Four Color Comics

The Onion A.V. Club interviewed Portland-native Matt Groening last week about the upcoming Simpsons and Futurama movies. Among other things, the chat revealed:

• Groening and co-horts will be producing four direct-to-DVD Futurama films.
• On why people love Homer and Bender: “Like Homer, Bender has no guilt whatsoever. He wants what he wants. He’s one of the few robots in pop culture who isn’t either an effeminate little wimp, or an unfeeling psychopath. He has a lot of emotion.”
• On the bootleg Simpsons merchandise he collects: “…a crazy Russian coloring book of The Simpsons. The artist probably was shown an episode for 15 seconds and then based an entire comic book on his vague impressions.”
• On authorized Simposons merchandise: “I’m not very fond of the Simpsons fishing lures. They just look like little Bart toys, except they’ve got nasty fishhooks in them. I don’t know what kind of fish would be fooled by a Simpsons lure. Probably not a fish you’d want.”
• On newspaper comic strips: “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 of this country.”
• On his favorite Simpsons characters: “Some characters always make me laugh. I love Apu, I love Principal Skinner’s mother, Ralph Wiggum of course, everyone’s favorite. I like the squeaky-voiced teen, ’cause he seems to be working wherever Homer needs to order a milkshake or buy a movie ticket.”

And how’s this? According to his wikipedia entry, Groening is of Mennonite stock. Brother!