No Matter How Good You Are At

With 'futurama,' I Was Just Worried That Somebody Would Beat Us To It; It Seemed So Obvious That There Should Be An Animated Science Fiction Show Set In The Future. And One Of The Reasons Why It's Not, I Learned, Is That It's Really, Really Difficult.

I Went Through A Phase Where People Would Introduce Me At Parties As A Cartoonist, And Everybody Felt Sorry For Me. 'oh, Matt's A Cartoonist.' Then People Further Feeling Sorry For Me Would Ask Me To Draw Garfield. Because I'm A Cartoonist, Draw Snoopy Or Garfield Or Something.

I Think In Daily Newspapers, The Way Comic Strips Are Treated, It's As If Newspaper Publishers Are Going Out Of Their Way To Kill The Medium. They're Printing The Comics So Small That Most Strips Are Just Talking Heads, And If You Look Back At The Glory Days Of Comic Strips, You Can See That They Were Showcases For Some Of The Best Pop Art Ever To Come Out.

I Had Been Drawing My Weekly Comic Strip, 'life In Hell,' For About Five Years When I Got A Call From Jim Brooks, Who Was Developing 'the Tracey Ullman Show' For The Brand-new Fox Network. He Wanted Me To Come In And Pitch An Idea For Doing Little Cartoons On That Show.

Buy Space Ghost Cereal, But Don't Eat The Prizes.