Matt Groening ends "Life in Hell" after 30 years

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - For more than 30 years, "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening sketched the syndicated comic strip "Life in Hell," a long-time staple of alternative newsweeklies like LA Weekly and the Village Voice.

But, as the cartoon's revenue stream dried up in the wake of newspaper budget cuts, so too did Groening's ink. The final "Life in Hell" strip, the cartoonist's 1,669th, was published Friday.
"I've had great fun, in a Sisyphean kind of way, but the time has come to let Binky and Sheba and Bongo and Akbar and Jeff take some time off," Groening told Poynter in an email Wednesday.
"Life in Hell" was known not just for its characters - including anthropomorphic rabbits and a pair of gay lovers - but for helping a whole new generation of cartoonists to break into larger markets by licensing to the popular and widely distributed newsweeklies in major cities.
Its quirky cast and offbeat jokes gave rise to cartoonists like Tom Tomorrow, Ruben Bolling, Ward Sutton, Keith Knight and Ted Rall.
"Groening is modern cartooning's rock God, a Moses who came down from the mountain (or the East Village office of the Voice) and handed us the rules we followed," Rall told Poynter.
But as budget woes plague former syndicators like LA Weekly, which dropped the strip in 2009, the comic appears to have become more work than it was worth - it earned around $18 per publication.
"I was hoping that he would never end it, that he would keep up, but with the way the newspapers are in today's world, it just wasn't profitable," Sondra Gatewood, who managed the strip's syndication for more than two decades, told TheWrap. "It wasn't like back in the day."
Groening created the company Acme Features Syndicate, Gatewood's employer, to shop out the comic, which hit a peak of about 380 papers in the early 1990s. That number has fallen to a dismal double digit - less than 40 newspapers now carry it.
"With budget cuts, with drops in advertising due to Craigslist and with no more personals because of Match.com," said Gatewod, "alternative weeklies have had to really, really scramble to reinvent their budgets."
That has been a difficult fight.
Village Voice Media, the parent company of the namesake Manhattan weekly and various other alt-weeklies across the country, has come under intense pressure from protesters and the likes of New York Times columnist Nick Kristof to shutter Backpage.com, its cash-cow personal listings site often used to market prostitutes.

Prince William set for Diana inheritance on 30th birthday

Britain's Prince William celebrates his 30th birthday on Thursday, triggering a clause in his late mother Diana's will which could see him receive a £10 million inheritance.

The late Princess of Wales left the bulk of her estate to sons William and Harry, who were aged 15 and 12 when she died in 1997, but the executors ruled that the inheritances should not be handed over until both turned 30.

Diana left a net estate of £12,966,022 ($20.41 million, 16 million euros), but it is estimated that the figure has grown to around £20 million through investment. Both Princes William and Harry are entitled to half of this share.
Speculation that William and wife Catherine -- the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge -- may use the money to buy a country house has been dampened by suggestions he is about to sign up for another tour with the Royal Air Force's Search and Rescue team.
"There has been speculation about the Duke and Duchess having a house built but there are no plans for that at all," a royal aide told the Daily Telegraph.
"If the Duke decides next year to continue his Search and Rescue career he might well have to move to another base, away from Anglesey, so the idea of a new house just isn't on the radar at the moment," added the official.
William and Catherine, who married last year, are expected to celebrate the milestone with friends before returning to their rented farmhouse on Anglesey, an island off the north west coast of Wales.

Meet Marijuana's Semi-Famous Superdonors

As political causes go, legalizing pot isn't as glitzy as re-electing Barack Obama. Sarah Jessica Parker and George Clooney are not on marijuana's A-list.
But with marijuana initiatives on state ballots in Colorado and Washington in 2012, after Prop. 19's failure in California in 2010, pot enjoys the financial backing of a small cadre of semi-famous people. Here they are:
Peter Lewis, chairman, Progressive Insurance. Lewis' company carries a small hint of lefty flavor, from its name to its casual corporate dress code, and Lewis himself is marijuana's biggest financial backer. After supporting California's Prop. 19 legalization campaign in 2010, Lewis has given far more than any other individual donor to the campaigns in Colorado and Washington - $875,650 and $650,000 respectively.
David Bronner, CEO, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. Those earthy-looking hemp soaps, sold at Whole Foods, could be more profitable if the company didn't have to import its hemp from Canada, and David Bronner, son of the original Dr. Bronner, is an avid hemp activist, most recently getting arrested outside the White House after firefighters had to cut him out of a metal cage in which he locked himself in protest. Bronner has pledged $50,000 to the Colorado legalization campaign, according to an official, although his donation hasn't yet been made official.
Rick Steves, author and TV host, Rick Steves' Europe. He might be the best known American expert on European travel, with dozens of books on travel destinations and a travel series on public television. He also wants pot to be legal. While Steves himself hasn't contributed to either legalization initiative in 2012, the committee to promote Washington's ballot initiative has reported taking in $150,000 from his company, Rick Steves' Europe, since last year.
George Zimmer, founder and CEO, Men's Wearhouse. You're gonna like the way your state looks with legalized marijuana: George Zimmer guarantees it. The Men's Wearhouse CEO has not donated to either of this year's state campaigns, but he backed Prop. 19 in California in 2010 to the tune of $50,000, and he's known as a major supporter of pot legalization