Life In Hell RIP (1977 - 2012)

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

The "Life In Hell" comic, created in 1977 by Matt Groening (who went on to create a little animated TV show called The Simpsons) has been retired.

Last week, Matt Groening quietly put an end to Life in Hell, the weekly comic strip he'd written and drawn for 32 years.

Today, Groening's best known for creating The Simpsons, which in addition to being TV's longest-running scripted prime time series ? 23 seasons and a movie, with no end in sight unless and until Fox gets tired of ponying up the equivalent of a small island nation's GNP 22 times a year to retain the services of Hank Azaria and/or his jar-preserved head ? is inarguably his greatest contribution to popular culture, not to mention Rupert Murdoch's. But The Simpsons didn't really become The Simpsons until it passed from Groening's hands. As an institution, it belongs as much to the storied lineup of writers, producers, actors, and animators who've kept it alive and (countless Worst Episodes Ever notwithstanding) reasonably funny for more than two decades as it does to Groening.

Life in Hell was Groening's alone. After graduating from Evergreen State and moving to Los Angeles in 1977, he started self-publishing it as a comic book, selling the early issues alongside the punk zines at Licorice Pizza, the Sunset Boulevard record store where he clerked. He sold his first strip to the "gourmet bathing" magazine WET one year later. In 1980, Life in Hell began appearing in the pages of the Los Angeles Reader, the weekly paper where Groening worked as a paste-up artist, music columnist, and occasional delivery driver. A few years later, the Reader fired Groening in a dispute over money, and the strip moved to the LA Weekly; by the mid-'80s, it was a regular feature in alt-weeklies across the country.

L.A. had a thriving, punk-informed underground comix scene back then; Groening's peers included Love & Rockets creators Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez and future indie-comics titan (and Pee-wee's Playhouse set designer) Gary Panter, whose work Groening published in the Reader. But it was Groening who broke out. A mordant Life in Hell strip about dying in Los Angeles got him a meeting with producer James L. Brooks, who was interested in turning Groening's comics into a series of animated "bumpers" for The Tracey Ullman Show, which Brooks was developing for a fledgling network called Fox. Realizing at the last minute that if he took the deal, he'd lose the rights to the Hell cast (including the angst-ridden one-eared rabbit Bongo, his girlfriend Sheba, and fez-wearing nihilists/small-businessmen/gay life partners Akbar and Jeff), Groening scribbled out some new character designs while sitting in Brooks's lobby ? a family based on his parents, Homer and Margaret, and his sisters, Lisa and Maggie.

You know how that story ends, or doesn't.

"Both projects help me cope with life," Groening said in a 1995 interview. "I like The Simpsons because it's a chance to hang around really funny people and I like going home and holing up in my studio and drawing my comic strip every week, too."

At its peak ? before the rise of Craigslist decimated alt-weeklies by bleeding away their classified-ad revenue, leaving them without discretionary income to spend on things like syndicated comic strips in which painful life-truths are conveyed by bucktoothed rabbits ? Hell appeared every week in nearly 400 papers. When the final new installment ran on June 15, only 38 papers carried it, paying ACME Features a paltry $18 a strip for the privilege. Groening could afford to keep doing it because television and Butterfinger commercials and Otto the Bus Driver action figures made him richer than Mr. Burns and Hank Scorpio combined. But he also liked doing it. He told people that facing a deadline every week kept him grounded.

Read the rest of this good article HERE.

Anyway, farewell to Akbar and Jeff, and Binky and Bongo - you all will be missed...



At least Matt Groening will continue creating his brand of humor in other forms...



Post funny Life in Hell comic strips that made you laugh/think over the years...





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[Mutt]

wow, i had no idea he kept doing Life in Hell all these years while he was a gazillionaire from the Simpsons.

how involved has he been in the Simpsons? that story makes it sound like he doesn't have much to do with it, he invented the characters and turned them over to a production studio.

[RyuLion]

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

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[Mutt]

Bongo's Bio

Distinguishing Features: Take a guess

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by Mutt

Bongo's Bio

Distinguishing Features: Take a guess

ADG

[baddog]

I remember when he first came out with his comic, was in the Hermosa Beach Easy Reader. It was the first thing I would turn to.

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by baddog

I remember when he first came out with his comic, was in the Hermosa Beach Easy Reader. It was the first thing I would turn to.

Same here, we have a Weekly independent newspaper that was one of the first to syndicate Life in Hell.





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[astronaut x]

a milestone....

wouldn't call it a tragedy

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by astronaut x

a milestone....

wouldn't call it a tragedy

ADG

[Mutt]

Originally Posted by AsianDivaGirlsWebDude