Matt Groening

Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening(pronuonced GRAY-ning, born February 15, 1954 in Portland, Oregon) is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creater of two successful TV shows, The Simpsons, and Futurama, as well as the comic strip, Life in Hell. His family includes his Norwegian-American mother Margaret Ruth, who was once a teacher, his German-American father, Homer Philip Groening, who was once a filmmaker, advertiser, writer, and cartoonist, his two younger sisters Lisa and Margaret(Maggie) Groening, his older sister Patty Groening, his older brother Mark Groening, and his grandfather, Abraham Groening.

Groening grew up in Portland and attended Ainsworth Elementary, and Lincoln High School. From 1972 to 1977, Groening attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He served as the editor of the campus newspaper The Cooper Point Journal, for which he also wrote articles and drew cartoons. He befriended fellow cartoonist Lynda Barry after discovering that she written a fan letter Joseph Heller, one of Groenings favorite authors, and received a reply. Groening has credited Barry with being "probably [his] biggest inspiration". Groening has also cited the Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmations as what got him interested in cartoons. In 1977, at the age of 23, Groening moved to Los Angeles to become a writer. He went through what he described as "a series of lousy jobs," including being an extra in the movie When Every Day Was the Fourth of July, bussing tables, washing dishes at a nursing home, landscaping in a sewage treatment plant, chauffering, and ghostwriting for a retried Western director.

Life in Hell
Main Article: Life in Hell

Groening described life in Los Angeles to his friends in the form of his self-published comic book Life in Hell, which was loosely inspired by the chapter "How to Go to Hell" in Walter Kaufmann's book ''Critique of Religion and Philosophy. Groening distrubuted the comic book in the book corner of Licorice Pizza'', a record store in which he worked. He made his first professional cartoon sale to the avant-garde Wet Magazine in 1978. The strip, titled "Forbidden Words," appeared in the October/September issue of that year.

Groening gained employment at the Los Angeles Reader delivering papers, typesetting, editing, and answering phones. He showed his cartoons to the editor, James Vowell, who was impressed and eventually gave him a spot in the paper. Life in Hell made it's official debut as a comic strip in the Reader on April 25, 1980. Vowell also gave Groening his own weekly music column, "Sound Mix," in 1982. However the column would rarley actually be about music, as he would often wrtie about his own "various enthusiasms, obsessions, pet peeves, and problems" instead. In an effort to add more music to the column, he "just made stuff up," concocting and reveiwing fictional bands and non-existent records. In the following weeks column, he would cunfess to fabricating everything in the previous column, and swear that everything in the new column was true. Finally, he was asked to give up the "music" column. Amongst the fans of the column was Harry Shearer, who would the voice Mr. Burns and many other characters on The Simpsons.

Life in Hell became popular almost immediatly. In November 1984, Deborah Caplan, Groenings then-girlfriend and co-worker offered to publish "Love is Hell", a series of relationship-themed Life in Hell strips, in book form. Released a month later, the book was an underground success, selling 22,000 copies in it's first two printings. Work is Hell soon followed, also published by Caplan. Soon afterward, Groening and Caplan left and put together the Life in Hell Co., which handled merchandising for ''Life in Hell. Groening also started a syndicate, Acme Features Syndicate, which syndicated Life in Hell, Linda Barry,and John Callahan, but now only syndicates Life in Hell.''

Life in Hell is stilled carried in 250 weekly newspapers and has been anthologized in a series of books, including School is Hell, Childhood is Hell, The Big Book of Hell, and ''The Huge Book of Hell. ''Groening has stated that he will "never give up the comic strip. It's [his} foundation."

The Simpsons
Main Article: The Simpsons

Life in Hell caught the eye Hollywood writer-producer and Gracie Films founder James L. Brooks, who had been shown the strip by fellow producer Polly Platt. In 1985, Brooks contacted Groening with the proposition of working in animation on an undefined future project, which would turn out to be developing a series of short animated skits, called "bumpers," for the Fox variety show called ''The Tracey Ullman Show. Originally, Brooks wanted Groening to adapt his Life in Hell ''characters for the show. Groening feared that he would have to give up his ownership rights and that the show would fail and take his comic strip down with it. Groening conceived the idea for The Simpson family in the lobby of James L. Brooks office and hurriedly sketched out his version of a dysfunctional family: Homer, the overweight father, Marge, the slim mother, Bart Simpson, the bratty oldest child, Lisa, the intelligent middle child, and Maggie, the baby. Groening famously named the characters after his own family: his parents, Homer and Margaret (Marge or Marjorie in full), and his younger sisters, Lisa and Margaret(Maggie). Claiming that it was a bit too obvious to name a character after himself, he chose the name Bart, an anagram of the word brat. However Groening stresses that aside from some of the sibling rivalry, his family is nothing like the Simpsons. Groening has also stated that his older brother Mark was his inspiration for Bart.

Maggie Groening has also co-written a few Simpsons books for her cartoon namesake.