Matt Groening knows his schooling

When I found out that Matt Groening, creator of the Simpsons and Futurama had his own Alternative comic strip, I jumped off my couch and dashed to my local bookstore to check it out. However, you must remember this, the Life in Hell comic strips are not like the Simpsons. They are more mature rated, more realistic (at least more than the Simpsons), and Matt Groening has entire control over the entire cartoon, not like the Simpsons where Fox demands that he slips in a cameo appearance from N*Sync or anything like that. The Life in Hell series is pretty much a cartoon about Life’s pitfalls, and how much trash we all have to deal with in life.

School is Hell is just another compilation of this comic strip which surrounds around mostly school. It’s a great way to lessen the pain of people who are moaning and groaning about school, and that’s the truth here. See, School is Hell, plunges straight in with random humor and facts about the horrors of school between kindergarten to college. It starts off with a cartoon bunny rabbit (famously known as “Binky”) introducing the topic of school to a bunch of little animal kids. After his teaching was done one of the kids said,” can we go now?” And Binky replied,” no, we have to keep you off the streets for 18 more years.”

School IS Hell, and Matt Groening sure as heck points it out almost truthfully. Every single page is yet another random page of humor that criticizes school, the teachers, the students, and even the traditions of graduation. In fact, he criticizes them so much that he splits the teachers, students, and such into types of people. One page presents “Types of Elementary Teachers” which was decorated with numerous amounts of different types of teachers from Elementary, for instance the “Good Mom” which was the one that would be a very friendly teacher, one would be “Bad Mom” which was quite the opposite of the “Good Mom”, then there’d be the “Big Kid” which was technically some balding 40 year old guy who would try to act like a little kid to attract interest. Another time, Matt Groening would list over 80 types of High school students (such as: the prom queen, sexpot, drug addict, drunkard, snob, heavy metal dude, guy with small body and head and drives a big car…) and many types of College Teachers (the illogical theory teacher, the boring teacher etc…), High School Teahers (the teacher that plays videotapes all day, the teacher that fails everybody, the teacher that everybody wishes they had…), and even elementary students (big bully, scapegoat, golden boy, golden girl… etc.). Many other pages show Matt Groening’s humor in a “how to” perspective, where Matt Groening tries to give instructions to the reader in a humorous way.

“How to write a thesis”
1. Stay up all night studying
2. Write for a lifetime
3. Go on a drinking binge Friday.

These “instructions” to school also lead to warnings such as:

“Why you shouldn’t kill yourself in High School”
1. Nobody will care
2. They’ll make jokes up about you
3. There’s no TV in heaven

This follows with a long adventure of a little deformed cartoon rabbit’s school year in the elementary.

The real reason why this book is so fun to read is because most of the humor put into this book you can connect with your problems in school, your real life… not some farfetched idea. When you go through the “lists” of students, teachers, and such. You can pick out people you know in real life, when going through the “instructions” you can find many things that you’ve done in the past for school through them, even if they sound ridiculous, you sure as hell can relate to it. That’s what makes Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell” so damn funny, and that’s why anyone with any sort of spite towards school should read this hideously funny book!