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The Complete Simpsons Bibliography Compiled and Maintained by Bruce Gomes Sr. Revision 11.00 - 10 Aug 2009 c. 1989 - 2009 by Bruce Gomes Sr. Send Email to bruce@snpp.com Part 1 >> Table of Contents
Introduction and BackgroundFirst and foremost, let me explain what this isn't. It isn't just a bibliography that just lists articles that reference The Simpsons; wherever we can and wherever it's worth doing we quote from each article. Moreover, over 200 full articles have been transcribed; small ones are included right in the bibliography, and larger ones we link to. We're also adding new ones every day, including older ones that were never transcribed and newer ones as they are printed. This list was originally "Chapter 5 - Hot Off the Press" of "The Simpsons Tome", a work previously distributed in hard copy and on floppies. Since some of the other chapters largely duplicated the superior efforts of others I am working to incorporate additional information I have into lists maintained by others and releasing other chapters as separate lists. This work was started in December of 1989, two weeks before the first episode, when I first heard The Simpsons were going to get their own show.As a Simpsons fanatic I could never get enough of The Simpsons. To satiate my Simpsons hunger therefore I turned to magazines and newspapers. With so few episodes broadcast the first season I then turned to merchandise once that appeared, and I started to index that too. Since The Simpsons name sells all newspaper and magazine publishers have wanted at various times to cash in on them. Therefore I frequently found (and continue to find) The Simpsons on the cover of magazines, even when little or nothing inside was relative to The Simpsons. In this list I document all the covers and articles on The Simpsons or on Matt Groening, all the comics and political cartoons about The Simpsons, and all other major external references to The Simpsons not detailed on lists maintained by others. Note that covers are included both in the main body of this document with all the articles and in a separate covers list at the end. In this bibliography I'm attempting to document every cover and every article about The Simpsons and Matt Groening. I've also included articles by Matt Groening himself, regardless of subject. A far more difficult and impossible task would be to attempt to document every REFERENCE to The Simpsons (not that it stops us from trying). When The Simpsons were the "latest craze" practically every single newspaper and magazine writer made at least a passing reference. For example, in a Crain's New York (a business publication) article about Bank Of New York it mentions that today's customers are more likely to be like Bart Simpson. In William Safire's On Language column in the November 25, 1990 issue of The New York Times Magazine he references another article in the Detroit Free Press about 'attitude', indicating that "Bart Simpson has too much". A passing reference to Bart is made by Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame) in an article written for the New York Times (also Nov 25 1990). Some references to The Simpsons are not indexed if they're truly irrelevant. Note that the magazine 'Simpsons Illustrated' is documented elsewhere, and all Simpsons comics are documented elsewhere on the archive right here! Books on The Simpsons are also documented elsewhere on the archive, right here! Books that reference The Simpsons are listed herein. I also limit this listing to printed material and television shows that reference The Simpsons; it does not include Simpson music videos (listed with the regular episodes), Simpsons albums and videos, which are listed here! and games, which are listed here! It is not our objective to document Futurama articles here, but we've never yet seen a Futurama article that didn't reference The Simpsons. Likewise, we've never seen a Futurama article that didn't reference Matt Groening, so yes, every Futurama article we've found is also invariably documented here. While we were at it we went ahead and documented Futurama covers in a separate list. First Futurama references appear in 1998, and you naturally see a great number of Futurama covers and articles in 1999, the year Futurama debuted. Two publications stand out as having had extremely frequent references to The Simpsons. The first and obvious one is TV Guide. TV Guide, of course, references The Simpsons every week in the listings. In the index below I include mentions beyond the standard listings, i.e., articles, mentions in articles, recommended viewing, and yes, even advertisements. In TV Guide we even index the crossword puzzle questions, and answers, although the questions are so simple they insult the intelligence of any fan. Entertainment Weekly, particularly for the first two seasons, also referenced The Simpsons in every issue. Entertainment Weekly also gives ratings, and frequently recommended The Simpsons every week as a show to watch. Simpsons was listed as the #1 show for the weeks of June 29, 1990, July 6, 1990 and Oct. 26, 1990, for example. Entertainment Weekly also listed the Billboard charts, with Simpsons Sing the Blues on the charts over a dozen weeks across January - March of 1991. The Simpsons Do The Bartman was also the number one video in the country on the MTV video charts; at the end of March, Deep, Deep Trouble won second place in a weekend video marathon call-in vote, also on MTV. In light of the frequent mentions, I first list all "TV Guide" references (that's the U.S. publication; TV Guide Canada shares it's name and not much else, and is a separate publication), then all Entertainment Weekly references followed by all other publications in date order. There are also many references to specific Simpsons merchandise that are not entirely listed below. Specifically, both Advance Comics magazine and Previews magazine give advance notice of every comic and include references to videos, trading cards and other merchandise. The various video game / computer games magazines often reference the Simpsons' games. These are listed below whenever an exceptional mention is made, such as an individual article, or particularly when The Simpsons are on the cover and/or are a cover story. This is somewhat subjective, so I always err on the side of inclusion; if you know of something not indexed below, don't assume I decided not to include it; please advise! Note that most of what appears below CANNOT be found in the 'Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature'. I spend a lot of time scanning newsstands and have always kept an eye out for Simpsons references. I checked various types of online magazine cross-references but nonetheless I found so many by pure chance that I wonder what I may have missed. Since fellow workers, friends and family also know of my Simpsons searches I was often contacted with leads in the direction of certain publications and pointers to new merchandise (fellow workers had a hint by way of the six-foot Bart Simpson in my office..). I am forever indebted to them. There were also a number of amateur X-Rated drawings distributed by photocopy which are not listed anywhere at this point. Not because of their lewdness, but due to the general stupidity and lack of humour. Not that I still don't collect them, of course. Some of the strict bibliographical formats don't work particularly well, and almost assume everything is part of a formal article. With TV Guide in particular we almost ignore the traditional format in favour of one that allows for a better arrangement of the information. Note that all the information from a strict bibliographical format is nonetheless included. When quoting material I correct obvious typos from the original but otherwise leave unaltered any non-standard spelling, grammar, etc. Over the course of eleven years I've slowly expanded what I supply for each entry so some are missing details that you'll find in later entries. Better articles are now always fully transcribed if relevant or quoted at length so we're going back and transcribing them. Feel free to email me for any special requests! We continue to add in foreign publications with each update, and we're sure missing a lot of good entries. We're assuming we'll reach the point of getting to a detailed index of publications in each country which we'll use to expand the number of foreign publicatons that are included. We currently include some British, Canadian, Australian, French, Italian, Dutch and Brazilian publications. Early foreign covers we've seen referenced which we need information on include;
If you know of anything NOT indexed here, please advise!
Comments, corrections and suggestions are welcome!
ThanksHope you'll find something interesting here. As a personal philosophy I strongly believe in a cooperative effort to build and maintain lists like these and (more importantly) keeping them linked off a central location where everyone can easily find them.Special thanks to all those who built the archive and who currently work to keep the files current, including Gary Goldberg, Jouni Paakkinen, Brian Petersen, Dave Hall, Benjamin Robinson, Gavan McCormick, Don Del Grande, James Cherry, Matthew Kurth and Ricardo Lafaurie Jr. A word of thanks to Brendan Kehoe who originally built a bibliography back in 1990 on this location, the age of which inspired me to come forth with the list I've maintained for years. This could not possibly ever hope to be complete without "a little help from my friends". Special thanks who those who have contributed to entries in the bibliography, directly or indirectly, including;
- Aaron Varhola, for posting the Yeardley Smith interviews Credit may go to others, butt the misteaks are all myne. Those with eagle eyes and a better sense of spelling and (Kelsey) grammer than I who've found my stupid errors and more importantly took the time to write include....
You're Name Here!
Borrrrring Revision HistoryI'm a fanatic about ensuring all my links work, checking those that go to other sites with every release. (Don't you hate when you go check out some cool site and half the links are broken?#%@..) Currently it's a manual process for me. Come to think of it, if someone doesn't hurry up and advertise shareware that checks links for developers I'm going to write my own...
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Last updated on Aug 10, 2009 by Bruce Gomes (bruce@snpp.com) |