With the whole world caught up in the hupla over the new Simpsons movie, I got to thinking about their creator cartoonist Matt Groening. Today, the Simpsons are a global phenomenon, They've been on TV for 20 years, longer than M*A*S*H. But they started out as just the buffers between commercials for the Tracy Ulman Show on the brand new FOX TV network. Success make for odd bedfellows with FOX mogul Rupert Murdoch taking over the Wall Street Journal and FOX NEWS spewing Republican propaganda all over the American Landscape, he owes much of his empire to the anti-establishment cartoonist who started out in edgy alternative weeklies like the New Times, the LA Weekly, and the Weekender (or whatever the free tabloid full of concert promotions and strip joint ads is named in your town).
Every Thursday I'd head down to the local 7-11 ("Quickie Mart" in Springfield) to check out the comic books, get a Big Gulp Slurpee and read the edgy, alternative comics- "Honky Tonk Sue" by Arizona 's own Bob Boze Bell, "Zippy the Pinhead" by Bill Griffith, "Red Meat" by Max Cannon, Mark Alan Stamaty's "WashingTOON," and best of all, "Life in Hell"- the chronicles of Binky the Rabbit, and the abiguously gay Akbar and Jeff, two short guys who each wore a fez by none other than Matt Groening. And by the way, that yellow guy on this post is me, "Simpsonized."
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