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Sunday, February 13, 2022

Book Review: FoxTrot Sundaes by Bill Amend

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: Laughs with the Fox Family
Cons: None for me
The Bottom Line:
The Fox family
Some Sunday strips collected
Plentiful laughs here


Our First Dose of Sunday Fun with FoxTrot

I’ve been a fan of the comic strip FoxTrot since I discover it while I was in college.  The antics of the Fox family made me laugh for years, and I was disappointed when cartoonist Bill Amend made the decision to semi-retire, only releasing new strips on Sundays.  That means that the collections of his books are also coming out less frequently.  I’ve been buying them, but for some reason not reading them.  I finally fixed that with the first of the Sunday only collections – FoxTrot Sundaes, and I immediately remembered why I loved this strip so much.

If you have yet to meet the family, there are five members of the Fox family.  In addition to the parents, we have high school junior, Peter, high school freshman, Paige, and fifth grader, Jason.  The kids (and parents for that matter) fall into a bit of your typical stereotypes, maybe with the exception of Jason, who is super smart and your typical geek.  And yet, they still manage to be real characters and make us laugh, even after all these years.

This book originally came out in 2010, and it collects almost two years’ worth of comics in full Sunday color.  We can easily follow along with the seasons as first days of school and holidays help us pinpoint where in the year we are.  While the strip when it was daily had quite a few great strips around new pop culture movies or TV shows, this one isn’t quite as pop culture dependent.  However, there are a couple of references to current events that definitely date the strips.  But that’s a minor issue (and the strips are still funny).

Fans of the series will definitely be glad to hear that nothing has been lost by cutting down to just Sundays.  Yes, the jokes might be familiar – Jason tormenting Paige, Paige being obsessed over guys, the mom’s awful vegan cooking as examples – but they are still funny.  There are enough twists to the jokes to make me enjoy them all over again.  Okay, so the time I spent away from the characters might help as well.  These strips were collected here for the first time; nothing from this book was also in the previous collections I’ve read.

I’ve got all but the most recent book.  Now that I’ve reacquainted myself with the Fox family, I am hoping to make a point to revisit them again this year.  Any fan of family comic strips will enjoy FoxTrot Sundaes.

1 comment:

  1. I have some of the older collections at home, but haven't looked at the newer Sunday ones. Maybe I will. Always enjoy the strip in the paper, and do miss it in the daily one. My favorite has to be Funky Winkerbean, which I've followed since middle school!

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