With over 1,000 newspapers subscribing to his comic strip, "FoxTrot," Bill Amend joins an elite group of cartoonists breaking the four-figure circulation mark. Amend's strip, featuring the antics of the Fox family, touched a nerve with the public from its inception in 1988. Parents Roger and Andy Fox and their children, Jason, Peter, and Paige, display real family dynamics "without resorting to the clichés of the family strip," according to Charles Solomon, writing in the Los Angeles Times. Sibling rivalries abound, but so too does a real affection between family members. Amend's daily and Sunday strips have been collected in a number of "FoxTrot" anthologies that have sold well beyond a million copies.

Success at an Early Age

Amend's own family could serve as a stand-in for the Fox family. Born in 1962, in Northampton, Massachusetts, he is the oldest of four children. His early childhood was spent in...