of Michael Stivic from the television show All in the Family, Tacoma shared the same liberal values as Gloria Stivic's husband in the TV show. Their children were born sometime around the year 1988 and were first introduced around August 1998 with the appearance of fraternal male twins. Eventually, they grew up to be children in the early stages of puberty that confuse their grandfather's work clothes for the baggy clothing that was popular among youth in the late 1990s. At least one of the grandsons was informally called "Junior" throughout the late 1990s running of the comic strip. Earl and Abigail Bird Earl Bird was the African-American next-door neighbor of Mike and Mabel Motley and a fellow worker at Drudge Industries and they were seen working side by side. Earl usually had a cigar in his mouth and was the most incompetent person in the comic strip; once confusing a microwave for a television set. When he was captured and forced to steer a ship, he took command of the ship until it collided with land in the middle of Kansas. The humor behind that scenario was that ships cannot land in Kansas; Earl was clearly an incompetent sailor and no clear explanation was given about the reason of giving him command of an entire ship. During the earlier years of the comic strip, Earl complained about the white flight from metropolitan cities into more suburban areas due to rising crime in the inner sections of North American cities. Humor was added when Earl talked about the things that suburban people had (swimming pools, shade trees, lawns) and complained about not being able to afford to move out of an inner city environment to enjoy them. Abigail Bird was Earl's wife who had suffered for a long time with him. Mister Drudge In the comic strip, Mister Drudge was considered to be an autocratic factory manager. He personally ran the fictional corporation Drudge Industries, Inc., which was a construction company. Very rarely did anyone receive a pay raise or a promotion in his construction company. Never on a first name basis with anyone, Mister Drudge insisted that his first name was "Mister." Mister Drudge was considered to be a very young person, with red hair, very young skin, and a white bow tie. He also appeared content in his successful life running a major corporation at his age. Some