Being A Good Embalmer Is A Thankless

As Astute Followers Of 'life In Hell' Will Notice, Akbar And Jeff Wear The Same Striped T-shirt As Charlie Brown. 'peanuts' Was Very Important To Me.

'the Simpsons' From The Very Beginning Was Based On Our Memories Of Brash '60s Sitcoms - You Had A Main Title Theme That Was Bombastic And Grabbed Your Attention - And When You Look At Tv Shows Of The 1970s And '80s, Things Got Very Mild And Toned Down And... Obsequious.

It's A Funny Show. The Characters Are Surprisingly Likable, Given How Ugly They Are. We've Got This Huge Cast Of Characters That We Can Move Around. And Over The Last Few Seasons, We've Explored Some Of The Secondary Characters' Personal Lives A Bit More.

I Think In Daily Newspapers, The Way Comic Strips Are Treated, It's As If Newspaper Publishers Are Going Out Of Their Way To Kill The Medium. They're Printing The Comics So Small That Most Strips Are Just Talking Heads, And If You Look Back At The Glory Days Of Comic Strips, You Can See That They Were Showcases For Some Of The Best Pop Art Ever To Come Out.

Back In High School, I Wrote A Novel About A Character Named Bart Simpson. I Thought It Was A Very Unusual Name For A Kid At The Time. I Had This Idea Of An Angry Father Yelling "bart," And Bart Sounds Kind Of Like Bark - Like A Barking Dog.