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Vaughn Meader, a comic who made an unfortunately brief career of doing impressions of John F. Kennedy, used to have a bit in which he would play President Kennedy eating dinner at home with his family. Suddenly, a question would come from off-camera, and Meader, as Kennedy, would shoot up from his chair, create a makeshift podium at the table, and carry out family business much as JFK would preside over one of his famous press conferences. (Something to the tune of, "On the question of going, er, horseback riding this weekend, ah, Caroline, I say let's move forward!")

Meader's bit about the Kennedy family was a hilarious take on how the great and powerful might deal with the humble and mundane details of life. Fast-forward two generations, and you'll find the same tension fueling a new comic strip from Tom Stern, a part-time executive recruiter who says he's out to create the next Dilbert.

Stern's CEO Dad is Frank Pitt, an executive who rules the roost at the office but is cut down to size at home by two sharp-witted kids and a quietly omnipotent wife. He comically stumbles his way through fatherhood the best way he knows how: by treating it like a business. The only problem is that it's hard to downsize the wife and kids--much to CEO Dad's chagrin--whenever the going gets rough.

Thanks to corporate scandals lingering in the headlines, coupled with a growing anxiety about balancing work and family, Stern's strip has raised some important eyebrows recently. For starters, Creators Syndicate, the home to Gary Larson's The Far Side, formally launched CEO Dad in January, and already seven papers, including The Seattle Times and The Denver Post, have bought the strip. According to those in the business, that's a blockbuster opening in the arcane world of comic-strip economics. Dilbert itself languished for its first couple of years with only about 35 newspapers, and took several years to build up to 100. Today, the strip runs in 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries, and Scott Adams's cube-dwelling dweeb has spawned a cottage industry.

Even before getting a syndication deal, Stern managed to snare CEO Dad a mention (and a panel) in Sue Shellenbarger's popular "Work & Family" column in The Wall Street Journal, as well as a small item (and strip) in Forbes. More recently, Stern has started doing commentary for Public Radio International's business show Marketplace, whose producers have asked him to develop some CEO Dad skits to be performed on the air. An appearance on Ed McMahon's national talk-radio program led the uber sidekick to promise that he would discuss the idea of turning CEO Dad into a television show with Aaron Spelling over dinner.

And if ambition is what it will take to make CEO Dad the next Dilbert, Stern, 48, has it. He's an in-your-face, relentless marketer who doesn't take no for an answer. Overwhelmingly controlling, he can come across as a pest in the service of getting what he wants. A longtime friend says Stern once talked his way onto Jerry Seinfeld's private plane and then told Seinfeld all the things that were wrong with his act. "I mean, here's Tom Stern, who's made all of $9 over his lifetime in comedy, telling Seinfeld what he's doing wrong," the friend marvels. As Stern puts it, "I'm a recovering narcissist--but I haven't fully recovered yet."