For King Features is officially allowing Jeremy - who has been 15 years old since the popular comic strip Zits began in 1997 - to at last turn 16.
Driving! Car dates! The freedom to careen far away from parents Walt and Connie Duncan!
Think back to when you were 16 (or forward to when you will be 16) and just imagine the possibilities.
Jeremy's lifestyle - sometimes as immobile as that Volkswagen van he and Hector have up on blocks - can soon hit the open road.
"I do look forward to some new scenery within the strip. I imagine the van will become more of a character and there will likely be more parentless adventures," Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Jim Borgman said.
"After freezing Jeremy at 15 for over a decade, it just felt like time to cut the kid a break and move on to a different set of challenges and frustrations."
Jerry Scott, Borgman's co-creator on the strip - which is syndicated to more than 1500 newspapers - said he relished the creative terrain that letting Jeremy turn 16 could bring.
"I think it's going to give us new writing opportunities," Scott said.
"For years, we felt 15 was the maximum frustration age. You think you can run the world and you can't even drive a car . . . Driving a car is going to ratchet up the tension between his parents and him.
"There's the new-found freedom - there will be more strips that don't involve his parents. That's going to create a whole new challenge that's kind of exciting.
"We're going to get inside his head a little more."
Scott and Borgman are not the only ones ready to see Jeremy get behind the wheel.
Scott recounts a recent incident in which a Zits reader came up to Borgman at an Ohio cartoon museum event and said: "You got to let the kid drive!"
So when will Jeremy's exact birthday be? Scott went back over the upcoming strips to figure it out.
"It'll be August 14," Scott said.
Jeremy's look has changed over the years, perhaps most notably his hairstyle.
So will his appearance change now that he is of driving age? "I don't see dramatic visual changes immediately ahead," Borgman said.
"Truth is, Jeremy has already 'aged' within 15 - gradually developing an older, shaggier, slouchier look over the years we've been drawing him.
Chronologically, he's now 16, but I think his look now covers most of teenagerhood."
- Michael Cavna writes the "Comic Riffs" blog on washingtonpost.com, from which this article is adapted.
- Zits runs daily in the ODT.
