Matthew Abram Groening ( GRAY-ning; born February 15, 1954) is an American cartoonist. He is the creator of the television series The Simpsons (1989–present), Futurama (1999–2003, 2008–2013, 2023–present), and Disenchantment (2018–2023), as well as the comic strip Life in Hell (1977–2012).
Born in Portland, Oregon, Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde magazine Wet in 1978. At its peak, it was carried in 250 weekly newspapers and caught the attention of the producer James L. Brooks, who contacted Groening in 1985 about adapting it for animated sequences for the Fox variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, Groening created a new set of characters, the Simpson family. The shorts were spun off into their own series, The Simpsons, which became the longest-running American primetime television series and the longest-running American animated series and sitcom.
In 1997, Groening and former Simpsons writer David X. Cohen began production on Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999. It ran for four years on Fox, was picked up in 2008 by Comedy Central for another 5 years, and was picked up again by Hulu in 2023. In 2016, Groening developed a series for Netflix, Disenchantment, which premiered in August 2018.
Groening has won 14 Primetime Emmy Awards, 12 for The Simpsons and 2 for Futurama, and a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004. In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on the Life in Hell comics syndicated in over 250 daily and weekly newspapers. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 14, 2012.
Early life and education
Matthew Abram Groening was born
in Portland, Oregon, on February 15, 1954, the middle of five children (older sister Patty and brother Mark were born in 1943 and 1950, and younger sisters Lisa and Maggie in 1956 and 1958, respectively). His Norwegian American mother, Margaret Ruth (née Wiggum; March 23, 1919 – April 22, 2013), was once a teacher, and his Canadian Mennonite father, Homer Philip Groening (December 30, 1919 – March 15, 1996), was a filmmaker, advertiser, writer and cartoonist. Homer, born in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, Canada, grew up in a Plautdietsch-speaking family.
Groening's grandfather, Abram A. Groening, was a professor at Tabor College, a Mennonite Brethren liberal arts college in Hillsboro, Kansas, before moving to Albany College (now known as Lewis and Clark College) in Oregon in 1930.
Groening was raised in Portland and attended Ainsworth Elementary School and Lincoln High School. Following his high school graduation in 1972, Groening attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a liberal arts school that he described as "a hippie college, with no grades or required classes, that drew every weirdo in the Northwest." He served as the editor of the campus newspaper, The Cooper Point Journal, for which he also wrote articles and drew cartoons. Groening almost graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism in 1977. He left before completing his degree. He befriended fellow cartoonist Lynda Barry after discovering that she had written a fan letter to Joseph Heller, one of Groening's favorite authors, and had received a reply. Groening has credited Barry with being "probably [his] biggest inspiration." He first became interested in cartoons after watching the Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians as well as Monty Python.
Early career
In 1977, at age 23, Groening moved to Los Angeles to become a writer. He went through several jobs, including being an extra in the television film When Every Day Was the Fourth of July, busing tables, washing dishes at a nursing home, clerking at the Hollywood Licorice Pizza record store, landscaping in a sewage treatment plant, and chauffeuring and ghostwriting for a retired director of Western films.
Life in Hell
Groening described life in Los Angeles to his friends in the form of the 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 distributed 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 September/October issue of that year.
Groening had gained employment at the Los Angeles Reader, a newly formed alternative newspaper, 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 its 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 rarely actually be about music, as he would often write about his "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 reviewing fictional bands and nonexistent records. In the following week's column, he would confess to fabricating everything in the previous column and swear that everything in the new column was true. Eventually, he was finally asked to give up the "music" column. Among the fans of the column was Harry Shearer, ("This is Spinal Tap")who would later become a voice actor on The Simpsons.
Life in Hell became popular almost immediately. In November 1984, Deborah Caplan, Groening's then-girlfriend and co-worker at the Reader, 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 its first two printings. Work Is Hell soon followed, also published by Caplan. Soon afterward, Caplan and Groening left and put together the Life in Hell Cartoon Co., where Caplan endeavored to introduce his work to the world. Acme Features Syndicate, which initially syndicated Life in Hell as well as work by Lynda Barry and John Callahan, would eventually only syndicate Life in Hell. At the end of its run, Life in Hell was 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. Although Groening previously stated, "I'll never give up the comic strip. It's my foundation," the June 16, 2012, strip marked Life in Hell's conclusion. After Groening ended the strip, the Center for Cartoon Studies commissioned a poster that was presented to Groening in honor of his work. The poster contained tribute cartoons by 22 of Groening's cartoonist friends who were influenced by Life in Hell.
Creation
His partner, Deborah, was asked to bring a portfolio of Life in Hell original art to Fox Studios for fellow producer Polly Platt who wanted it as a gift for Hollywood writer-director-producer and Gracie Films founder James L. Brooks, The cartoon was entitled, "The Los Angeles Way of Death." 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 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 down his comic strip with it. Groening conceived of the idea for the Simpsons in the lobby of James L. Brooks's office and hurriedly sketched out his version of a dysfunctional family: Homer, the overweight father; Marge, the slim mother; Bart, the miscreant oldest child; Lisa, the intelligent middle child; and Maggie…