[1] Set in central Ohio suburbia, the strip centers on Jeremy as he tries to balance his family life, social life, the academic demands of high school and his plans for the future, often with a heavy dose of surrealism, making it stand out from being just a typical teenager cartoon strip.

In 1996, Jerry Scott was drawing Baby Blues, a comic strip about raising children he co-wrote with Rick Kirkman.

After Scott discussed the issue with his artist friend Jim Borgman, the two corresponded with one another over the next few months and eventually collaborated on the characters that would become the Duncans.

[7] Jeremy Michael Duncan[8] is an intelligent[citation needed], 17-year-old high school junior (earlier a 15-year-old freshman) who aspires to be a rock musician.

Jeremy spent time restoring a 1962 Volkswagen Type 2 van with his best friend Hector Garcia, which they hoped to drive across the country when they turned 16.

Jeremy is also the lead singer and guitarist of his garage band, which goes by many names including "Chickenfist", "Goat Cheese Pizza", "Jughead's Hat", and "Angry Dwarfs".

[13] In July 2017 the band had their first "adult" engagement at the Arthur C. Coachella Senior Citizen Center, where the geriatric audience gave them a much better reception, with them constantly shouting "Turn It Up!".

In the end, however, Jeremy's sense of ethics overcomes the desire to plagiarize, and he spends the night writing the essay himself.

Running gags in the strip include depictions of Jeremy's room as being so messy that Connie has to dig a tunnel to reach him, his tallness and growth spurts, and his ability to consume vast quantities of food in seconds (either by literally inhaling or shoveling it in; one strip even showed him unhinging his jaw to eat a large sandwich).

She is a child psychologist, but works only part-time after Jeremy's birth, and her profession is rarely mentioned except in early strips.

Walt Duncan is Jeremy's father, an orthodontist who, like Connie, finds it almost impossible to hold a conversation with his son.

[25][26] He has been shown to think that a fan belt is part of a search engine and that "Googling" somebody means having sexual intercourse with them.

His interactions with Jeremy's peers cause intense embarrassment for his son, as Walt makes comments such as "What's up, dood [sic]?

Overweight and balding, Walt wears oversized blue pants, a plain white T-shirt, black vest, and combover (Jeremy has commented that this makes him look like a Wal-Mart greeter).

The two spend a lot of their time hanging out, much of it trying to restore the VW van and dreaming about where their future road trip will take them.

Hector used to date Autumn, a militant vegetarian who refers to Jeremy as "carnivore", "predator", "vampire", and "flesh-eater" or the like whenever she sees him with meat.

Hector is from a Spanish-speaking family and lives with his parents, grandparents, and multiple younger siblings[32] and is apparently Roman Catholic.

[35] Sara's genuine kindness and generosity is evident in one story arc where she cuts her hair short and donates her ponytail to a charity for children undergoing chemotherapy.

[36] In the January 15, 2008, strip, Jeremy revealed he did not want to date Sara exclusively anymore, but was upset when she readily accepted this change.

Like Hector's girlfriend, Autumn, Pierce is an animal activist and environmentalist and has been known to wear tofu shoes because leather uses cow hides, rubber uses oil, and wood uses trees.

Phoebe is one of Jeremy's classmates and is presented as a hyperbolic overachiever, using any means necessary to excel academically and enter a "high-power college".

[45] Sadly, Phoebe is so obsessed with success that she has no sense of right and wrong, and will do nearly anything dishonest to get ahead, such as downloading bootleg reports off the Internet.

She has dreadlocks, a copy of Edvard Munch's The Scream tattooed on her tongue[46] and occasionally wanders around with Pierce after connecting their respective earrings.

[46] Autumn is Hector's ex-girlfriend and a strict vegetarian, whose social graces are as lacking as her personal hygiene (she appears to have more hair under her arms than on her head).

Zuma is portrayed in one comic as one very obsessed with her makeup and clothes, even going so far as to change her Social Security number so it is "cuter"; this extends to all of the girls to an extent, however, as they were once "held hostage by their hair" when they were supposed to have been helping Jeremy with a biology lab project.

"Richandamy", as their classmates have nicknamed them, are boyfriend and girlfriend Rich and Amy who are generally seen in a constant, intertwined hug.

Viral is an over-achiever, tending to do many things at once (being class president, captain of the JV volleyball team, as well as many other activities) or better than normally expected.

He was also mentioned in December 2010 when Pierce decoded a mumbled message from Jeremy about him studying the wrong chapter for a test.

[67] The strip itself has been translated into at least ten languages, including German, Chinese, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Estonian.

Borgman would like the series to tackle complicated issues such as AIDS, drugs, and premarital sex, while Scott prefers not to "see the 6 o'clock news...on the funny pages.