The Staying Power of the Simpsons
Hey there!
This week we're talking about longevity. If you've been reading my "What I enjoyed this week" bit for a while, you know two things I've recently been consuming a lot of are the Blank Check Podcast and The Simpsons. Blank Check, if you're unfamiliar though I do think I've mentioned it before, is a podcast about directors' filmographies--how they go from their early hits to being given free reign to make the sort of movies they want to make, and loosely, how the movies "clear or bounce". I've been more-or-less bouncing back and forth between the newest episodes and listening to the back catalog from the beginning, so I've most recently finished Spielberg (the Dreamworks years) and Henry Selick.
One of the show's hosts, Griffin Newman (Arthur from The Tick), has a theory that I've been very drawn to. He talks about actors and how interesting to trace how many decades they've been relevant relative to their creative evolution.
Just because I think he's a good example (and he's been on The Simpsons), let's use Woody Harrelson as an example. In the 80s, he is essentially Woody from Cheers. He's in a few other things, but he's a TV actor from one huge show, to the point that even into the 90s, his most frequent role is Woody from Cheers. In the 90s, at the end of/post-Cheers, he becomes a movie star. Like an actual movie star, where the poster is his face, it's his name above the title, etc. The 2000s, he becomes a character actor. He's still working at a good clip, he sometimes ends up on the poster, but now he's back as part of ensembles. And in the 2010s, like so many former-movie-star-character-actors, he becomes a franchise guy: He's a big part of the Hunger Games. He's in a Marvel movie. He's in a Star Wars movie. He's so good in True Detective, that even though he's only in one season, he gets the show renewed. And while we're still fairly new into the 2020s, his 5th (technically 6th) decade as a working actor, the prestige-y films he did between his franchise movies have earned him elder statesman status and he's on posters again. For a guy whose most famous role is also a guy named Woody, he's really stuck around and managed to find a way to stay relevant.
Okay, but The Simpsons?
Tracking of creative evolution over the decades works for all sorts of creators and endeavors. That same framework, that same way of thinking, can be applied to something like say, The Simpsons. If you're a fan of The Simpsons, there's a distinct chance that either A. you believe it stopped being good at the end of the 90s or B. you've heard people it stopped being good at the end of the 90s. I like a lot of The Simpsons, so I wanna talk about that a bit.
In the 90s, The Simpsons was a family sitcom. That's rightfully what appealed to people about it. It's right there in line with Newhart and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a show about family dynamics that're usually silly and sometimes serious, with the only real dividing factor being that The Simpsons is animated.
But by the 2000s, the Simpsons exists in a really strange place. It's no longer the only primetime animated sitcom or adult animated sitcom. You have King of the Hill and the Mike Judge properties, you have South Park, you have Family Guy and Adult Swim and Futurama. And at the same time, while family sitcoms never go away, there starts to be a shift to occupational sitcoms being the power players--Scrubs, The Office, etc. So the show's in a place where it's competitors are shifting genres and moving to absurdist humor and they have to find a new identity within that. And what they find is they keep it a family sitcom, but heighten the absurdity and start to really play into The Simpsons as a pop culture object that can be aware of other pop culture.
In the 2010s, things have shifted even further--I'd say actually in some ways tied to what I was talking about a few weeks back in the brandification of geekdom. And The Simpsons, in growing and changing their relevance 20 years in, change from a pop culture object that is aware of other pop culture to almost a self-referential pop culture staple. The show, in some ways, is about how long "The Simpsons" can last and the what "The Simpsons" means. It's common knowledge that the Simpsons "predicts the future", but interestingly enough, the future episodes of the show used to be a lot more spaced out. It was roughly one every five years, until 2011 when they became much more regular--from full episodes to end of episode flash-forward tags to "life of" episodes.
Now, in the Season 30-somethings, The Simpsons has truly become such an institution that it can be a bit of everything it's been before. Some episodes lean more heavily on traditional family sitcom "drama". Some are unexpected and bizarre (Lisa the Boy Scout is a personal favorite from the current season). Some are straight up pop culture pastiches. I think to their benefit, it's what the writers find funny because all aspects are true of what The Simpsons is and it's not a surprise to hear they've been renewed for a few more seasons.
Each decade has charms because they're responding to what was needed at the time for the show's longevity.
I Thought this was a Comics Blog?
It is! And here's what that has to do with comics. On the one hand, you can apply this "changes over decades" theory to a lot of comics creators. You look at someone like the much missed George Perez and can track how he maintained a career for so long and how his art and storytelling and even the functions of his job evolved, right? He's a creator whose style is so specific and recognizable that two pieces from different decades can both immediately be identified as his own, even when they might look very different from each other. Part of what I'm getting at is if you are looking at comics as a long-term goal, the thing you want to do with your life, it's worth it to study the people who have managed to do that and the sorts of changes they've made along the way to do so.
On the other hand, and this is one of the things I find really fascinating about comics--generally speaking, it's a lot harder to apply that same thinking to specific titles. Not to say you can't do it entirely, but it tends to be easier when the comic is the work of one or a one group of people--Usagi Yojimbo or Dragon Ball or I'd say even to some extent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles given how much of it's history has had some combination of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird involved. But when you look at something like Batman, because of the nature of comics--between multiple titles for a single character, runs of incredibly varying lengths, a constant influx of new creators who bring in a diversity of storytelling (but not always a diversity of creators...) it is harder to take these evolutions by decade. Which, in some ways I think is a good thing. Because it means the things that last are not static and are changing to encompass multiple ideas of what it is and what it could be.
Anyway, food for thought and mostly I wanted to talk about how actually The Simpsons has been pretty funny for the majority of their 30+ years.
Coming up: Next week, since it's been about a year since I did a full one of these, I'm probably going to do another "Stuff That Sucks" and talk about the many massively disappointing and frustrating and downright awful things happening right now that we should all be keeping an eye on. The week after that, I think we're going to do another "Ask Me (Almost) Anything"! My inbox is open here (and it's incentive to answer a couple emails in there...) and I'll get a post up with next week's blog on Twitter for people to submit their questions!
What I enjoyed this week:
Blank Check (Podcast), Honkai Impact (Video game), House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (Book), Persona 4 Golden (Video game), Poker Face (TV show), Romantic Killer (Anime), Warioware & the other Gameboy/GBA games now on Switch, Snack vs. Chef (TV show), finally got my hands on a Minerva so that's one more Wrecker! And I got the new Big the Cat figure! Admiring good comics lettering. Seeing The Fablemans tomorrow and very much looking forward to it, and the Kaguya-Sama movie on Valentine's Day with my valentine!
New Releases this week (2/8/2023):
Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors - All Hail the King #5 (Editor)
Sonic the Hedgehog #57 (Editor)
Sonic the Hedgehog, Vol. 13: Battle for the Empire (Editor, collecting Sonic #50, 51, the 2022 Annual, and the 2022 Free Comic Book Day short)
New releases next week (2/15/2023):
Off week for my books
Final Order Cutoff (2/13/2023):
Godzilla: Best of King Ghidorah (Editor)
Sonic the Hedgehog #59 (Editor)
Sonic the Hedgehog #1 5th Anniversary Edition (Editor)
Announcements:
Arizona Comic Book Arts Festival - 2/25! This is like 2 weeks from now! They've got a heckuva guest list including me, Becca, Elizabeth Brei, Danny Djeljosevic, Mitch Gerads, Steve Rude, John Layman, Henry Barajas, Jay Fotos, Jeff Mariotte, Marcy Rockwell, John Yurcaba, Andrew MacLean, Alexis Zirrit, Meredith McClaren, James Owen, Ryan Cody, and many more! Come and see us! Becca'll have some very cool new merch, too! And tickets are only $10! I'll be bringing a mess of stuff that I've written and edited from Transformers, Sonic, Godzilla, and more! (Promo art by Becca)
Speaking of Becca, did you know they have a Patreon? They're doing weekly drawing prompts that're uploading Sundays, so lots of new stuff up there as well as a pretty impressive backcatalog from the past few years. This month, if you sign-up at any level, your support's actually going to a really amazing local organization, The Brown Building.
And final Becca news, they contributed to Aradia Beat, a Magical Girl Anthology Magazine! It's now on Kickstarter! It's both a tribute to 90s magical girl stories and part of a larger project about the overall preservation and mutual support of magical girl stories! We're in the final week and they're about $1K away from their goal. They can definitely make it, but it'd be cool if you could help out by backing or by sharing! Speaking of Magical Girl Kickstarters, it's still early in the life cycle of Sweet Little Resistance, which is by fellow AZ Comic Book Arts Fest tablers, Elizabeth Brei and Danny Djeljosevic as well as a host of cool artists! They're only about $500 away from their goal, and would make for a very nice complimentary piece! (Promo art by Becca)
Pic of the Week:
So the actual Pic of the Week is Tiansheng who decided to sleep under the pillows in Becca's office chair, rather than on top of them!
