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Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening (/ˈɡreɪnɪŋ/, gray-ning; born February 15, 1954) is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell and television series' The Simpsons and Futurama. Groening made his first professional cartoon sale of Life in Hell to the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978. The cartoon is still carried in 250 weekly newspapers. He was also interviewed in The Simpsons: Celebrity Friends, The Simpsons: Mischief & Mayhem, The Simpsons: Access All Areas, The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice!, The Simpsons: America's First Family, and The Simpsons: A Culture Show.

Life in Hell caught the attention of James L. Brooks. In 1985, Brooks contacted Groening with the proposition of working in animation for the FOX variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Originally, Brooks wanted Groening to adapt his Life in Hell characters for the show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, Groening decided to create something new and came up with a cartoon family, the Simpsons, and named the members after his own parents and sisters — while Bart was an anagram of the word brat. The shorts would be spun off into their own series: The Simpsons, which has since aired over 450 episodes in 21 seasons. In 1997, Groening got together with David X. Cohen and developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premiered in 1999. After four years on the air, the show was canceled by Fox in 2003, but Comedy Central commissioned 16 new episodes from four direct-to-DVD movies. In June 2009, Comedy Central ordered 26 new episodes of Futurama, to be aired over two seasons. His advice to beginning cartoonists is to not care about what over peaple think and just try to make yourself laugh. He said that if he did not think up the Simpsons, he would probably be in a tire shop, drawing doodles of his boss on the break room wall.