Bill Amend has announced that December 30 will be the last daily for his popular FoxTrot comic. Reruns of the daily will be available on web.
Says Bill,
“After spending close to half of my life writing and drawing FoxTrot cartoons, I think it’s time I got out of the house and tried some new things,” said Amend. “I love cartooning and I absolutely want to continue doing the strip, just not at the current all-consuming pace. I’ve been blessed over the years with a terrific syndicate, patient newspaper clients, and more support from readers than I probably deserve, and I want to assure them all that while I’ll be now a less-frequent participant on the comics pages, I’ll continue to treat my visits as the special privilege they are.”
Lee Salem, president of Universal Press Syndicate, also mentions that in the future, FoxTrot might be available in other kinds of media platforms, but he didn’t specify which.
What a shame. I will very much miss the daily sequences. Thank you Bill Amend for providing them as long as you did.
I hope he’ll do more with the Sundays now that he has more time. So many Fox Trot Sundays in the past couple of years have been single panel sight gags. Go for it Bill… any Fox Trot Sunday you create is far more worthy of the space Opus has gotten.
Dang, it’s 1995 all over again.
I’ll miss reading “FoxTrot” on regular basis, though I’m glad the Sundays will at least continue.
I kind of respect Mr. Amend for stopping or slowing down when he feels he’s tired of the grind instead of allowing Foxtrot to degrade into mediocrity. I’m not saying it is mediocre, because its not, its a funny strip. But a lot of strips seems to stay on long past the time when the creator still cares. Well, thats my 2 cents anyway. I hope the sundays keep going for awhile though.
Berke blows. Bloom County was the best and I am so disapointed with the encore. And, Mike, a lot of strips stay on long past the time when the creator still lives.
What a surprise, and not a happy one. It’s a good thing that Amend has the instinct of any respectable artist, and that is to move on before the idea grows stale. The sad thing is, at least in the comics pages, that most cartoonists (or sons and daughters of cartoonists) don’t make this crucial decision. So strips like FoxTrot, Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County, Far Side, etc. end with dignity, but Blondie and Garfield will continue forever, until it’s just them and the cockroaches inhabiting the Earth.
Of course there are lots of “new” cartoonists waiting to take Bill’s place, just like there are lots of young readers out there with slightly different perspectives than the “current” batch. Humanity has an uncanny way of replacing itself, kind of like Autumn. A little sad; but that’s life. Nature ain’t always pretty.
Still, I’ll miss him. Best of luck always, Bill, old friends. I’ll miss all of you.
Richard Leagan, Quincy, FL