David Cooper

Patreon Print - April 2022

This came in second in last month's poll, so now it's the April print! I like this one.

Just in case you're new to this: Patrons at the £10 level or higher this month get an A5 print of this piece delivered to them. Just be at the right level, check your address, and it'll be sent to you at the start of next month.

(The March prints got sent out yesterday by the way! Some of you may already have yours.)

At the moment the print for next month has not been decided, so if you ...

0086 - Mother (and Baby)

*ahem* Let's strike the previous post from the record...

Marge talks to a couple of characters at the picnic in this episode, perhaps it was a real attempt to give her friends and a social life outside of her family. This mother is a unique character that as far as I can tell has no further appearances, although if it were later I imagine she'd be replaced with someone like Luann Van Houten.

Soon the writers lean into the idea that Marge is at her core quite a plain, boring person...

0086 - Guy Who Would Do Anything For A Klondike Bar

So I believe this is the last character in this episode of Family Guy, we've finally reached it.

As a Brit, I was not familiar with the Klondike bar ad campaign this guy is a reference to. It's another example of me being introduced to American pop culture references solely though Family Guy. I understand the joke they're making here, but I'm sure the first time I saw it I was very confused.

By the end of the advert, this man is a murderer, but it's within the fiction of the adver...

0085 - Kid at Picnic

This poor kid. Not only does he have to miss his little league game to attend a company picnic, but his comments seemingly get his dad fired.

Or do they?

In season 2's "Dancin' Homer", Mr Burns greets a suspiciously familiar looking family at a softball game:

They are introduced here as the "Gammills". The kid has dyed his hair, presumably a goth phase brought about as a rebellion t...

BONUS! Picnic Homer/Marge and Wife at Picnic

Homer and Marge have different outfits for this grand picnic scene, which I thought was noteworthy. I'm not committing to drawing every slight alteration they make over the series, but this one struck me as interesting because I don't think the team would bother with a redesign for a scene like this even a season later. Their "regular" outfits would suffice.

Also included today is the wife of the gentleman from yesterday. I haven't done a full breakdown of this but there have been a LOT...

0084 - Man at Picnic

Welcome to episode four: "There's No Disgrace Like Home".

This guy is a good way to ease us in to this episode chock-a-block full of absolute nobodies. Y'see, as you may remember, this episode is all about Homer being ashamed of the antics of his family's behaviour, compared to the others he sees around him. 

Side note: this is an example of how things are not figured out in season one. The Homer we know and love would not care about how people perceive his family,...

SUPER TOP SECRET POST FOR PATRONS EYES ONLY

Tuesday will be the one year anniversary of Lenny, a very important comic to me. To mark the occasion, I decided to make a semi-quasi-spiritual-successor. I hope you like it.

The comic will be going up on Tuesday, but I thought it was only right that you would all get to see it first.

Please please pretty please don’t spoil or share it outside this post before Tuesday. Thank ...

Homer's Odyssey - round up!

Twenty new characters and I still have to check every time if I've spelled "Odyssey" correctly.

A few significant characters this time around! We're fleshing Springfield out a little, and unlike with some characters whose popularity grows organically (Jasper is a good example of this), I'd say most of the significant characters from this episode were designed to be important. Characters like Wiggum, Otto, Smithers are thrown in with the intention of being used often.

The total num...

BONUS! FREAKS

This is a much better way to end our time with Homer's Odyssey.

This scene is kind of infamous for being so...strange:

Look at them all! I've barely scratched the surface of this crowd, I find new gems every time I look.

This is the result of a show that has not found its footing yet. The p...

0083 - Man at Rally

A friendly but ultimately not noteworthy fella.

I wonder whose idea it was to stand on top of a car for this demonstration. Seems like there would have been better ways to go about it.

Anyhoo, after a few noteworthy characters through this episode, we end on a dull thud. Man at rally is the last new character of Homer's Odyssey, at least in the official count, but I think we have room for...

0082 - Jasper Beardley

Well this was almost a DISASTER.

As noted last week, Jasper can be seen in the town meeting, sitting behind Homer.

On my initial watch through I had not realised that he actually does have a line here - he gets spoken over by Homer, but he can clearly be heard saying "tough customer", in reference to El Barto. It is not his usual voice, so it slipped me by completely. It was only in resea...

BONUS! City Hall Judges and Freak

These two judges are present in the city hall scene, but get no individual lines. Hey, I'll include them in the interest of being comprehensive, perhaps if I draw as many of these nobodies as possible it'll fill the emptiness in my soul. Eventually.

I've given them both "Barney teeth" - the kind of prominent overbite that a lot of early characters have. I cannot remember if this is from the scene or not, but it's increasingly one of my favourite design traits of Springfieldians, it look...

0081 - Police Chief Clancy Wiggum

Wiggum is a character that enters the show more or less fully formed. His design has changed very little between his first appearance and now, to my eye.

The biggest difference I would say is how he is used. Early on his importance as the chief of police is maintained - he is a public speaker at the town hall here, not a beat cop investigating every minor crime vaguely adjacent to the Simpsons as he later does.

He is one of those characters that largely is used as an overall comme...

0080 - City Hall Judge

Springfield has a couple of noteworthy judge types, this guy is not one of them.

But he's the only prominent one in this scene with a line, so he gets his own entry here. He's the one with the gavel, so I assume he is the...head...judge. Is that how it works?

This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, 2022-03-14 09:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post

0079 - Mr Winfield

Poor Mr Winfield never gets a first name as far as I can tell, presumably because he is not as useful as an antagonist to the Simpson family as his wife. Also, who would want to see this somewhat grotesque design again?

Unlike 742 Evergreen Terrace, the Winfield house has been home to a variety of residents over the years, and after this it is seemingly always in relation to whatever the Simpsons have going on that particular week. I think the most recent occasion the property has had a...

Patreon Print - March 2022

The results are in! Thanks to your votes, the March print will be "Make Homer Something Something". Hurrah! I liked putting it to a vote, hopefully I can do it again in the future!

The February prints were sent out today, keep an eye out for them soon! But it's time to move onto March.

As ever, here is the deal: be a £10 or higher patron in March and you'll get this A5 print delivered to you once your payment clears at the start of next month! It's really that simple!!!!!!!

0078 - Sylvia Winfield

This is almost a good Simpsons trivia night question - who were the Simpson's neighbours on the non-Flanders side? Sylvia Winfield shows up a couple of times as a somewhat stereotypical angry neighbour, unable to put up with Homer's buffoonery. You may remember her calling Homer to complain about Santa's Little Helper, for example.

(Fun fact: in this episode alone, Sylvia is voiced by Tracey Ul...

March 2022 Print - Vote For Your Favourite Design!

Hi friends!

The monthly Patreon print has become a really fun thing for me, sending out art to people across the world, and your collective response has been to rewarding! My plan had been to thank my supporters with a print of my most popular pieces but - and I'm not trying to sound smug here - I've had quite a few popular pieces lately, more than one a month. I can't stop making stuff and - against all odds - people seem to even like it sometimes.

So I thought this month we'd tr...

BONUS! - Chef and Waitress Marge

I LOVE THIS GUY.

He is on screen for less than half a second as Homer is rejected from several jobs, but he's so flippin' cute. He reminds me of the Little Chef logo:

For international readers, Little Chef is/was a chain of motorway service restaurants. Largely not that notable except for being t...

0077 - Barry Mackleberry

After the surprising consistency of Martin's father throughout the years, we have Sherri and Terri's father, who looks different in basically every appearance he has:

Maybe he just likes dying his hair, but we...

0076 - Plant Employee

I'm including a picture of this fella just to prove he exists:

And also because Homer looks so goofy here.

Just one season later this random colleague at the power plant would almost certainly have been replaced with someone more recognisable, but I can forgive it being this guy as technically Homer is in a different job at this point. The plant is a big place, maybe he had a lot of diffe...

0073, 0074 & 0075 - Nuclear Waste

It's debatable whether these three should count in the official numbering. They make little noises, but do they count as indistinguishable voices within a crowd? I mean, I know two's a couple, but who knows at what number a crowd begins? Science has yet to determine.

Anyway, if you have a problem with it, take it up with my supervisor.

Here's a weird bold unrefined idea that I'm going to ...

0070, 0071 & 0072 - Uranium Rods

Look at these guys! They're so cute! Don't get excited, they're not inanimate carbon rods, but I think they have charm and pizzazz nonetheless.

That said, I thought it would be unfair to you lovely people to stretch them out over two weeks, so here they all are. Also, how the heck am I supposed to find something individual to say about each of them?

What I find funny about this little edu...

0069 - Smilin’ Joe Fission

Here's a weird little fella!

Smilin' Joe is the mascot of the Nuclear Power Plant, and appears here in an educational video as the kids take a school trip to the plant. He seemed more familiar to me as an icon though, he appears often as a promotional tool for the Plant. Here's an example of a undeniably classic Smilin' Joe Fission appearance from the season 5 episode "The Last Temptation of Homer":

2022-02-21 09:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post

0068 - Waylon Smithers

Of course, we all know that this isn't how Smithers appears in Homer's Odyssey, he looks a little more like this:

"Black Smithers" is one of the more infamous season one oddities. This was supposedly a simple colouring error, but it comes up quite a lot among fans as a piece of useless...

0067 - Terri Mackleberry

It was very tempting to just reuse the Sherri image and copy and paste her entry here (with minor adjustments), but let's instead turn our attention elsewhere:

Did you know there is a rumoured third Mackleberry sister? She is mentioned by our old pal Dr J Loren Pryor in the season 22 episode "The Blue and the Gray", who tells Bart that the twins were once conjoined triplets, and the thir...

BONUS! - Toxic Waste Dump Employee

A little insight into the Simpsons character drawing process here: when I sit down and watch these episodes, I take notes as I go. Every time a new character speaks, I jot down their name (or description), and if they are particularly obscure, the time at which they appear.

Sometimes, minutes will pass with no new character, especially with scenes in the Simpsons' house, but often when we are dealing with already established characters. Where possible, I keep an eye out for interesting ...

0066 - Wendell Borton

Poor Wendell. A character defined by a sole trait: a weak stomach. His only role in the show is when some kind of puke joke needs to be made, and we see little else of Mr Borton's inner life throughout.

I can see how a character like this would be appealing as a comedy tool early in the series, but really there's only so much that can be done with the concept, and so Wendell fell out of favour pretty quickly. As a result, he's one of the Springfield children with multiple voice actors -...

0065 - Sherri Mackleberry

Sherri and her sister appear as part of the school performance in "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", but do not get singular speaking roles until Homer's Odyssey.

Here comes the controversial part: I can not say with 100% certainty that the girl that speaks first in this episode is Sherri. You can see her mouth move as she says "One, two three," boarding the bus, BUT she is not identified. I ...

Patreon Exclusive Print - February 2022

Another month, another print! 

If you were signed up for January's print, they'll be going out in the post tomorrow. UK peeps, expect them soon! International peeps, expect them slightly less soon, but hopefully still soon!

February's print is a look back at one of my favourite pieces from Moevember - the Moena Lisa! I keep meaning to do non-Simpsons prints, but these pieces keep being more popular than I expect!

If you want an A5 print of this delivered to you, be a £...