#361 Bill Morrison: From The Simpsons to Mad Magazine

Jeff Dwoskin 0:00

All right, everybody. I'm excited to introduce you to my next guest, the legendary comic book author, writer, editor, co founder of Bongo comics, former executive editor of Mad Magazine and Eagle Scout. Ladies and gentlemen. Bill Morrison, how are you, sir? I'm great. Thank you. How are you good? Welcome to the show. Thanks, Jeff. I was jealous about the Eagle Scout thing. I never made it myself. I Oh well, I made it so far, and then I was a wee low I had all my wee low stuff, but never, never, never made it to Eagle Scout. My dad was an Eagle Scout. So I know it's a hard thing. So I when I saw it on your list, you've got amazing accomplishments, but I wanted to throw that one in also.

Bill Morrison 0:45

Well, my dad was my scout master, and I don't think he took it easy on me, but it did make it kind of easier to get merit badges. Because, you know, he, he was always kind of poking me, and he would say, you know, I know this guy is a merit badge, you know, he's a, you know, basket weaving merit badge counselor. And I could drive you over there right now if you want. So, yeah, he didn't give me the hard sell, but he made it. He made it easy for me to get to various things and just to accomplish things that you have to do to be an evil I think

Jeff Dwoskin 1:21

where I fell apart was we were one of these, like overnight outings. I was with my dad, and they were doing this chant, and you had to figure out the chant, and when you figured out the chant, and the chant was a wands, and as I am, a wand, and for the and for the life of me, I could not figure it out. I was the last kid, which is like being the last kid sitting there when no one's picking you for dodgeball, whatever I cannot figure out. Oh, what's an ass I am. I cannot. It's just not hitting me. And I think I had a breakdown from it. And I think that was the end of my Eagle Scout career. I think that was, that's where it all ended for me. You know,

Bill Morrison 1:59

I we had the same chant. I remember that one, and, you know, looking back, it's kind of cruel. It's kind of a cruel thing to do, I think, to a kid. We actually did it to some adults, and that was fun. Yeah, yeah. There was no guilt. There

Jeff Dwoskin 2:14

no okay, yeah, but I was just little kid. I couldn't figure it out I had, man, all right, I'm having flashbacks Now, Bill, so let's move on to something else. You've done so many amazing things. One of those amazing things is working with the system. Is working with The Simpsons and Matt Groening and Bongo comics. But if we were to back up and then kind of move in that direction, like, what's your origin story? What's the bill Morrison origin story that got you to that meeting and the history with The Simpsons and drawing? I know there was Disney on the on the way to that path. Yeah. Just interested in what got you in at what point in your life, did you know I can I can draw, and I can draw and make and I can make money, and I can do this for a living. I

Bill Morrison 3:06

think the first time I knew I could draw was I was about three years old. I don't remember this, but my older sister was 11 years older than me, and she told me that she sat me down at the kitchen table one day and showed me how to draw a stick figure. You know, she kind of, she did a drawing, and then she said, I'm going to come back in 10 minutes. And while I'm gone, I want you to imitate what I did. So when she came back, I had drawn like this fully formed figure. So I didn't just draw a stick man. I gave everything a width, you know, arms, legs, you know, I put details on the head, hair and ears and, you know, everything. And she kind of flipped out. And, you know, she got very excited, and she said, Oh, my God, you're going to be an artist someday. She kind of fostered that over the years, and she was always showing me, here's how you draw a horse. And whatever I was into, like I was, if I was into monsters, she would do a drawing of the Wolf Man on big, uh, newsprint paper with crayons, and you know, then she would tack that up in my bedroom on the wall. So she was always there. Just kind of it was, I was, I was kind of like a project for her, because she saw that I had some ability, and she wanted to foster that and make it grow. Most of my life. Growing up, I just assumed I would be an artist, because that's what my sister said, and I didn't have any reason to doubt her, you know? I mean, I believe what she told me. So I grew up in Lincoln Park, Michigan, south of Detroit. And so, you know, when I got into high school and started thinking about college, she also was there to help me, sort of sort of steer me towards, what were the art colleges in Detroit? You know, what were the. Uh, possibilities. So Center for Creative Studies, which is now the College for Creative Studies, was one of the options, and that's where I ended up going. So for my I would say for, like, my first two years, I think I really thought I was going to be a comic book artist. So everything I did, every assignment I got, was sort of geared towards comic book art. But I, you know, I grew up in the 70s, and I, I think I saw too many Martin Scorsese movies and too many 70s cop shows that were centered in New York. And back then, everything was in New York, like, if you wanted to be a comic book artist, that's where you had to go. I just, I was afraid of New York. I was like, I don't want to, you know, I'm okay visiting there, but I don't want to live there. So I started thinking about, well, what else could I do that I'm excited about that doesn't involve going to New York. And this is this kind of an irrational fear when you grow up in Detroit, especially Detroit back then, because, you know, there was a lot of crime. I think Detroit is great today, but back then, it was scary, I think especially for a kid, because you just heard a lot, you know, all you heard was, oh, there's crime in Detroit. You know, I went to school there, you know, where my, where my school was, was almost like a little island. And if you if you venture two or three blocks in either direction, you still saw the remnants from the riots in 67 so you still saw, you know, like kind of burn out buildings and vacant lots and all that. So it's weird that I was afraid to go to New York because of where I grew up, but I guess it's sort of like the thing you don't know is scarier than the thing you do know. I thought, Well, what else can I do that doesn't involve going to New York? There weren't really many opportunities in Detroit at the time, so I ended up having a class with an illustrator named Gary chicarelli. And Gary is an airbrush artist and an amazing teacher, as well as an amazing illustrator. He really hooked me. Just turned me on to the sort of the West Coast airbrush look, and that's the kind of illustration style that was being done out in California for movie posters, for record album covers all that kind of stuff. So that's what I ended up sort of gearing my portfolio toward, was that look. And so I started shifting away from the comic book stuff. Got out of art school, worked in a really boring job for about two years doing technical illustration, so just, you know, sort of stuff for the auto industry. But while I was doing that, I was working on my portfolio. So evenings and weekends, I would go home and I would, you know, just do things that I sort of thought would get me a job in California. Finally, the time came. I took a vacation, took a whole week, went out to California and just started showing my portfolio around. I ended up landing a job at a place that I guess it was, I guess you'd call it an ad agency, but it was sort of a boutique agency that catered specifically to the movie industry. So we did movie posters, we did TV Guide ads, everything geared towards TV and motion pictures. And that was actually where I met Matt Groening, because it was prior to the Simpsons. He was a struggling cartoonist and writer and one of the art directors that we had at the agency brought him in to write copy for movie posters. So I would see him around the office. If he had to come in and pitch ideas for movie poster copy, I would see him the wife of the owner of the agency also had a greeting card company, and he also wrote greeting cards. So that was where I first met Matt. That was actually also the first collaboration that we had. Even though we didn't work directly together, one of his copy lines appeared on a poster for which I did the illustration. Blood diner. It was blood diner. How did you know that? Oh, my God, that's it's like your psychic, yeah, blood diner, and so I did the illustration. And Matt's copy line was, first they greet you, then they eat you.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:34

That's a great tagline. Was your illustration, the hand with a knife over the blood diner, or the ghostly guy picking his teeth with a knife?

Bill Morrison 9:44

No, the the ghostly guy came later. I think that might have been done for the video release, yeah, but mine was the neon sign with the bloody knife and the diner in the background, creepy looking diner in the background.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:59

Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so your first interaction with Matt Groening has nothing to do with, really, comics or anything, but this is how you meet, which is, right, that's a great first meeting. Yeah, and do you guys each have a copy of this poster in your offices somewhere?

Bill Morrison 10:17

You know, I have one. It's not, it's not framed in hanging out. I seriously doubt that Matt has one. If he does, it's, it's in one of his many storage units. Matt actually, you know, contractually, he gets a copy of every Simpsons and Futurama and now disenchantment item that comes out. So

Jeff Dwoskin 10:39

he has every piece of merchandise ever made for disenchantment Futurama and The Simpsons,

Bill Morrison 10:45

yeah, contractually, they have to send it over to his office once it comes out. You know what happens is the, you know, there's a department at Fox, I think it's now called consumer products, but it used to be called licensing and Merchandising, and they're the ones that whatever comes out, including Matt Groening. So like, if you go to his office for a meeting, you'll see like these boxes of things, just toys and video games. And

Jeff Dwoskin 11:12

I personally have boxes and boxes of the Simpson characters in my basement. I when those see that theories came out, I was an avid collector of that COVID, as many of them as I could. So does he? So does he have, like, a museum or they're just all in boxes?

Bill Morrison 11:27

No, they're just, you know, he just says storage units. The stuff that he likes to collect, like the things that he displays in his office, are just kind of the weird things, oftentimes, the bootlegs, like, he really loves the Mexican chalkware bootleg statues, of which there are many, or especially, you know, back in the 90s there were just tons and tons of bootleg chocolate statues. They're just like plaster figures that are usually molded off of another legitimate piece of merchandise, like a plastic doll or something. But then they would sort of trick them out. So they would put Bart in a sombrero with a serape, or they would do something different to it. And then they're almost always very badly spray painted. And they're really cool. I mean, for that reason, they're just, they just look very bootleggy and handmade and made quickly, you know, to just kind of make a buck and then move on. But he, he loved those. And when we had the earthquake back in 1994 he lost a lot of that stuff. Oh,

Jeff Dwoskin 12:33

that's unfortunate, but that's, it's funny that he, he loves that kind of stuff. That's, that's really, that's quirky, fun, that's a good that's a good, good tidbit. Bill, thank you. I think

Bill Morrison 12:42

it says something about him. You know, that he's, he's always been kind of a hippie and a an underground kind of guy at heart. Even though he recognizes the bootleggers are sort of taking money out of his pocket, he still kind of respects it. And, you know, because it's just something cool about it, I don't know, probably

Jeff Dwoskin 13:01

unique in the industry, too. Most people probably try and always Sue. Sue. Sue. You had a very deep relationship with Matt in regards to Bongo comics, yeah. How did that come about? Like, where did creating this amazing poster for blood diner? How did that then lead to this amazing collaboration with Matt. Let's

Bill Morrison 13:23

see. Well, I left that agency after about four years, and I went to a studio that was run by one of my heroes, one of the guys whose work I sort of emulated when I was in art school. His name was David willardson. He's done a lot of really famous images, but the one that people might recognize the most is, if you have the album cover, the soundtrack album for American Graffiti for the George Lucas film, it's got the waitress on roller skates, sure, yeah, like a diner waitress. So that was Dave. So Dave, Dave painted that, and he had a studio, like, you know, just a an illustration studio that did not only movie advertising and entertainment related stuff, but just product advertising and everything. So I went to work for him. I I did a lot of, you know, sort of various types of paintings. One of the clients that came along kind of early in my tenure there was Disney, and I started doing all of their movie posters for the animated films. So I did the original Little Mermaid and Oliver and company, and like all the new ones that came out. But also back then, in addition to releasing the classics on video, they would also release them into theaters. So I got to do posters for Bambi and Peter Pan and Cinderella and a lot of the real kind of beloved favorites from my childhood. So I sort of got to be known as a cartoon illustrator. So when the Simpsons came along, the art director friend that I met. Question earlier, who was friends with Matt and who brought him in to write copy for movie posters? She was now working for him on The Simpsons as his liaison, kind of like his design and approvals liaison between him and Fox. So whenever there was, you know, a piece of merchandise, she would do the approvals on it, on his end. So there were people at Fox doing approvals, but like, she would go into Fox a couple of days a week, and she would look at merchandise, and she'd say, yes, no, can't do that. Love that, but change this, you know. So she was hardcore, like Matt's sort of right arm in terms of approvals for all the merchandise. So she called me up one day. I hadn't spoken to her, like maybe three years, and she said, I'm working with Matt on his new show, The Simpsons. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's on Fox, and it was early enough that you could actually say that and maybe even get a no answer. You know, No, I've never heard of that. Yeah, it's

Jeff Dwoskin 16:09

funny in the COVID, yeah, context of having finished 32 seasons, right?

Bill Morrison 16:14

But you know, back then, it had been on for a couple of weeks, and it was very new. And if you're talking to somebody about it. You weren't sure if they had seen it or knew about it, you know, I told her. I said, Yeah, well, I love it. I've seen it, and it's great. And she said, Well, I'm, I'm doing all of the approvals from that, and we're looking for artists to do merchandise arts, if you, if you're available to freelance and do stuff on the side, love to have you come to my studio and, you know, I'll show you how to draw the characters and etc. So I said, Yeah, I'd love to do that. I went and took a, like, kind of a quick tutorial from her on how to draw the characters. She laid a bunch of model sheets on me. Next thing I know, I'm, I'm drawing Bart playing bongos and The Simpsons family in a kick line and all this stuff that ended up coming out on merchandise in 1990 and I did a ton of it for, like about six months. I did so much that I sort of got a reputation at Fox. They liked what I was doing. I was fast, and so they made an offer for me to come on board full time, which I took. So from that point on, I was like all day long. I was doing artwork for Simpsons merchandise. And then I discovered that when Matt made his deal with Fox, he retained all the publishing rights, so his lawyer arranged for him to have the right to do books, comic books, magazines, everything that fell under the publishing category. I was doing the merchandise during the day, and then at night and on weekends I would I would work on Simpsons calendars, or Simpsons books, or they started a magazine called Simpsons illustrated and I worked on that. That was where we started doing comics. So in the very first issue, I drew the first Simpsons comic strip, which was a crusty of the clown comic that somebody had written. I'm not sure who wrote it, possibly Steve Vance, because Steve was the editor. This was the first time I realized my dream of being a comic artist. It just kind of fell in my lap, you know, just sort of fell to me to draw this strip. And I had such a great time. And it was such a, you know, like one of those moments of fulfilling a childhood dream that I called Steve, and I said, Hey, Steve, you know, if you've got another comic script, I'd love to be considered to draw it for the second issue. And Steve said, Well, we're really behind. Nobody's had time to write anything. Yet, if you want to write something, then you can also draw it, because Matt really wants to have comics in every issue. So this kind of solves the problem for us, just, you know, very calmly, said, Oh, okay, sure, yeah, I'd love to do it. And I hung up the phone, and I had one of those moments where you sort of grab your head and go, Holy crap. What did I just agree to? I've never written anything in my life. I don't, how do I do this? I don't, I don't know how to write a comic book script, so I just started thinking, you know, what are some stories from when I was a kid that might be funny, that I could turn into a Simpson story? And I, that's what I did. I just, I sort of thought of a story, and I was about me growing up, and I turned me into Bart, and I turned my dad into Homer, you know, obviously I had to change some things, because my dad wasn't really anything like Homer, you know. But it worked, and Matt liked it. And from that point on, it was not only drawing comics, but also writing them. And so we did that for about two years the magazine Simpsons illustrated, and for the second year we did an annual. People that we decided as kind of a gimmick, and because we were having so much fun doing the comics at this point, and by the way, the magazine was very eclectic. It was like The Simpsons fan magazine that had puzzle and game pages and it had articles and all kinds of stuff, but it just had one little section that was comics. And it was very small at first, and then by the final issue, it was, I think we had about 12 pages of comics. But for this, for this annual, we decided, let's just actually do a comic book. So it'll be an annual issue of the magazine, but we won't call it Simpson's illustrator. We'll call it Simpson's comics and stories as sort of an homage to Disney comics and stories that we all grew up with, and we'll make it comic book size. It'll just be nothing but comics, and that's that's what we did. So that book came out, it sold like crazy, and that was what gave Matt the confidence to ask Steve, and Steve and his wife, Cindy, who was also working on the magazine and myself, if we wanted to start a comic book company. And of course, we did, because we were all comic book fans. Loved comics growing up, and this was, you know, to actually be in on the ground floor of a brand new company was amazing. So we did. We started Bongo comics. And you know, that was a gig that I had for about 25 years. Well, let

Jeff Dwoskin 21:24

me I want to go backwards for one second. I want to go back to Disney, The Little Mermaid, right? That's the the one that everyone talks about that was your drawing, right? Yes, yeah, the one that Amazon stole the design for their rocket that was the May 10 year design. What I recall?

Bill Morrison 21:46

Yeah, actually, the I did the poster, and there was never any kind of uproar or controversy of any kind around the poster. But the following year, I did the illustration for the video cassette, and that's the one that everyone talks about,

Jeff Dwoskin 22:02

got it? Got it? Yeah, so you didn't do that on purpose? Then, right? Of

Bill Morrison 22:06

course not. No, no. You know, it's funny, because everybody, whenever I tell the the true story, everyone is disappointed, because they sort of want it to be that I did it on purpose. You know, the the urban legend is that the guy who did it was fired by Disney, and, you know, so this was kind of his last screw you gesture. And the truth is, I didn't work for Disney. I worked for this outside studio, so Disney couldn't fire me. I didn't work for them. But the story kept growing. You know, every time I heard it, and I heard over the course of a couple of months, I overheard it several times, or I would hear it told to me by people who didn't know that I was the artist. And it just it was like a game of telephone, where every time somebody tells it to somebody, the next person tells it to somebody else, and it gets more elaborate. Game. Yeah, he plays kids. So it was like that. And one of the early versions I heard was that the artist who did it not just that he was fired, but the reason he was fired was because Disney found out he was gay, which seems weird today, because, you know, Disney wouldn't fire somebody. They wouldn't care if somebody was gay, how much less fire them. But back then, that was a thing, that was a thing that could happen, that was not true. But the next version I heard was they found out he would not only was he gay, but he had AIDS, they fired him because of that. That was also not true. And then the final version I heard, after all these versions, was Disney fired this guy because he was gay. He had AIDS, and they caught him performing satanic rituals in the office after hours. So he was a gay Satan worshiper with

Jeff Dwoskin 24:00

AIDS. This is so funny. It's so funny. When you, like are talking to the real person about the urban legend, you just realize how ridiculous urban legends are, and everyone believes them. Everyone loves to believe these insane, ridiculous things. It's so funny. It's

Bill Morrison 24:21

so, you know, my wife was, she's an actor, and she was doing a show, and was in the dressing room, and they were, you know, it was a big cast. So there were some women that she wasn't really friends with, didn't, you know, she kind of knew a little bit, not very well. And they were talking about this, you know, they like one girl was telling the others about this degenerate Disney artist who put this phallic image in a children's video cassette cover. So my wife, Kara is just kind of overhearing it, and she's getting kind of mad because, you know, they're talking about her husband, even though they don't know it. And she finally decides. To go over and just set them straight. So she walks over says, Excuse me, couldn't help but overhear what you were saying, and I just want to tell you that that's not true at all. My husband is actually the artist who painted that video cassette cover. And none of that is true. And she explained, you know, the reason why it looks the way it does is because he had a really short deadline, and he didn't have time to put in all these details that are on the tower and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she gets to the end of her speech, and the woman looks at her kind of takes a beat and goes, I don't think so. And then goes on, you know, talking to her friends, but it's so clearly illustrates, you know, somebody comes over and gives you the real, true story, and it's not as much fun as the story you were telling. So,

Jeff Dwoskin 26:01

that I don't think so. People don't want the truth. The truth is too boring. People want the made up stuff, all right. So thank you for all that. That was, that was, I love that the So, back to Bongo comic. So you're doing the Simpsons, you're doing Futurama. You then also wrote the only non kind of graining one Roswell, which is your own personal

Bill Morrison 26:30

limited series. It wasn't the only one, but it was. It was the first one.

Jeff Dwoskin 26:34

The first one. Okay, so was that a hard pitch to get them to kind of deviate to like, I want to say, I guess it's all original material. But like, non Matt Groening, original material?

Bill Morrison 26:47

No, it wasn't a hard pitch at all, because the pitch really came from Matt himself, and it wasn't, it wasn't something I even thought about. He very early on when we started Bongo you know, he said, you know, we're going to do comics based on characters in The Simpsons. We're going to do Radioactive Man, Itchy and Scratchy Bartman, etc. But he said, I would really love to see the company expand beyond that into other types of humor comics, you know, and kind of the comics that we grew up reading as kids that don't exist anymore. And so he, he put it out there that if any of us had an idea for a comic book series that we wanted to do ourselves, and, you know, to bring it to him, if it sort of fit the model of what Bongo was, you know, the kind of the comics that Matt wanted to produce, then we would do it. So I had that in my head for a couple of years, you know, just always in the back of my head, thinking, that's an amazing offer. It's a really generous offer, something that I shouldn't take lightly, something, you know, I shouldn't just take this for granted. I should really try to come up with something, because that's really cool of him to, you know, offer to publish something that is really that is awesome. That's amazing. Yeah, you don't get that every day. And so I was, like, I said, for a couple of years, just thinking, What can I do? And one day, I was reading a book on the Roswell UFO incident, there was like, an eyewitness who says she saw an alien who survived the crash, like in the back of a truck, and they were taking it off to a military hospital, and that just kind of gave me the inspiration, and I thought, well, what if there was an alien that survived, and what would his life be like on Earth? And, you know, what kind of people would he meet? And would he meet somebody that was sympathetic to trying to help him to get back to his own planet? And it just kind of went from there. That's awesome, yeah, so I pitched it to Matt, and Matt loved it. And so that was it.

Jeff Dwoskin 29:16

It was different, too. Is kind of 1940s style art. So did you enjoy kind of 90s humor at the time with kind of a retro feel to it?

Bill Morrison 29:26

Yeah, that's always sort of been my my period the 40s. You know, 40s and 50s. I just like everything. Well, not everything, but I like visually. I love I love the way cars looked. I love the way buildings and signs look. I love the clothes, the hairstyles. I love the movies from that period. So I think early on, I thought, you know, if I'm going to do a comic, that obviously I know how long it takes to i. To draw a comic, you know, hours and hours. So if I'm going to spend a lot of my life drawing something, I want to draw things that I like drawing. So, you know, I intentionally said it in that time period for that reason, just so I could have fun drawing the kind of things I like.

Jeff Dwoskin 30:18

That's awesome. And then the one kind of tidbit as I was that I thought was fun was that you gave your character an engineering degree from the University of Michigan.

Bill Morrison 30:33

I definitely wanted it's funny when you're creating characters. And I know actors do this all the time, but up until this point, I was working with characters that already existed for the most part. I would look at what was on the show, and then I would write dialog, and I would write situations based on what I knew those characters would do, what I knew they sounded like, how they would talk, and they already have a backstory, all of them. So when I, when I started doing Roswell, it was really fun to go, well, where's Julian fries from? Well, I think she's probably from Michigan, because I'm from Michigan, so I want her to, you know, it's like, write what you know about. So if I'm going to write this character, and know about where she grew up, I kind of have to, you know, it's kind of essential that I make her from here. And I knew I wanted her to be brilliant. So I remember, like actually looking up, where can you get a degree in engineering in Michigan, you know, I wanted to make sure that somebody wasn't going to write a letter and go, Well, that's really stupid. You can only get a engineering degree in Michigan from Eastern. You can't get it from U of M.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:53

That would have been a stretch to, like, say, Eastern Michigan. I went to Eastern, but, like, even I would know that,

Bill Morrison 32:00

yeah. I didn't think that was going to happen, but it's funny. It's like when you're writing, especially when you're writing comics, because comic book fans can be very particular about continuity and facts, and, you know, annoying things like facts. So I'll write something sometimes, and I'll think, oh, that that's okay, you know, I don't have to look that up. I'm sure, I'm sure everyone will be fine with that. But then there's like, that voice in the back of your head that's like, better look it up, because some fans gonna read this and go, excuse me, sir, that they did not have

Jeff Dwoskin 32:37

that's funny. Yeah, I can see that you may you made the right call. Why was it only six issues? Was it always meant to be kind of a limited No,

Bill Morrison 32:44

it was meant to be ongoing. But a little thing called Futurama came along and I started, I started helping Matt develop the character designs for Futurama while I was doing Roswell, and that wasn't a problem, I had plenty of time for that, but once the show was up and running, I ended up becoming the art director on the show, in addition to my regular job as Creative Director at Bongo so I had those two things that I'm juggling at the same time and trying to get out an issue of Roswell every month, or even every two months, just wasn't possible with those other two very time consuming jobs. So I just had to give it up. It

Jeff Dwoskin 33:37

sounds it can do all three. Sounds like a rough life, though. You got a dream job that gets interrupted by a different dream job. I mean, let me play a little violin.

Bill Morrison 33:52

It's really hard to get any sympathy around here.

Jeff Dwoskin 33:54

So you went from the 40s and then you just jumped right to the future. So that's kind of a flip there. That's kind of cool, though.

Bill Morrison 34:02

Although there was a there was an episode of Futurama that we did where they actually go back to the Roswell UFO crash. And it turns out it was bender. It was the planet Express crew that actually crashed, and then Bender was part of the debris that they took from the debris field and examined. And I got to design some of the characters for that as art director. And one of the characters I designed was kind of an homage to Julian fries from Roswell, from my Roswell series, she's a diner waitress who's Fry's grandmother, who he ends up having sex with, and is possibly his own grandfather. One of the most living, horrifying, horrifying plot points. In the history of animated

Jeff Dwoskin 35:04

television, oh, man, you guys probably just, you just sit around going, this would be hilarious. This pulling these, pulling these dots. Well, the dots the

Bill Morrison 35:12

writers did every so often. I got to, you know, visit the writer's room. So, yeah, there was, there was a lot of that going on, but mostly, as you know, those of us just doing designs, we would go to the table read and, you know, just generally, laugh ourselves silly for 45 minutes and then go off and draw all the stuff that they wrote. Are

Jeff Dwoskin 35:39

you still doing any work with The Simpsons now? Do you still work with Matt? Yeah, occasionally

Bill Morrison 35:44

I just did a job that was kind of like an internal job that one of the producers asked me to do. But I did. I did some stuff for when the Simpsons became part of Disney, and they were sort of premiering the where they were kind of announcing the fact that this is the Simpsons was going to be on Disney plus, and that they were now part of the Disney family. So I did some pieces for that. It was for a convention. They have an Anaheim every year called D 23 you know this the Disney fan convention. So did some things for that. I did a poster for the Thanksgiving of terror, or Thanksgiving of horror episode, Halloween

Jeff Dwoskin 36:37

of horror. Did they do a Thanksgiving one?

Bill Morrison 36:39

They did a Thanksgiving one, think, in 2019 so the is basically the same as the tree house of horror Halloween special, except that it was Thanksgiving themed vignettes, like three, three Thanksgiving stories.

Jeff Dwoskin 36:57

You know? Do you know? Do you know? Al Jean, yeah, okay. I talked to him on the podcast. Also, you know, he's from Michigan too. I know, yeah, we grew up in, he's actually from the same exact city that I grew up in. Oh, really, yeah, that. So let's talk about for a second The Simpsons yellow album. First, I want to ask, I want to I want to understand the whole art appropriation and cause and all that kind of stuff. But first I want to understand so this, this is a album cover that you designed and patterned it after the Sergeant Pepper album. My question is, you drew it, right? So why was, why was Matt Groening his name on it is that was that's

Bill Morrison 37:42

except for the comics. That's standard on everything. It's just a contractual thing. So when Matt made his deal with Fox, in addition to his lawyer securing the publishing rights, she also put in stipulation that anytime Simpson's characters appear in print, whether it's, you know, on any kind of merchandise or magazines or whatever it has to have that green signature, and that was a way of preventing Fox from distancing themselves from Matt, or distancing Matt from his creation. More correctly, which could easily happen, you know, I mean, he was hired on. I mean, he created the characters. He co developed the show. He's been on board as a producer, Executive Producer, from the beginning, but, you know, at some point, if he was separated from the show, they could very easily just sort of pretend like he didn't create the characters, just not acknowledge it. You know, it would be very difficult for him to make the claim that he, you know, he did create it. So this was sort of a way of making sure that never happened. So it's, you know, it's something that I I applaud, you know, I think if I created something that was as big as the Simpsons, I would want my name on it. Cool thing that Matt did, the thing that he has more control over than anything, is the stuff we did at Bongo all the books, all the publishing, he allowed us to have our names on the covers as well as in the credits of the of the comics. And so those are really the only places where you will not really the only like if you, if you get the Simpsons yellow album, and look at the indicia on the inside, it probably says who actually drew it, but it wouldn't, wouldn't say it on the cover. On the cover, it's just Matt's name. And I think that's fine. I think it's I would never want to see Matt separated from his character. So I think that's good. I know that was kind of a long winded way of no. That

Jeff Dwoskin 39:58

was interesting, because I. I always wondered that, because, you know, as I was reading and he started to see they are the bill Morrison art, and then it's like, oh, but it doesn't have your signature. It has Matt Groening signature. I was, I always was curious about that. It was so that was no, that was a good answer. I Yeah, most appreciate you sharing that insight you

Bill Morrison 40:17

see. Most of the stuff that you see is drawn by me or somebody else. There are a few pieces of merchandise that Matt did draw. He drew the the US posted postage stamps. Those are his okay, I know there's, there's, like, a few things that have that, you know, perfect, Matt Green touch. But you know, most of it he there's just no way. It's like, you know, peanuts. There's no way. Charles Schultz drew all the peanut stuff that you see out there, right? You know, he had ghosts who, who did it, then Schultz's name is on it. So that's pretty common. Very

Jeff Dwoskin 40:56

cool. So, in terms of the, so you, you drew the Simpsons yellow album. It's, it's based on the Sergeant Pepper only hearts called band, like I mentioned before. And then cause is commissioned to do a version. Cause is artist that puts the x's over the eyes and kind of changes the characters forever. And so his version, then they really, you know, the kimsons and all that that sells for almost $15 million it's supposed to be the auction. It's, yeah, I heard about that. I heard that. You heard about that. What are your feelings on that?

Bill Morrison 41:34

Well, it's funny. I think it seems like people who know me and Simpsons fans in general, were more outraged about it than I was. I think the first comment I made about it publicly was that it put me in the same club with some of my heroes, who were artists that worked like in the 50s and 60s, and their art was appropriated by people like Roy Lichtenstein and some of the pop artists from that period, who just took these comic panels and then sort of blew them up, you know, repainted them and then signed their names to them without any acknowledgement of the original artist. In a way, it was kind of a badge of honor, because the thing that was, you know, done to those guys, which I don't think was right, was now being done to me. So that was sort of my way of looking at it. I never felt like I was damaged, because I don't own that art. I don't own the rights to that artwork. It's owned by Fox and now owned by Disney. So it's not like I could sue cause for just tracing over my art and altering it slightly. I think my attitude more more than anything, aside from the badge of honor, thing was, I was just kind of mystified by it, because I just didn't understand. I mean, I understand somebody doing it. I understand somebody taking a piece of artwork, altering it slightly, putting their name on it. People do it all the time, but it's not all that often that something like that sells for $15 million and that's kind of the thing that amazed me, is like, How does somebody pay that much money for something that is basically a tracing of a piece of merchandise art that just seems bizarre to me.

Jeff Dwoskin 43:36

Yeah, it's crazy what people will pay for. It's for the record. I like your version better.

Bill Morrison 43:42

Well, thank you. I mean,

Jeff Dwoskin 43:44

I mean cause, I guess it's cool. I mean, I've seen it. There's a big cause in downtown Detroit, actually, outside the Quicken Loans building. There's a Mickey Mouse one. I just don't get it. It seems like more is depressing than you

Bill Morrison 43:57

know, I got nothing. I mean, I I got nothing as an artist, I think I really like the stuff that he does. It's more original. And like when you know his clown figure with sort of the Mickey Mouse pants and the gloves, I think that's sort of a step removed from what he did with The Simpsons images, because he's sort of creating his own character, but he's making a statement by putting him in the pants and the gloves and the giant Mickey Mouse shoes. He's not really just doing a drawing of Mickey Mouse and putting X's on his eyes. There's more originality to it. And I really like that stuff, you know? I think that stuff is a lot more fun than just taking a piece of art, tracing it and doing minor alterations. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 44:45

let's get one of your pictures on eBay, and then we'll put a link to it and try and get you $15 million for

Bill Morrison 44:53

your somebody will do it. Thank you. I Well, I wouldn't say no to that, but take one of your own

Jeff Dwoskin 44:59

drawings. Just. Going to x over their eyes and see what we can do, make it, you know, draw, trace his drawing of your drawing.

Bill Morrison 45:07

You know, somebody, a couple of people, have suggested that I take that art and then do like, further slight alterations to it and put it out there and see how much money I can get or or see if I get a cease and desist letter from his lawyer. That would be funny, right? Yeah, it's interesting. It reminds me of when I was working back at Fox licensing and merchandising, somebody there had the idea like it had been a few years since the early Simpsons mania, which is what generated a lot of the bootleg Simpson's images, because there were a lot of bootleg T shirts, other things, but mostly T shirts. And somebody at Fox licensing said, what if we did a line of T shirts that were based on the bootlegs? I thought that was a fun idea, but one of the lawyers there shot it down, because they said, Well, then, you know, if we just copy exactly the bootleggers art, even though it's based on our art, then they could sue us for appropriating their stuff. And that made me laugh out loud, because I just thought, that's crazy. It's like, we do a piece of art, somebody rips it off to make Bart Sanchez or Rasta bar or whatever. You know, it was hot back then, and then we take that and put it on a shirt and make, you know, 1000s of dollars they could sue us for that.

Jeff Dwoskin 46:39

Yeah, yeah. The world we live in, it's, it's a crazy place. The

Bill Morrison 46:43

irony is that now those bootleg shirts are selling for hundreds of bucks. The people who collect Simpsons merchandise love those. And they're, they're like, highly sought after.

Jeff Dwoskin 46:53

I worked for a major corporation that I'll remain unnamed, and they would do fan art of our mascot, and the lawyer would never let me acknowledge it ever, because he's like, if you start to acknowledge it, you're encouraging it. And then if you encourage it, then we have to potentially fight our IP and then we encouraged it. So, you know, it was, it creates this whole weird cycle. That's why,

Bill Morrison 47:22

every time somebody did an interview with Matt and did a like a shot of his studio and saw those knock off Mexican statues that people at Fox hated that, because that was basically Matt giving the seal of approval to the bootlegs, right? You know, even if you didn't say it in the interview, it was kind of there in the photo.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:45

Let's pivot for a second to another amazing thing that you did, Beatles, Yellow Submarine. You did the graphic novel adaptation of Yellow Submarine. That must have been a hoot, because that that art is amazing. Thank

Bill Morrison 48:01

you. Yeah, it was, it was fab. It was gear. It was groovy. I don't know, again, it's like, you know, I grew up with the Beatles. I think Beatles music was playing in our house almost constantly when I was growing up. I didn't see the film. I didn't see yellow submarine when it came out, but I remember seeing it the first time it was on television and just being, you know, mesmerized by it. So, yes, when, I mean, when they asked me to not only draw that, but also write it and adapt it, I don't know, I'm still kind of pinching myself, because it's one thing to work on characters that are super iconic, like The Simpsons when you're an adult, and they're sort of fresh characters, you don't have that nostalgic connection to them. So as much as I love the Simpsons of Futurama and disenchantment, and love drawing those characters for fans, you know, the fact that I got to draw Mickey Mouse officially for, you know, to advertise a Disney film, fact that I got to draw Bambi and Peter Pan and then the Beatles, it's like a different level of giddiness, because not only are they world famous, and everybody recognizes those characters and loves them, but I personally have that childhood connection that makes me go, man, if you like, if you could go back in time and tell your 11 year old self that you did this, you know, his little head would explode. So

Jeff Dwoskin 49:34

in the art world, is it like, considered the highest of honor to be trusted with a character like that, like all right, Bill, we're gonna let you, your hand, your pencil, you're gonna draw Mickey Mouse for Prince and the popper. And you're gonna do all this. You're gonna draw a Bambi. You're going to rate this, this image that you're that people are already familiar with, but it's now going to be review. You. I

Bill Morrison 50:00

don't know if it's if it's recognized by most people as as you know, just being an incredible honor, or just to be trusted with those characters. I think for artists personally, it is. I mean, I definitely feel that way, and I think a lot of artists probably do. I think the people who are entrusting the artists with those characters. I don't think it's something they think about, because I know, I mean, I've been on the other side of that, where I'm hiring an artist to draw the Simpsons, for example. Okay? And all I'm really thinking about is I want to make sure they do it correctly. I want to make sure they don't do anything that's going to get me in trouble later from the people higher up above me. I don't, you know, I was never thinking in terms of, like, I'm honoring somebody with this job. I think I'm more just like you find the people that you trust, and you know they're going to do a great job, and you're just excited to see what they come up with, awesome. And then

Jeff Dwoskin 51:01

how did you end up at Mad Magazine? Mad Magazine, just so, you know, when I grew up, I collected Mad Magazine, and I had subscriptions to Mad Magazine at one point. I don't know, to this day why my parents allowed this, but they did. I would cut out all the comics, you know, the little strips from Mad Magazine, and I literally everything from man magazine and wallpapered my entire room with, wow. I'm upset because I don't I don't even have a picture of it. I have nothing. Was back then, you know, before phones had cameras. Yeah, before phones.

Bill Morrison 51:39

I remember those days when you're like, I got two photos left,

Jeff Dwoskin 51:43

I know, right, right, right, yeah. So how did you then move on to this dream job of Mad Magazine? So I'm

Bill Morrison 51:53

at Bongo I've been editing the comic books for years, and I got a little bit bored with it, because I was spending all my time overseeing other artists and writers, but I didn't have time to write and draw on my own, so I was sort of missing the creative part of what I what I like to do, and I was really, I kind of felt Like I was grading test papers all the time, like I'm just getting scripts and I'm marking them up with notes, and I'm getting layouts pencil drawings, and I'm marking them up and making corrections and changes, and it just wasn't that fulfilling, because I just wanted to draw more And I wanted to write more, so I went to Matt Groening, lawyer, who's also his business manager, you know, just told her, kind of how I was feeling. And I sort of caught wind that Matt was working on a new show idea, but I didn't know what it was. I said, you know, I'm just wondering if maybe I should step away from the comics. I feel like I'm kind of phoning in the editing, you know, maybe I should step away and do something else, if that's possible. And she said, Well, yeah, actually, Matt is working on a new show, and it would be great if you could help him out with that. Also, in the meantime, she said, We want to develop these comic reader apps so that people can read Bongo comics on their phones and on their iPads, etc, and we need somebody to creatively oversee that so. So that's what I did. I ended up stepping away from my job as creative director, and while I was sort of waiting for Matt to figure out what he wanted to do with the new show, I started developing these apps, and I did, I did a Simpsons one, and then one for Futurama. So that took a couple of years. By the time I was finished doing that, Matt was sort of, you know, getting things together in terms of disenchantment. And so I was brought in to work on character designs. There was a little period where I was kind of doing both working on the apps and working on designs for disenchantment. Next thing I knew, he had pitched it to Netflix, and Netflix bought it, and they're putting together a production team, and so now I'm on that team full time, and I'm doing disenchantment. And that was fine until I got a call from the lawyer, and she said, because Netflix is now taking over, they're going to be paying your salary, so there's going to be some slight adjustments. They're going to have to shave your salary slightly. And I was like, What do you mean? Shave my salary? What does that mean? And she said, Well, it's in the agreement. You know, look it over. If you have any questions, give us a call back. I get the agreement. I look it over. I checked out the new salary, and it was about a. 35% pay cut from ouch making, yeah, that was, you know, it's kind of like a big kick upside the head, you know, I talked to my wife and I said, you know, can we afford to do this? You know? She said, No, you know, we're still paying a mortgage, and we've got two car payments, plus insurance, plus this, plus that. So I went back and I said, Look, I don't, I don't think I can do this. I can't make this work. The only way I could is if I'm allowed to do freelance on the side, and the agreement says I'm not. And so she went back to Netflix, came back to me and said, Okay, Netflix is going to send you a new agreement. It says that you're allowed to do freelance. It just can't compete with anything Netflix is doing. So I couldn't do freelance on like another animated show, but I could do freelance for a comic book company. So I thought, okay, great. I started putting feelers out just for freelance work. And one of the first people I contacted was Dan to Dio at DC Comics. I had already, you know, I done another job for him a few years prior, and I said, Hey, just letting you know, my situation with Matt groenings changed a little bit. If you've got any freelance work, I'd love to be considered. And then just kind of on a on a whim. I added, by the way, if you have anything more permanent, I'd be interested in hearing about it, because I just started thinking, you know, maybe I should look elsewhere for something that pays the salary that I need, that doesn't force me to have to do freelance work on the side. I got a response back immediately from Dan, and he said, I think we should have lunch, because I've got an opportunity that might be beneficial to both of us. That was exciting, but I didn't really know what it meant. I mean, I I mean, I'm known for doing humor, so I didn't think they were going to hand me Batman, you know, let me edit Batman, or be like the regular writer or artist or anything like that. So I thought, well, you know, it's Warner Brothers, maybe Bugs Bunny. Maybe they're gonna ask me if I can edit the Looney Tunes comics or whatever, you know. So that would have been cool. That would have been cool too, and, and so I was excited to go have this meeting. You know? We get to lunch, and he starts telling me about, you know, how DC has moved to California over the past few years so that they could be closer to Warner Brothers. And this is an edict from Warner Brothers from the parent company. He said The only, the only holdout is the guys at Mad Magazine who dug in and said, We're not moving. And so I guess there was a lot of back and forth, you know, the DC people and the Warner Brothers people said, No, you have to move. We want the whole company out in California. And the guys at Mad said, Well, no, we're New Yorkers and Mads in New York Magazine, and we're staying here. So finally they said, All right, look, we'll let you stay here. We'll put you up in an office. But just so you know, we're going to have to find somebody to take over the magazine out in California for the time being. Business as usual, but we will have to look for somebody. When I contacted Dan and said I'd be looking for something more permanent, he told me. He said, I just assumed that you were sort of joined at the hip with Matt Groening, and I figured you would always be working on whatever his projects are. Didn't imagine that you'd ever be a free agent. So he said, When, when you said that I thought bill would be great for taking over Mad Magazine. I'm having, you know, I'm listening to this at lunch, and I'm again, my inner 11 year old is going crazy because I'm just thinking, Oh my God, he's in the lead up to it. I'm like, is he about to offer me the job of editor Mad Magazine? No, that's not possible. Are you kidding me? That could never happen. Wait. I think he is. Yes. He is, oh my god, you know, so having this little inner monolog, and, you know, your head's exploding, but you're trying to be cool, and, you know, business like, and that's so cool, but yeah, so that's how it happened. You know, it wasn't anything that I lobbied for or even knew that was possible, just the happenstance of me saying, Oh, by the way, I'd be interested in something more permanent was, what did it you

Jeff Dwoskin 59:22

have hopped from dream job to dream job. What are you doing nowadays? Well,

Bill Morrison 59:26

my wife and I moved back to Michigan. We bought a house that we think is about 112 years old, no, 108 years old. We're kind of rehabbing the house, bringing it back to life. I'm a freelance artist now, freelance artist and writer. I'm just enjoying the the freedom of that alongside the terror of not having a regular paycheck every two weeks. But it's great. We're we're loving it. It's. We love being back in Detroit. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 1:00:02

awesome. Where can people keep up with you? On the social medias.

Bill Morrison 1:00:05

I'm on Facebook, you know, under my own name, but also I have a like, more of a page related to my art, which is Bill Morrison, atomic battery studios. Instagram is at atomic battery, which is my studio name, atomic battery studios, and I'm doing a lot of conventions, another Beatles book. Well, thank you

Jeff Dwoskin 1:00:26

so much for hanging out with me and sharing a bunch of your stories with me. I really appreciate it.

Bill Morrison 1:00:30

Oh, anytime my pleasure, God knows I got stories you.