[introduction] Nearly 10 years ago, the first episode of The Simpsons aired. Now Simpsons creator Matt Groening (rhymes with raining) has masterminded another animation comedy, Futurama, which premieres this spring. Groening put out the welcome matt [speeled that way] and answered our questions.

[the interview] Nickelodeon Magazine: What cartoons did you like as a kid? Matt Groening: I watched everything I could and read all sorts of comics. I loved cartoons such as Roger Ramjet and the Rocky and Bullwinkle shows. They had cheap animation but were really funny. I also loved Little Lulu comics.

Did you draw comics back then? I made my own Batman and Robin comics, but I drew Robin as an actual bird, because I couldn't draw very well. Also, I had my own character, Melvin, who was like Bart Simpson. He was an orphan who had adventures with hids dog, Gurfy.

You have two kids. Do they draw? Yes, in fact they made a Christmas comic for me last year. I sometimes put my kids in my weekly comics strip, Life in Hell. I draw them as rabbits with very short ears.

Why are The Simpsons yellow? Because I wanted to make The Simpsons look like nothing else on television.

Why aren't the characters yellow on your new show, Futurama? The joke reason is that Futurama is real and The Simpsons is just a cartoon. The real reason is that we don't want people to think this is a Simpsons spin-off.

What's Futurama about? Futurama takes place in the year 3000. In the first episode, the main character, Philip J. Fry, is living in the twentieth century, delivering pizzas for a living. On the final delivery just before midnight on New Year's Eve, 1999, he accidentally gets forzen in a lab. He gets unfrozen and wakes up in New New York City a thousand years from now.

What does Fry do in the future? He hooks up with an ointerplanetary delivery service called pPlanet Express. His best friends are Bender and Leela. Bender is a robot porgrammmed to bend steel gorders, but would rather be a gourmet cook. Unfortunately, he has no taste buds, so he's really bad at cooking. Leela is a beautiful young woman-- or as beautiful as one can be with a single eye.

What inspired Futurama? Futurama is an attempt to bring to life the great science-fiction magazine and book covers that I loved growing up. I've also always wanted to do a show set in the future that was really funny.

What's the world like in one thousand years? We've created a future that we'd like-- except that the gadgets don't work very well. For example, people get around New New York City in pneumatic [pressurized] tubes. People step into them and fly around very fast. Unfortunately, in Futurama, people often end up flying out of the tube and smashing into a brick wall. But the journey is really great.

Do the Futurama characters go into outer space? Yes, there are lots of weird aliens and planets. We go to a planet where aliens spend part of their lives in liquid form. Fry accidentally drinks the emperor.

What's the show's animation like? Futurama looks like a regular cartoon, but with more depth. We've mapped out the whole city on computer so we can moved around a lot withour redrawing it every time. Also, there's an alien alphabet on signs in the backgrounds that we challenge viewers to translate.

How many people work on Futurama and The Simpsons? About 300 people work on each show.

Do you like working with such a big group? I still do my weekly comic strip, Life in Hell, all by myself, and that's fun. But it's lonely, so I love the collaboration that comes from working with writers, animators, and actors.

What's the hardest thing for you to draw? Women. They just don't looks very good when I draw them. The image I have in my mind and what comes out is completely different.

What do most enjoy drawing? I love drawing Bender, because it's fun to draw robots.

When you were a kid, did you know you'd be a professional cartoonist when you grew up? I never thought I'd make a living at cartooning. But I knew I was going to draw my entire life, because I just had so much fun doing it. My adivce to kids is that if you really love something-- for me it was drawing funny pictures and telling stories-- try to do it. I mean, it can be done.