It seemed to be a bit of a stretch of serious books, so it was time to interject it with something less strenuous. Let’s go to the comic book section. Friday’s read is The Best of Foxtrot
If you’re unfamiliar with FoxTrot – the comics cover a regular, stereotypical family and their day-to-day life.
The mother is a stay-at-home mom, freelancing journalist and a health nut when it comes to cooking and the father works at an office, and enjoys golfing. They have three children, Peter, their oldest son, enjoys eating, watching television and is terrible at sports, Paige, their daughter, who is rather ditzy, loves shopping and boy crazy, but without any huge success, and Jason, the youngest son, who is an extreme nerd. He enjoys pursuits such as standing in line for the latest release at the movie theatre, dressing up into the characters from such films, coding his own operative system to compete with Windows, and teasing Paige.
In vibe, it is rather like Calvin & Hobbes – if Calvin had an older sister to torment in addition to Susie.
I don’t remember when or where I first stumbled upon Foxtrot, but I’ve been wanting to read more of the older strips to get more of the back story. This “Best of” contains the strips and stories that Bill Amend (and quite possibly also his publisher) thinks are the best of a 20 year run.
The two-volume set is filled with the strips. Some of them have notes from Amend to explain a point, but I would honestly have liked more of the notes. It gives an insight into the series that can be amusing, or explain why Amend thought it should be included.
The selection method seems rather haphazard. Since I don’t know all of the strips, it is difficult to say whether or not something else should have been included, but I definitely think that it could have been pared down some on a certain number of the storylines. Jason and his best friend in costume for nerdy film number 10… is probably okay if you were reading it day by day in the newspapers, or online, but in a “best of” volume that doesn’t include all the strips, it feels like it is too much repetition.
That being said, the books are ideal for just randomly opening to a page and enjoying as they don’t need much backstory. (The notion of a younger brother tormenting his older sister is fairly universal, I think.)
Despite the repetition of story lines, I definitely enjoyed it, and will probably go back to it from time to time.
