Simpsons Illustrated magazine: the early days of fandom

The idea for this post came from my friend Dave. We were recently talking about our first exposure to The Simpsons, and I instantly thought of a little magazine I bought in the early ‘90s called Simpsons Illustrated. It contained articles, interviews, behind-the-scenes info, and the first ever comic strips about The Simpsons. And yes, I still have them – that's my collection you see above.

The first time I heard of The Simpsons was when Smash Hits magazine reviewed the “Do The Bartman” single. I first saw its music video the week of February 3, 1991. This Fresh Prince-style rap song performed by Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson was my first exposure to the Simpsons characters. At the time of writing, there have been 811 episodes of the show, but at the time “Do The Bartman” entered the Australian charts, only 24 episodes had been aired in the USA, and the show would only make its Australian debut two weeks later, on February 10, 1991. Consequently, chart-watchers in Australia like me would have seen “Do The Bartman” before they saw the actual show. 

 
The writers. Matt Groening, bottom right. I read in several places that photos of writer John Swartzwelder are hard to come by, but he is in this picture – second from the left, front row.

I hadn’t become hooked on the show yet, but my sister and I were sufficiently interested enough in it to start buying Simpsons Illustrated magazine when we first noticed it on the newsstands. The first issue appeared in the US in April 1991, but it’s hard to find out when the Australian version made it to shelves. As you might know, Christmas was only introduced here in 1997 — that being only three years after we got electricity — so it’s safe to say Simpsons Illustrated took a while longer to hit our shores. Let’s be generous and say it was mid-1991.

Ah, 1991.

What comes to mind when I say “mid-1991”? The Gulf War? Sure. Warner Bros Movie World opening? Goes without saying. But there was also a little thing called the MASSIVE LICENSE TO PRINT MONEY that was the Simpsons merchandising boom. I became a teenager that year and I couldn’t turn my head without seeing yellow-skinned cartoon characters on any youth-oriented product you care to name (and several non-youth-oriented products besides, like pasta shapes). The Simpsons were now part of everyday life in many English-speaking countries and there was no escape from them.

These scenes will be familiar to any Simpsons fan who saw the original Tracey Ullman Show shorts — not to anyone in Australia though, as they never aired here.

Simpsons Illustrated was part of that initial merchandising explosion, but it definitely held more value for Smash Hits- and MAD-reading 13 year old me than the majority of the shoddy Simpsons crap being cranked out. By 1999 I would be a regular visitor to what was then called snpp.com, the internet’s best source of Simpsons information (mostly to find out all the episode titles). But before the internet, there were few ways to get info about the show and its creators and talented staff.

The animators. I defy you to find a better name for an animator than 'Chuck Sheetz'.

The quarterly magazine was produced by Simpsons creator Matt Groening, along with Steve Vance, Cindy Vance and Bill Morrison. It was geared towards the younger fans of the show, in the vein of similar publications like Nickelodeon Magazine and Disney Adventures, but it very much had Groening’s comedic voice running through it — evidently he had a hand in writing it. The "School Survival Handbook" in particular is wonderful stuff; cynical and very funny.

As a young fan of this new global phenomenon of a show, the magazine was indispensable. Reading about the writer’s room, what the voice actors looked like, rough sketches, interviews, character designs, what inspired certain scenes or episodes, the orchestra that provides the score, teasers for upcoming new episodes, even fan art — this was all pure gold at a time when finding out how your favourite show is made was a real rarity. It wasn't strictly a kids’ magazine — there was a fair bit of content in it aimed at kids though, such as Bart’s advice on how to make your teacher’s life hell, fake ads for Springfield businesses, a look at Bart’s school paper, or prank ideas introduced by Satan himself: it’s all very reminiscent of Groening’s Life In Hell comics, with its recurring premise that kids’ natural creativity and frivolity is constantly being suppressed, and that all adults are humourless arseholes. It was also a novel way to expand the lore of the show that only had a few dozen episodes to its name.

Words of wisdom from Mr. Groening.

The very first Simpsons comics appeared in this magazine, along with the comic strips William & Percy by Gary Panter, and Arnold by Craig Bartlett (Groening’s brother-in-law). Going by the letters page, readers thought those last two strips sucked, but they evidently wanted more Simpsons comics. And they got ‘em. The magazine’s staff put out a one-off issue in January 1993 called Simpsons Comics and Stories, and it was such a success that a regular Simpsons Comics title was launched. The focus shifted and so, after just eight issues (and one ‘annual’), Simpsons Illustrated was discontinued and its staff launched the Bongo Comics company. Simpsons Comics ended up running for 245 issues, coming to an end in October 2018.

Yes, those are 3-D glasses included with the 1993 annual, which was indeed in mind-bending knee-slapping eye-popping 3-D. At left is the ad in issue 3 showing that it was originally intended to be the 1992 annual.

I get the feeling Simpsons Illustrated’s creative team intended the magazine to have a lengthy run, as evidenced by the “Volume 1 Number 1” issue numbering that they used. The final issue gives no indication that there would be no more issues; it even has the usual subscription form in it. Even if the title hadn’t been superseded by Simpsons Comics, I think the magazine could have kept going through the final waning pre-internet years. If the animated series can remain on the air for 114 seasons and counting, the magazine may well have had an endless well of material to draw from. Alas, we shall never know. Maybe Moe gets a cell phone? Has Bart ever owned a bear? Or, how about a crazy wedding, where something happens, and…

The comics in the magazine often included bits of non-canonical lore. I can see Bart being into Ozzy, or Dio, or maybe even Pantera, but here he’s a fan of Satanic black metal. Nice.

Some more non-canon details, and possibly the best drawing of Homer in existence. “17-23-56”??

Look how they’ve made Dan Castellaneta all yellow, those scallywags.

Bart’s school paper. Love that motto!

My eyes. The goggles do nothing.

Dear Lord. Haven’t I suffered enough?

Make it stop! By the way, the kid pictured here is actually named Bart Simpson, and he was 6 at the time. Which means he is 41 now. Scary.

This is just silly. Back to the drawing board, Dan Povenmire!

That's more like it.

SIMPSONS ILLUSTRATED © 1991–1993 Matt Groening Productions.
THE SIMPSONS ©…er…who holds the rights to it now? I forget…

Surrealism at the World Cup

Has it really been 16 years since I last posted about the FOOFA World Cup? Sixteen years to the day?? Well I never.

If you've been watching the 2026 World Cup you might have noticed the unusual design on Belgium's away jerseys:

What are those things? Well, surrealist art lovers may recognize them as the metallic orbs from René Magritte's painting from 1931, La voix des airs.

The Belgian team are paying tribute to their cultural heritage by honouring one of their finest artists. The shirt also features the words "Ceci n'est pas un maillot" ("This is not a jersey"), in reference to, y'know, that pipe thing. Those words were intended to be on the front of the shirt but that broke the rules or something, so they appear on the inside instead, on the collar.

It got me thinking. What if other countries wanted to pay tribute to their artists with a jersey design? What would that look like, eh? Wonder no more, because here are some I came up with.

SWITZERLAND: Hans Ruedi Giger

SPAIN: Salvador Dali

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Harvey Ball

FRANCE: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

ENGLAND: Banksy

THE NETHERLANDS: Piet Mondrian

What do you make of this, Bert?

Here's another old cartoon from many decades ago. It's not a bawdy postcard this time, just a single panel gag cartoon from 1937. I did find it rather puzzling though, but perhaps you can make some sense out of what's going on here:

At first glance, there's a lot of questions about this one. Where is this happening? What's behind the curtain? What job do these men have? Why is there light shining from their heads? Why does that one guy have such a perverse leer? Why have these people removed their shoes? Can someone explain any of this??

In the course of my 'research' I discovered that the most likely scenario is that these men are train conductors or porters, and that the setting here is a sleeper car on a train, although nothing in the artwork suggests this. (Unless the number '4' is meant to give it away?) That would explain the shoes. Oh, and one of the pairs is women's shoes, so there's something untoward going on here, Miss Marple.

The only visual element to this cartoon that I like is the dark-red ink wash for the curtain, although the use of red did make 'cinema ushers' or 'cops doing a brothel raid' a more likely scenario in my mind. Such is the suggestive power of a single colour. 

This cartoon is credited to Frank Beaven. He was one of several contributors to Laff-A-Day, a daily gag cartoon panel that ran in American newspapers from 1936 all the way up to 1998, if you can believe that. When King Features revived the series in 2006, its promo statement included this line: "Older readers may get an extra chuckle from scenes of traveling salesmen, two-ton Chevies and women sporting funny hats."

I mean if you don't get a chuckle out of those things you have no soul, yeah?

Until next time.

Stuff that didn't make it into Juliet Prime: Part I

Welcome, unsuspecting peasant, to...the Hall of Discarded Ideas! [cue evil laughter] Ah ha ha ha ha ha! 

Back in 2021, when I started working on plot ideas and concepts for my graphic novel Juliet Prime, I didn't have a clear idea of the events that were meant to happen in it. So I decided to make a list of every type of scene I wanted to see in a comic, and put it in. Most of the things on that list ended up in the finished book, but quite a lot didn't.

In the next few posts I will detail those rejected ideas here. Mostly because this is a web log — a time- and date-stamped record of my artistic doings. I also find that it helps to never fully discard your comic ideas. Just because these things didn't fit into my story doesn't mean they won't fit anywhere else. Hold on to them! They are probably more interesting than the slop being served up by 'Hollywood' these days, anyway.

Here's the first dropped idea that I wanted to make mention of.

 

Early on, I developed the conceit that the main characters Juliet and Seymour were time-travellers. I thought it would be interesting if, in this story set in the year 2112, that the protagonists were from another era. I thought this might go some way to explaining why their appearance isn't so 'futuristic'. Juliet is dressed like she's from the 1800s and Seymour has a striped rugby jersey redolent of a British public school boy. You could safely predict that no one will be dressing like this in the 22nd century and you'd be right.

A year after I first created these characters, there was a Blackadder special called Back & Forth. The Blackadder series was notable for showing iterations of the same characters in different eras, but in this one they actually travel through time, resulting in scenes like Blackadder going back to the reign of Elizabeth I and punching Shakespeare in the face. I could do that with my characters, couldn't I? Juliet goes back in time to meet the Roman emperor Diocletian and...? Some stuff happens?  

In the end though, I couldn't think of a way to make this idea fit in, and I didn't really want to write a time-travel story. Juliet and Seymour are not time-travellers, nor are they under the delusion that they are. They are just two kids in the future who dress like they're from the past.

~to be continued~ 

Froggie went a-courtin'

I'm more than two years late with this post — it was supposed to be posted back in October 2023! I found these pics when I was poking around my MacBook looking for things to delete, because my available hard drive space had dwindled down to a mere 1.1 GB. Incidentally that was also the entire hard drive capacity of my family's IBM Aptiva back in 1997!

But anyway — 

There were four progress photos of a small watercolour frog I painted. I can't remember what commentary was supposed to go with them, so I'll just post the pics.

First, the pencil outlines.

 

Then I filled in the background, everything except the frog's green body, the following day.

 

Just another view of it. It's A5 watercolour paper masking-taped to some porous cardboardy stuff that came as packing material.

 

And we're done! Looks like I wasn't happy with those vines in the background and blurred them out altogether. 

I painted this mainly to amuse my Japanese friend Meg who liked a drawing of a 'frog craftsman' I did earlier in 2023, and asked me to draw another frog. Hence this. And yes, that is a bowl of nachos in his hand. So, there you go! I hope you've enjoyed looking at this little critter as much as I have.