Matt Groening

His Norwegian American mother, Margaret Ruth (née Wiggum; March 23, 1919 – April 22, 2013), was once a teacher, and his German Canadian 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.

Matthew Abram Groening (born February 15, 1954) is an American cartoonist, writer, producer, and animator.

Groening was born on February 15, 1954, in Portland, Oregon, the middle of five children (older brother Mark and sister Patty were born in 1950 and 1943, while the younger sisters Lisa and Maggie in 1956 and 1958, respectively).

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.

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, and he has also cited Robert Crumb, Ernie Bushmiller, Ronald Searle, Monty Python, and Charles M. Schulz as inspirations.

He is best known as the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell (1977–2012) and the television series The Simpsons (1989–present), Futurama (1999–2003, 2008–2013, 2023–present), and Disenchantment (2018–2023).

The Simpsons is the longest-running U.S. primetime television series in history and the longest-running U.S. animated series and sitcom.

Groening graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism in 1977.

In 1977, at age 21, Groening moved to Los Angeles to become a writer.

He went through what he described as "a series of lousy jobs," including being an extra in the television movie 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 Western director.

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.

Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde magazine Wet in 1978.

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, who would later become a voice actor on The Simpsons.

Life in Hell became popular almost immediately.

At its peak, it was carried in 250 weekly newspapers, and caught the attention of American 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 has since aired episodes.

In 1997, Groening and former Simpsons writer David X. Cohen developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999.

In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on Life in Hell.

Groening has won 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, 11 for The Simpsons and 2 for Futurama, and a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004.

It ran for four years on Fox; was picked up in 2008 by Comedy Central for another 5 years; then was finally picked up by Hulu for another revival in 2023.

He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 14, 2012.

In 2016, Groening developed a new series for Netflix, Disenchantment, which premiered in August 2018.