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Matt Groening | 1, 2, 3, 4

Groening's success owes as much to his own work as it does to the work of a slew of others, including co-creators James Brooks and Sam Simon, and "The Simpsons'" writing staff. Though Groening has continued to churn out his comic strip every week, it's been about a decade since he wrote an episode of "The Simpsons." The daily task of writing the show is left to a team of writers, whom he calls his "Harvard-grad-brainiac-bastard-eggheads." In fact, when "Simpsons" writers wax elegaic, they tend to do so about George Meyer, a writer who first became involved with the show late in 1989, a few months before its Fox premiere. Executive producer and show runner Mike Scully once told the New Yorker, "People are always asking why 'The Simpsons' is still so good after all these years, and, at the risk of pissing off all the other writers, I think I'd have to say that the main reason is probably George." Ian Maxtone-Graham, another writer on the show, has said in an interview, "I would rather make George Meyer laugh than get an Emmy." Groening has said that due to his limited drawing ability, it's unlikely he could get a job as an animator on "The Simpsons" today. Perhaps, were he to walk in off the street, he could get a job as a writer on the show. But in any case, Groening allowed the series to evolve under the tutelage of his writers, the undisputed champions of television comedy.

Brooks' and Simon's hand in shaping the show was significant. It was thanks to Brooks' reputation that "The Simpsons" was granted a level of autonomy not normally given to television shows -- especially one as risky as "The Simpsons" seemed at the time. Simon was also responsible for hiring the writing staff, who shaped the characters into what they are today.

In the 10 years since the debut of "The Simpsons," however, Groening had gone from semifamous alternative cartoonist to iconic powerhouse. A fan of science fiction, he had been thinking about creating a show about the future for some time. And the idea of creating a show on his own appealed to him. "I think Matt likes the fact that this is more his baby," Rich Moore, supervising director of Rough Draft, the company that animates "Futurama," told Spin magazine. "That there's no Jim Brooks around. I think he kind of wants to prove, maybe to no one but himself, that he can do it without those guys."

"Futurama" moved away from the family sitcom structure and into dysfunctional workplace territory, a subject that had long inspired Groening. A thousand years in the future -- a wry, bleak version of a future where suicide booths and celebrity heads preserved in jars are part of the landscape -- work is still hell. The show centers on Fry, a pizza-delivery man who is accidentally frozen in a cryogenics lab and defrosted 1,000 years later. He winds up working for an intergalactic delivery service, with a crew of misfits including Leela, the ship's one-eyed alien captain and Bender, a corrupt, vice-addled, disgruntled robot. Needless to say, the life-affirming executives at Fox worried that the show was too dark and negative.




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Despite the unprecedented success of "The Simpsons," the process of getting "Futurama" on the air has been described by Groening as "the worst experience of my adult life." When he and former "Simpsons" show runner David X. Cohen (now the show runner on "Futurama") first approached Fox with the new idea, the network went into instant paroxysms of ecstasy. Then, no sooner had they ordered 13 episodes than the doubts set in. The network resisted giving Groening the autonomy he needed and plied him with notes. As to the autonomy he'd enjoyed with "The Simpsons," Groening was told, "We don't do business like that anymore."

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