The Big Book of Hell (paperback, 170 pages, 9 page index, dimensions 11 by 11 inches) shows the kind of cartoons Matt Groening created before he invented The Simpsons (which started out on the Tracey Ullman weekly TV show in 1987 and acquired a show of its own in 1990). About half of The Big Book of Hell is a compilation of Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strip series, which began in Wet magazine in 1978. Life in Hell later appeared weekly in the Los Angeles Reader (1980). Then it was syndicated by the Acme Features Syndicate and appeared in hundreds of newspapers in several countries. The other half of the book consists of funny pages which were not part of the Life in Hell series, some of which have appeared in previous books by Matt Groening. The titles of these are listed below. Observe from the list that Akbar and Jeff are among his cartoon characters. Matt Groening (he says his name "rhymes with 'raining'") was born in Oregon in 1954. He used to doodle a lot in school. In his preface, he explains himself as a guy who enjoys "drawing bulgy-eyes rabbits with tragic overbites". Then he includes Robert Graves' short but hilarious poem, Epitaph on an Unfortunate Artist. In my humble opinion, The Big Book of Hell is the funniest thing written in the past 25 centuries, and that includes Aristophanes.
Here's that list of cartoons that supplement the ones from the Life in Hell series ...
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