List of FoxTrot characters

The FoxTrot family members (clockwise, beginning at the top): Roger, Andy, Quincy the iguana, Paige, Jason, Peter.

This page contains information on the central characters in FoxTrot, a comic strip created by Bill Amend. The strip centralizes on a nuclear family composed of mother Andy, father Roger, and their three children: Peter, Paige and Jason, along with several auxiliary characters.

Roger

Roger Fox is the father of Peter, Paige, and Jason and the husband of Andy. According to the strip, he is forty-five years old and was born in Chicago, Illinois. Roger has also stated that he majored in English studies^[1] at the fictional Willot College.^[2] He works at Pembrook and Associates. Roger's occupation is an unspecified white-collar office job, although his coworkers and his boss, Pembrook, have appeared in the strip.

His hobbies include golf,^[3] camping, and chess, though he has no talent at any of them (or virtually anything else he attempts). He often tries to involve his family in his interests, usually by taking them on vacations.^[4] He is also portrayed as being highly out of step with modern technology, especially computers.^[5] Many strips also show that he is overweight and in poor physical condition, and despite his wife's attempts to get him to eat healthy foods and exercise, he rarely does so.

Andy

Andrea "Andy" Fox is the mother of Peter, Paige, and Jason and the wife of Roger. She is portrayed in the strip as a forty-two-year-old mother. According to the strip, she was also an English major in college. While earlier strips portrayed her as a freelance writer and columnist for a local newspaper,^[6] references to her job were gradually dropped and she has mostly been portrayed as a stay-at-home mother.

Andy often prepares exaggerated vegetarian or vegan meals for her family, much to their chagrin. She often criticizes her children for what she sees as their bad habits, such as procrastination^[7][8] and use of improper grammar. In addition, she tends to show disapproval towards the children's insistence on watching television or playing video games. However, she sometimes becomes obsessed with the same video games that she will not allow her children to play, such as Jason's Doomathon II game.^[9] Andy has also been shown to obsess over certain other fads, such as "Bitty Babies" (a parody of Beanie Babies) and the movie Titanic.

Andy's unnamed mother (the grandmother of Paige, Peter and Jason) has occasionally appeared in the strip as well. The grandmother is often referred to as "perfect"; as a result, Andy often feels inferior around her, and will try to prove herself by competing against her mother (usually by trying to cook a meal as well as her mother can).

Peter

Peter Fox is the eldest child of the Fox family. A sixteen-year-old high school junior, he is regularly shown wearing a blue/purple and white baseball cap with the letter A on it, as well as a grey hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans. Occasionally, his cap has an "H" instead of an "A", but only as a benchwarmer. He is only seen to take off his hat in the first few books. He is also depicted as having an exaggerated appetite, but is frustrated that no matter how much he eats, he cannot seem to gain any weight (except in one series of strips, where he gained 50 pounds at a pizza joint's all you can eat buffet, then losing it by the Saturday strip.)^[10][11] He is also shown as a reckless driver,^[12] once claiming to have "flirted" with four-digit speeds. Peter has pulled many stunts with the family car, such as speeding, back-wheelies, deliberately spinning and fishtailing, driving so fast that zero-gravity was achieved, almost sideswiping Andy's car, and going over the speed limit while parallel parking.^[13] Peter is also portrayed as a procrastinator, and one of the running gags of the strip is the many ways he dreams up to avoid doing his homework or household chores. He once bragged that he was "sick of homework from day one" in response to Paige claiming that she's starting to get sick of homework barely two weeks after the start of school. He also shows interest in sports, but is constantly shown to be inept at both football and baseball. Peter also holds other stereotypical interests for an adolescent male, including swimsuit models, video games, and guitar playing. He is known to be an avid Bruce Springsteen fan, once dating a girl only because she had a Springsteen tickets.

Paige

Paige Fox is the middle child of the Fox family. A 14-year-old high-school freshman, she is always portrayed with her hair in a pony-tail. She enjoys shopping and will often demand that Peter drive her to the mall (often through threatened blackmail of photos of him and his girlfriend, Denise), much to his chagrin.

Like the rest of the family, she has interests expected of her age group. Her obsessions include fashion, pop music, modern fads and trends, and attractive teenage boys. She shares her obsessions with her best friend, Nicole (see below). Paige often has sleepovers at Nicole's house to avoid Jason's pet iguana, Quincy (see below). Although persistent in her pursuit of a boyfriend, she has almost never dated in the strip. In fact, the only boy interested in her is nerd supreme Morton Goldthwait, who she despises, although in one strip, she was asked to the senior prom by Chris Moriessy who, as Peter calls, was the biggest sleaze artist in the school. She also was invited to a seniors party where the host (Mitch) asked her to go to bed with him. Paige has tried learning to cook to attract boys, but the food she makes is often inedible or burnt (and with illogical substitutions). She has also been shown to not be able to tell the difference between her own cooking, even if it's freshly baked.^[14]

Paige makes average grades in school due to her poor study habits. She will often ask Jason for help in homework, usually in mathematics. However, he often gives her intentionally incorrect answers, or charges her money in exchange for the correct answers. She has been shown to fall asleep in class (often due to staying up too late), and regularly takes naps at home as well. In some early strips, Paige would dream of a Frenchman named Pierre, who would attempt to impress her in a variety of extravagant ways.

Jason

Jason Fox is the youngest child of the family. A 10-year-old boy who wears glasses, he is shown to be intelligent, and is often relied on to help Roger with taxes, or Peter and Paige with homework. Unlike his siblings, Jason wants to do his homework, and often receives incredibly high marks as a result (72 correct answers out of 20 questions is disappointing to him). He sometimes is disappointed when he has no homework because he did all the homework for the year in the first week of school. He tends to aggravate the teachers with his overly complicated answers^[15] and is frequently in trouble for disrupting class.

Portrayed as a stereotypical nerd, he has an interest in science fiction, particularly Star Trek and role-playing games, as well as a high level of knowledge in mathematics and science. He also seems to have a high interest in comic books and dinosaurs. In a few strips, Jason is revealed that he likes Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and brings them to school. Jason is also a frequent user of the family computer, and has repeatedly constructed his own computer programs and viruses, which he often sends to the other computers in the house and Eileen Jacobson. In addition, he plays video games regularly — either by himself, with Peter, with Roger, or with his friend Marcus (see below). He frequently attempts to recreate the work of cartoonists while they are on hiatus, usually as an excuse to make fun of Paige. Occasionally, Jason will make exaggerated plans of his own, such as a large-scale animatronics Christmas display or a skyscraper comic book shop in his backyard. He is also shown to have a fear/hatred of girls (see below), but admits to slightly liking one of his only female friends, Eileen Jacobson. He often falls prey to advertising ploys, as illustrated in a 1991 arch where he became obsessed for a short while with "The Simpsons" products. He often insults Paige, often making "Slug-Man" comics with Paige as the villain, or doing stuff on the computer that include Paige.

Quincy

Quincy is Jason's pet iguana. Jason regularly uses him to tease Paige, either by waving the iguana in front of her, putting him in the bathtub while she is taking a bath, or throwing him on her; other times he will let Quincy into her room so he can chew up her belongings, usually throwing them up at some point, and in one panel, Andy said, "Would it kill you, to start the day with a smile?" Paige then replies, "I do!" with her sweater chewed up. At other times, Quincy just sits on Jason's head.^[16]

Other recurring characters

• Morton Goldthwait is a stereotypical nerd character with whom Paige attends class. Though Paige has mostly ignored him, he still has a crush on her. He also was Jason's Camp Instructor at one point, and Jason considered him to be evil. At one point, Jason used his crush on Paige to his advantage by arranging to have him become a part of Paige Fox's friends page on Facebook in order to exact revenge on him for having to endure him at summer camp (which ended up backfiring when Paige discovers what Jason did.)

• Miss Grinchley was Jason's school teacher in the early years of the strip. In a 1991 storyline, she retired and was replaced with Miss O'Malley (see below).

• Nicole is Paige's best friend. She is also a high school freshman who has similar interests. Paige and Nicole sometimes go shopping together. The two once broke up after Nicole was able to get a date for the prom and Paige was not, but soon reconciled. Nicole supposedly has a crush on Peter.

• Eileen Jacobson is one of Jason's classmates. She attempts to converse with Jason regularly, only for him to show discomfort around her.^[17][18] Their relationship apears to be a mixture of hatred and grudging respect (in addition to Jason's fear of girls in general), though there may be romantic subtexts in the relationship.

• Marcus Jones is Jason's best friend, and the only recurring African-American character in the strip. Jason and Marcus usually play together, launching model rockets, flying kites, playing video games, or other activities, such as harassing Paige. Sometimes, it is seen that Marcus likes to play with Quincy.

• Miss O'Malley is Jason's teacher. At first, Jason disliked her because, unlike his former teacher, Miss O'Malley encouraged Jason's creativity (such as marking the sites of dinosaur bone discoveries on a map when he was only required to name the continents), but then realized how big a problem Jason was. She sometimes forces Jason to stay after school and write sentences on the blackboard after he misbehaves. A common gag is that Jason tries to find excuses to stay at school when summer begins, despite Miss O'Malley's reminders for him to go home.

• Denise Russo is Peter's girlfriend. She is a blind girl whom he met at school in the strip's first year. They were very close, and would kiss constantly, although they did have their share of fights. Peter once attempted to break up with her so he could date other girls and "develop socially," but soon got back together with Denise when he found that he missed her. Denise had a manipulative streak and knew exactly how to get what she wanted from Peter. Paige and Jason blackmailed him with photographs of the two making out.

• Steve Riley is a friend of Peter's. Peter and Steve are often seen watching sports, or playing video games or guitar together. Steve works at Luigi's Pizza.

• Katie O'Dell is the baby daughter of one of Andy's friends. Paige sometimes babysits for her, usually with disastrous results. One time, Paige fell asleep on the job allowing Katie to find scissors and chop up a dress. Another time, Paige watched an adult show, with Katie discovering a swear word. Another time, Paige gave her cake, making her exceedingly hyper.

References