cone for $20.00.
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.
Fun-Fun Universe is another amusement park that seems to be a parody of 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 is the Voodoo Mountain Bobsled Ride. This 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." 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.
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. While the Fox family was camping there, a bear came into their campsite and ate their food.
Camp Bohrmore is a 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, and Eugene. Eileen and Phoebe would often try to play tricks on Marcus and Jason. Jason and Marcus were also rivals with Eugene. They wanted to beat Eugene in the Camp Bohrmore Science Contest. Jason and Marcus also tried to sabotage Eileen and Phoebe's project to get revenge, but their plan backfired, as they destroyed their own project. At the end of camp, they made a truce with Eileen and Phoebe, and eventually joined their friendship club.
Boonhurst is a small town. Roger went there to finish a business deal (which began one of the longest storylines in the strip, running for seven weeks). It apparently isn't very developed, as Roger asked Pembrook if they had finished paving the runway yet. When Roger missed his flight, he also had to go through several connections. His entire trip was 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. They 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 the Muzak in the elevators is Calypso. There are many Caribbean activities as well, such as snorkeling, body boarding, voodoo doll puppetry, and steel drum lessons. In fact, the resort even schedules fake hurricanes, which is why all the walls in the hotel are fastened with Velcro. However, many aspects of the resort are fake. The steel drum music at the beach consists of a staff person playing the synthesizer. Unfortunately for Andy and Roger, the staff person playing accidentally hit bagpipes instead. Also, there is a backdrop at the edge of the artificial ocean, which has chlorine. In this place, Andy had the worst time ever.
About the strip
Amend majored in physics at Amherst College, and this is reflected in FoxTrot's frequent inclusion of complex mathematical 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.
From June 16 to August 16, 1997, Bill Amend did a series of comic strips where Jason attended Lake Bohrmore Science Camp. Jason, Marcus, and Eileen all attended this summer camp, and it was the first appearance of Phoebe and Eugene. Morton Goldthwait was Jason's counselor, although he didn't find out until the end of Jason's stay at camp that Jason was Paige's brother. For this period of time, only the above mentioned characters appeared in the strip (along with the camp director, Dr. Archibald, as well as another character, Hawkins, who seems to be even more of a nerd than Jason is), and Peter, Paige, Roger, and the others only appeared at the beginning and end. After the end of this series, the strip returned to normal. These comics can be found in Welcome to Jasorassic Park and Camp FoxTrot. In 2000, Phoebe and Eugene briefly appeared in the strip again when they visited their uncle, who lives in the neighborhood featured in FoxTrot. In that story, Phoebe's prized camp journal turned up missing, and Jason, Marcus, Eileen and Phoebe ended up accusing each other of the crime and even disbanding their top-secret friendship club. It turned out that Eugene was the real thief, and Eileen, Phoebe, Marcus and a reluctant Jason created a new top-secret friendship club, one without any type of disbandment clause. The Wu siblings also appeared in the strip on October 31, 2004.
Subtleties
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 direct Jurassic Park II." 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. 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. Often signs in the theater are edited to have a humorous effect (such as "Mission Impossible 2: The Comic Strip Deadline"). Peter's posters in his room also are often edited to read things like "Baywitch". Almost all of Peter's posters are a parody of Baywatch.
Many products seen in the strip have altered names, such as "Chips McCoy" (Chips Ahoy!), "Toridos" (Doritos), "Cap'n Sucrose" (Cap'n Crunch), "Fax Mactor" (Max Factor), and "Arper Shimage" (Sharper Image). Most of the magazines shown, at least starting from around 1994-95, are parodies of real magazines or magazine genres. For example, Paige often reads "Fourteen" magazine (Seventeen), and other altered magazine titles seen frequently are "Thyme" (Time) and (at least for a while) "Illustrated Sports" (Sports Illustrated). The fast-food restaurant that the Foxes occasionally patronize has two M's back-to-back, parodying the McDonald's logo. Many pop culture products (especially video games) are amalgamations 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), "Blizzardbund" (Blizzard Entertainment, Broderbund) "World of Warquest" (World of Warcraft and EverQuest), and 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). (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, such as the Super Mario Bros. series, Myst. Also, other real names used are the Nintendo DS and its game Nintendogs.) Andy has also joined the organization MAGG (Mothers Against Gory Games) out of concern for the level of violence in the games Jason and Peter played. The list of video games approved by MAGG included such titles as "Nice City," "Pacifist-Man," "Ms. Pacifist-Man," and "Resident Good" (takeoffs of, respectively, "Vice City," "Pac-Man," "Ms. Pac-Man," and "Resident Evil").
The walls of the Fox home are adorned with pictures or paintings, usually of fruit. A specific pictures fruit will change from panel to panel.
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 Garfield: The Movie came out, Peter dressed up as Garfield to promote the movie.
The first one of these 'subtleties' to appear was a dryer which had the brand name "Dry Queen 1000" on it. Also, we see a partial view, the "OX" on a bottle of bleach, presumably Clorox. This was the third strip; it was shown April 13, 1988. The first subtlety to be shown in a color Sunday strip appeared April 17, 1988 in the "throwaway panel" identifying the strip. It shows Jason eating "Honey Skulls" (Honeycomb) cereal.
Merchandising of the Strip
On the FoxTrot website, there is a link to FoxTrot products. These include the collections and anthologies as well as shirts, mugs, posters, and other items. Many of these include whole comic strips or have FoxTrot pictures on them.
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 Powermac 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. After the iMac success in 1998, the family buys an "iFruit", the Foxtrot version of the iMac. It comes in many "flavours" and usually makes snide remarks about font type, or even the wallpaper in the room where it is. The MangoKiwi iFruit ( which when it starts up says "Welcome to iFruit, hug me..." ) is the current computer used by the Fox family. It has been upgraded and taken apart by Jason many times.
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 to give a larger gap between anthologies (see below). They (as well as the anthologies) are published by Andrews McMeel Publishing.
- FoxTrot (1989)
- Pass the Loot (1990)
- Black Bart Says Draw (1991)
- Eight Yards, Down and Out (1992)
- Bury My Heart at Fun-Fun Mountain (1993)
- Say Hello to Cactus Flats (1993)
- May the Force Be with Us, Please (1994)
- Take Us to Your Mall (1995)
- The Return of the Lone Iguana (1996)
- At Least This Place Sells T-Shirts (1996)
- Come Closer, Roger, There's a Mosquito on Your Nose (1997)
- Welcome to Jasorassic Park (1998)
- I'm Flying, Jack ...I Mean, Roger (1999)
- Think iFruity (2000)
- Death By Field Trip (2001)
- Encyclopedias Brown and White (2001)
- His Code Name Was The Fox (2002)
- Your Momma Thinks Square Roots are Vegetables (2003)
- Who's Up for Some Bonding? (2003)
- Am I a Mutant, or What! (2004)
- Orlando Bloom Has Ruined Everything (2005)
- My Hot Dog Went Out, Can I Have Another? (2005)
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.
- FoxTrot: The Works (1990)
- FoxTrot en masse (1992)
- Enormously FoxTrot (1994)
- Wildly FoxTrot (1995)
- FoxTrot Beyond a Doubt (1997)
- Camp FoxTrot (1998)
- Assorted FoxTrot (2000)
- FoxTrot: Assembled with Care (2002)
- Foxtrotius Maximus (2004)
Other languages
FoxTrot is translated into many other languages, including Spanish[3], Portuguese and Swedish.
External links
