Alas. I was proud that when I met Mr. Groening @ CCI in 2010, the first thing I told him was how much I loved "Life In Hell". He'd been about to leave but he took one last pic, w/ me.

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/5284/ma…

@1 That's a great photo!
weirdos : )

Agreed the @1 photo is fabulous - what a memory for you. And I should have kept up with Life in Hell and sought it out. RIP.

I still have a copy of "So You Want To Be An Unrecognized Genius" clipped from The Rocket in 1985 stuck to my refrigerator - it's been both an inspiration and an affirmation ever since.

So long Binky, Bongo, Akbar & Jeff - it was good to know ya'...

You are either a "Life In Hell" Groening living in Seattle in 1987 and reading him and Ernie Pook's in the cold in the open air Broadway Espresso when Capitol Hill was near vacant.

... or else you are a GenX Simpson's Groening, flooding Seattle in the late 1990s with your "real city" attitude.

You cannot be both...

Feels sad, man.

The last strip is perfect. Akbar and Jeff! I love me some Akbar and Jeff...

Akbar and Jeff's House 'O Sad Goodbyes...

So why didn't The Stranger run Life in Hell?

"At night, the ice weasels come".

Mistakes were made.

I hunt down the Life in Hell monthly calendar every year. I hope Bongo finally finds happiness. Or at least a decent sandwich.

I was surprised it was still around myself, Paul, and I'm not necessarily proud of it either. On the positive side of our ignorance, apparently there's 30 years of strips to catch up with when I want to!

The end of an era, for sure. I got into Life In Hell at around the age when I got too old for Mad Magazine, and it wormed its way into my philosophical view of the world forever.

"I’ve had great fun, in a Sisyphean kind of way." Classic Groening.

Life In Hell impacted my teenage development more than punk rock did. I would never have developed the protective coat of cynicism about how I would be valued as an employee if it weren't for Matt Groening.

That said, it started sucking pretty bad once The Simpsons began. Even though I remember him stating that he valued doing Life In Hell because it was one thing that was all his, no one else's, I've seen few post-1989 cartoons that elicited anything other than a wish for him to lay it to rest. Probably I missed some genuinely funny ones, but it wasn't worth seeking out after the old weeklies stopped running it.

Still, it's kind of sad to see it end. Kind of like Peanuts, which staggered along for about 25 years too long. The early brilliance makes up for everything else.

Love Akbar and Jeff. I didn't knwow it was still running, but I never see comic strips online. I used to read Doonesbury on Slate six or seven years ago, but it was funny in 1983.

Damn, I loved this stuff in the 1980s. Had no idea he was keeping it going all these years. Will there be some mega-compendium, hopefully on a DVD?