It’s just horrible. I never even bothered to read any of it in any form because of this.
Maybe there are some interesting or funny bits, but the style totally repelled me.
Read it? Are you talking about Simpsons comics?
Yes, of course it started as a newspaper comic. In a California paper, I think. And then morphed into an animated series.
The visual style stayed much the same though I believe. It’s a personal reaction: but I hate it. Sorry…
This is not correct, I think.
Do you mean Life in Hell, the comic by Matt Groening? It’s a similar visual style to the Simpsons, but it was not at all the Simpsons.
I seem to remember it in the San Jose Mercury news? Could be wrong?
I thought The Simpsons started as animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.
Matt Groening somewhat famously designed and named the Simpsons right before the pitch meeting with Fox as he decided he didn’t want to sell the rights to Life in Hell.
Correct. James L. Brooks hired Groening to produce shorts for the Tracey Ullman Show based on liking what Groening had done with Life in Hell. But Groening didn’t want to use the LiH characters, so he created the Simpsons.
So OP, what don’t you like – Life in Hell, the Simpsons, or Matt Groening?
So what is @xtenkfarpl referring to?
Are you talking about this
or this?
Guess that was a different strip, now I look into it, Presumably syndicated, not tied to a particular paper.
OK, what I don’t like the appearance of seems to be the cartoon.
Sorry, I just don’t. Your mileage may vary…
Tastes vary. Personally I dislike the visual style of Bob’s Burgers.
Also I don’t like South Park or Beavis and Butthead.
I could never get used to the way Seth MacFarlane’s characters always look like they’re saying “jabjabjabjabjab.”
The artwork in the originals comic was basic, but the ideas were funny - which is all that matters to me. The TV show has vastly superior artwork but I like it.
I do not. But I do loathe the animation style of South Park, to the extent that I can never watch more that a couple minutes of it. And their infantile “humor” seals the deal of non-watching-ness.
I was joking with a friend last weekend about how that show takes place in a parallel dimension where human beings evolved without chins for some reason.
As to the Groening art style, I like it. Then again, I was a fan of Life in Hell (and I have a couple of the books around here somewhere).
ETA: Ooh, these are the books I own, which are probably in a box in the garage somewhere.
I got into them when I was a teenager.
What “originals comic” are you referring to? I’m deeply confused.
I find it curious that the original Simpsons characters and art is so much cruder and uglier looking than the simpler rounder figures of Life in Hell. Maybe he was trying for more “realism” before reverting closer to his sweet spot? Or just wanted them to look different to have less connection to his other work?
The story goes that Matt Groening intended to pitch the Fox network execs a cartoon based on his “Life in Hell” characters, but decided at the last minute that he didn’t want to sign away the rights. So at the last minute - while he was sitting in the Fox waiting room! - he hastily sketched a five-person family and called them “the Simpsons.” To his surprise, the animators for the Tracy Ullman Show ended up using his crude sketches as their character models before he had a chance to clean the drawings up.