life in hell

Life in Hell, quietly retitled Life is Swell in 2007,[1] is a weekly comic strip by Matt Groening. The strip features anthropomorphic rabbits and a pair of gay lovers. Groening uses these characters to explore a wide range of topics about love, sex, work, and death. His drawings are full of expressions of angst, alienation, self-loathing, and fear of inevitable doom. Contents [hide] 1 History 2 Recurring characters 3 Recurring jokes and situations 4 Merchandise and advertising 4.1 Books 5 References 6 External links //

History Cover of Life In Hell No. 4, published in 1978.

Life in Hell started in 1977 as a self-published comic book Groening used to describe life in Los Angeles to his friends. Groening photocopied and distributed it in a small "punk" corner of the record store in which he worked, Licorice Pizza on Sunset Boulevard.[2] Life in Hell debuted as a comic strip in the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978, to which Groening made his first professional cartoon sale. The first strip, entitled "Forbidden Words", appeared in the September/October issue. Popular in the underground, Life in Hell was picked up by the Los Angeles Reader (an alternative weekly newspaper where Groening also worked as a typesetter, editor, paste-up artist and music critic) in 1980, where it began appearing weekly.[3]

The strip was frequently a serial, discussing various topics such as "Love is Hell", a 1984 "13-chapter miniseries" pontificating on love and relationships. In November of that year, Groening's then-girlfriend (and co-worker at the Reader) Deborah Caplan offered to publish "Love is Hell" in book form.[4] The book was an underground success, selling 22,000 copies in its first two printings. Soon afterward, Caplan and Groening left the Reader and put together the Life in Hell Co., which handled syndication and merchandising for Groening’s projects.[5]

Life in Hell reached the attention of Hollywood producer James L. Brooks, who received one strip — "The Los Angeles Way of Death" from 1982 — as a gift from fellow producer Polly Platt.[6][7] In 1985, Brooks contacted Groening with the proposition of developing a series of short animated skits, called "bumpers", for The Tracey Ullman Show. Originally, Brooks had wanted Groening to adapt his Life in Hell characters for the show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights to his characters, Groening instead created an entirely new batch of characters, the Simpsons.

As television began to place more demands on his time, however, Groening came to almost exclusively feature single-panel strips or 16-panel grids in which Akbar and Jeff exchange terse jabs. This later period also saw the increase of autobiographical strips, perhaps because Groening was influenced by this burgeoning trend in alternative comics.

Television has also made the strip "safe enough for a number