Baby Blues

A mainstream comic about parenting shown in many newspapers. Features the typical "nuclear family" set-up, but treats it with a much more realistic tone than most. Usually gag-a-day type four-panel strip with a few running jokes.

Was made into an animated prime-time series that debuted on The WB, was canceled after 13 episodes, and wound up as a rerun on Adult Swim.

Tropes used in Baby Blues include:
  • A Boy, a Girl, and a Baby Family: Didn't start out that way, but unless Darryl and Wanda have a fourth baby, the family will have a boy (Hammie), a girl (Zoe), and a baby (Wren).
  • Afraid of Needles: Zoe and Hammie have both shown fear of getting a shot.
  • Alliterative Name Wanda's maiden name was Wanda Wizowski
  • All Girls Like Ponies: Zoe is the big example of this. She likes unicorns too.
  • All Just a Dream: Zig-zagged in one story arc. Zoe and Hammie both want extravagant amounts of gifts for Christmas. Darryl then tells them how, when he was a kid, he wanted so badly to have a toy airplane for Christmas but tired of it within a day. Zoe and Hammie then dream that they receive a ridiculous amount of Christmas gifts, and upon finding themselves overwhelmed, try to get a letter to Santa (via toy airplane) asking for the excess gifts to be returned. Wanda compliments Darryl on the poignancy of his story on the airplane, which he admits he made up — just as a toy airplane is visible on the roof behind him.
    • Also inverted in one Sunday strip, in which Wanda wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming in terror from a dream in which she had no free time, a wreck of a house, terminally flabbly thighs and a pair of ungrateful kids. "It all seemed so real!"
  • All Women Love Shoes: A one-week storyline involved Zoe practically falling in love with a pair of pink cowgirl boots.
  • Animated Adaptation: Didn't last long.
  • Large Ham Announcer: Zoe, for a lot of examples. Here's an old one.
  • Annoying Younger Sibling: Hammie and Wren to Zoe.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When asked what three things she would change about herself if she could, Wanda chooses her insecurity, her impatience and her hair.
  • Art Evolution: The strip was much looser and more sketchy in the first few years, looking more like pencil work than inking. Over time, it became much more streamlined.
  • Artifact Title: Zoe was always the primary focus, and she is no longer a baby. Even Hammie is grade-school age now.
    • But Wren, the third child, is still a baby, so new fans would probably asume Wren was the reason for the title.
  • Babies Make Everything Better: It's even in the name, so of course Baby Blues has babies. Started with Zoe, and later Hammie and Wren.
  • Baby Talk: So far it's only with Zoe and Hammie, but most likely to happen with Wren in the future.
    • Hammie used a little more Baby Talk than Zoe, which was mostly the third example mentioned by pronouncing "r" with "w" ("twuck")
    • Zoe with similar baby talk to Hammie, but she usually pronounced more words correctly. Although, when she did use it, she mispronounced a lot of words like this example
    • And there was a story (back when Zoe was a baby) with Darryl actually STUCK in Baby Talk.
  • Bad Liar: Zoe in this example. Funny thing is, there is a similar strip which used the same joke, but was an old one.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: The plot of the Christmas story.
  • Bill, Bill, Junk, Bill The beginning of this strip.
  • Blatant Lies: Much like an older comic strip... Darryl told Zoe that the sun is yellow because it's made of mustard. Wanda then tells Darryl that it takes her all week to un-teach her his "weekend teachings."
  • Blue Eyes: Wren (see the link in "Green-eyed Redhead.")
  • Brand X: The MacPhersons' minivan is a model called the Oxymoron.
  • Bratty Half-Pint: Zoe and/or Hammie on different occasions.
  • Brick Joke: Wanda attempts to wean Hammie off the pacifier because she read a survey that babies if not weaned from them soon will be too attached to them. A much later strip has Hammie, no longer a baby, still sucking on his pacifier in secret.
  • Brother-Sister Team: Zoe and Hammie. Sometimes they fight to the extreme, but other times they work together to drive their parents crazy.
  • Bumbling Dad: Averted, as Darryl is shown as being fairly competent at parenting. He even changed a diaper in the men's room at the mall.
  • Butt Monkey: Hammie when Zoe kept pulling his teeth out.
  • Cain and Abel: Zoe says the Halverson boys' Mom calls them Cain and Abel, do to their Big Ball of Violence.
  • Censor Decoy: Done unintentionally as described in Getting Crap Past the Radar below.
  • Christmas Special: (Would this count if it's not on TV?) They always have a strip mentioning Christmas, but an actual story was made in 2006. The story's true start was actually in November, when Wanda mentions what Zoe and Hammie called "The Perfect Christmas," in which there would be no end to the presents Santa brings. Zoe and Hammie start to write their Christmas lists, when Zoe has a brilliant idea; Santa brings them every present in the world! When they do get all the presents in the world, they realize they've been greedy and decide to write another letter asking to return all the presents to Santa.
  • Class Clown: Zoe in first grade. Whether or not it was intentional it could be debated on, but everything she said either made the class laugh or give Mr. Doyle a headache. Or both.
  • Comic Book Time: Word of God says that the strip goes at roughly a 2:1 time frame (i.e., Zoe is 10 after 20 years of being in the strip).
    • Keesha is a good example. Yolanda gave birth to her when Zoe was one year old, (they had a past strip that refers to Zoe as "a one year old") so Keesha would be a year younger than Zoe throughout the strip, right? Nope! When Zoe was about three, they stopped mentioning Keesha being younger, and when Zoe was about seven years old, Keesha was no longer shorter than Zoe. Over time, they made it easy to forget Keesha is a year younger, and even hint in present strips that Keesha is in Zoe's class.
      • On the other hand, many children's relative heights don't correspond with their relative ages and Zoe could have started school late.
  • Comically Missing the Point:

Hammie: Can I watch TV while we eat?
Wanda: No. Let's just have a conversation.
Hammie: Okay. I'll have a conversation with Dad.
Wanda: Perfect.
Hammie: Hey dad. Wouldn't it be great if we could watch TV while we ate dinner?

Zoe: (after Hammie cringes at the taste) "Nope, they only come in one flavor."

  • Funetik Aksent: This was how Zoe's and Hammie's baby-talk was represented.
  • Gag Nose: Darryl.
  • Gasshole: Hammie, who is mostly a belch variant. Mostly.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar:
    • When Hammie is first shown, his penis is barely visible. The authors lampshaded this in an anthology book.
    • One early gag involved Wanda squirting breast milk into Darryl's coffee. Jerry sketched out the strip as a joke on Rick, who got even by actually drawing and finishing it. They then decided to submit it as a joke on their editor, thinking that she'd laugh and ask them for a replacement — only to have it printed, as their regular editor was out that week.
    • This strip. Calvin and Hobbes did it first.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Zoe's hair in preschool. And Wanda's hair as a kid.
  • Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Present-day Zoe might not care for them anymore, but there was once a week-long story line where Zoe used her toys in an attempt to stall bedtime. And boy did she have a lot of them!
  • Green Eyes: It's impossible to tell the character's eye color in the drawings, since the drawings just show their eyes as dots. But one strip mentions Zoe and Hammie have green eyes (see "Green-eyed Redhead").
  • I Ate What?: In the Easter 2012 Sunday Strip, Darryl is continuously asking Hammie, Zoe, and Wren if they are certain if they found all of the easter eggs in the area while trying to heavily hint at the egg on the porch lamp. The kids continuously attempt to insist that they have found every single one, before Hammie points out just as Darryl is about to eat the egg that the one on the porch light didn't count, as that was there since last year. Cue Darryl rushing inside to locate a restroom, presumably to vomit up the egg he just ate. It can be seen here.
  • Imaginary Friend: Zoe had Nadine (Not that Nadine), her "invisible friend," who wore polka-dots and pigtails and only ate cheese. Later, Nadine became Zoe's invisible sister. And Truth in Television, the idea for Zoe's imaginary friend was based on Rick Kirkman's daughter's imaginary friends, one of which was from Neptune.
  • I Take Offense to That Last One: One strip has Zoe walking Wren around the living room, saying things like "this is our pretty lamp" and "this is our comfy couch." When they pass Hammie, Zoe says "This is our gross, creepy, germy, wormy brother." In the next panel, Zoe is continuing to walk Wren around as Hammie shouts after her "Who are you calling creepy?"
  • I Want Grandkids: Two examples actually:
    • The most common one is Rhonda, Wanda's little sister. Her parents are always complaining about how she doesn't have kids or a husband.
    • This only happened once, since Darryl and Wanda have three children now, but in an early strip Darryl and Wanda invited both sets of their parents to spend Christmas with them. In the middle of the night, Mac, Hugh, and Maggie are in a line waiting for Pauline to be finished rocking baby Zoe, and Pauline says to Darryl "This wouldn't happen if you had another baby."
  • Kids Prefer Boxes: This strip [dead link] as well as this one [dead link] .
  • Lethal Chef: One strip had Wanda asking Zoe to ask Darryl if he needed any help cooking dinner. Zoe then asks while Darryl was using a fire extinguisher on a burning pan while shouting repeatedly "OH NO!" Zoe misinterpreted it as him just saying "oh no" to her question.
  • Let's Have Another Baby: Wanda swings in and out of this one all the time.
  • Middle Child Syndrome: This happened to Hammie a couple of times. He is the middle child, but it only happened in circumstances where he is jealous of baby Wren.
  • Mistaken for Aliens: Darryl was mistaken for an alien once when Zoe and Hammie heard him walking around the house and thought it was "Two headed brain sucking alien burglars with ray guns."
  • Mister Seahorse: Played with. When watching a nature DVD which (correctly) explains male seahorse anatomy, Wanda simplifies it by telling Zoe that the male seahorse basically has the baby. Wanda then offhandedly asks if male seahorses do household chores as well.
  • Nightmare Fuel: This strip is actually an in-universe example.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: After being handed down a pair of Zoe's pink monkey pajamas, Hammie draws on them to make them into pink vampire scorpion ninja monkeys.
  • Parental Abandonment: Spoofed in one strip as the family tries to find a kids movie to rent. "Do you have any family movies that have families in them?"
  • Print Long Runners: Started in 1989.
  • Punny Name: Hammie's name is sometimes used as a pun for "ham," the food, and Wren was actually named after a bird that smacked into the window.
  • Reverse Psychology Backfire: This strip.
  • Road Trip Across the Street
  • Secret Keeper: Zoe for Hammie's pacifier (see Security Blanket below) and when Hammie swore.
  • Security Blanket: When Zoe was a baby, she had Boo-Boo Bankie.
  • Shout-Out: One of the crocodiles from Pearls Before Swine appears on a box of cereal. Most likely a reference to Pearls featuring a Baby Blues-centric storyline around the same time.
    • After a Pearls Before Swine storyline about the characters babysitting the Baby Blues kids finished up, one Baby Blues strip afterwards featured one of the kids chewing on one of the crocodiles.
  • Sibling Rivalry: A lot of it.
  • Sir Swearsalot: Darryl swears a lot in the strip, particularly when frustrated or after injuring himself.
  • Something Blues
  • Souvenir Land: Whistling Cowboy Monkey Land.
  • So What Do We Do Now?: The first strip began this way.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Hammie's name has been spelled "Hammy" and Zoe's name has been spelled "Zoey." And these are adult fans. And the names are SPELLED in the strip on a regular basis.
  • Spiky Hair: Hammie, even on the strip where he was born.
  • Symbol Swearing: Used frequently by Darryl. When being asked if he "swears" to be on his best behavior at his in-laws', his response is, "Oh, [grawlix], we're here!" Also a Stealth Pun on his part.
  • Tagalong Kid: Hammie as Prince Bobo
  • The Ghost: Zoe had a crush on Bryan Barge, who has never been seen or heard of in the strip. Unless he's Bryan the Dinosaur.
  • The Swear Jar: Darryl having to put money into the Swearing Jar numerous times.
  • Theme Twin Naming: Bunny's twin boys are Wendell John and Wendell Jon.
  • Tinkle in the Eye: Provider of the page quote.
  • Toilet Humor: Many, many jokes about dirty diapers and farting. Somewhat justified, as babies do that.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Hammie. Ever since he turned about six, and stayed that way for a few years, he's been performing dangerous stunts nearly every time he appears! Wanda even told him once the many things that could go wrong and he acted like they were reasons to go along with it!
  • Wasn't That Fun?
  • Water Guns and Balloons: A week-long storyline involved Zoe and Hammie competing against Darryl in a water fight with giant water guns.
    • Another strip had Darryl using squirt guns as a way to give the kids their anti-pinkeye drops without it turning into a battle.
  • We Didn't Start the Billy Joel Parodies: An early Sunday strip has "We Didn't Start Out Tired".
  • Wildlife Commentary Spoof: Averted. One arc had Wanda, Darryl, and Zoe watching a Wildlife Documentary about a family of Meerkats, only to be shown a lot of Nightmare Fuel when the Meerkats are eaten one by one by Hyenas, a snake, and even a hawk.
  • Written Roar: "AIEEEEEEEE!" is very common.
  • X-Ray Sparks: In one strip, Hammie does it to his older sister.
  • You Didn't Ask: This can happen sometimes. Here's one of them from when Hammie was being potty-trained. and a later one with Zoe and Hammie on a walk with Darryl and Wren.
  • You Never Did That for Me: Though in most cases, it would be a sibling trope, this one happened comparing the children and their parents. Darryl's parents and Wanda's parents were invited for Christmas, and on Christmas day Darryl and Wanda look at their small number of presents as baby Zoe sits beside her large pile.

Darryl and Wanda: "Why didn't you give us that many presents when we were little?"
All grandparents: "We didn't want to spoil you."

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