Editing 1959: The Simpsons

{{comic
| number    = 1959
| date      = February 23, 2018
| title     = The Simpsons
| image     = the_simpsons.png
| titletext = In-universe, Bart Simpson and Harry Potter were the same age in 1990. Bart is perpetually 10 years old because of a spell put on his town by someone trying to keep him from getting his Hogwarts letter.
}}

==Explanation==
This is another comic with one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Fun fact|fun facts]]. It is a commentary on the longevity of the TV show ''{{w|The Simpsons}}''.

''The Simpsons'' is an American {{w|animated sitcom}} centered on the lives of the fictitious {{w|Simpson family}}. It is a very long-running series, having started with {{w|Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire|a Christmas episode}} in 1989, with the rest of {{w|The Simpsons (season 1)|the first season}} airing in 1990. As of the publication of this strip, it is still in production, having been on the air for 28 years with the same characters and primary cast. The decision was made early in the series that the characters wouldn't age, meaning that the parents, {{w|Homer Simpson|Homer}} and {{w|Marge Simpson|Marge}}, remained perpetually in their mid-thirties. The three children, {{w|Bart Simpson|Bart}}, {{w|Lisa Simpson|Lisa}}, and {{w|Maggie Simpson|Maggie}}, have remained 10, 8, and 1 year old, respectively. However, this has not stopped the writers from rooting specific moments of character's backstories in specific moments in time, such as [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv9hVPXDw3I Homer being old enough to witness the 1969 Lunar landing]. One of the interesting impacts of this dynamic is that the audience and the world have significantly aged over the course of the show, but the characters remain the same age. A rather dramatic example is that many of the early fans were similar in age to the children, but have now grown up, many have married and had children of their own, and they are now closer in age to the parents.

The title text further relates this to the {{w|Harry Potter}} series, providing an explanation for why nobody has aged. Harry Potter is the protagonist in a series of young adult novels (later adapted into films) about the adventures of a boy wizard in his magical school, {{w|Hogwarts}}. The series begins when Harry is accepted to Hogwarts, at age 11, and the timeline implies that he was born in 1980. When "The Simpsons" began, Bart was 10, implying he was also born in 1980 (although, in another case of "fixed timeline events", Bart  is supposed to have been conceived after Homer and Marge saw ''{{w|The Empire Strikes Back}}'' during its theatrical run, which points to a birthdate sometime in early 1981). Unlike Bart Simpson, Harry and his compatriots explicitly age over the course of the series. This strip ties the two series together, joking that the lack of aging in the Simpsons is a result of magic from the Harry Potter universe, intended to stop Bart from ever turning 11, for fear that he'd be accepted to Hogwarts.

==Transcript==
:[A black frame containing a gray table of two columns and three rows. Most of the text is also gray. The columns and rows have titles. A black jellybean-shaped loop is visually grouping three entries together, the top two in the right column with the bottom left entry. The text in those three boxes are black. Above the table there is a heading:]
:Fun Fact:
:{| class="wikitable"
|-
|
| 1990
| 2018
|-
| Lisa
| 8
| <strong>36</strong>
|-
| Bart
| 10
| <strong>38</strong>
|-
| Homer & Marge
| <strong>36-ish</strong>
| 64-ish 
|}

:[Caption below the panel:]
:If you were Bart and Lisa's age during the first few seasons of The Simpsons, this year you're the same age as Homer and Marge.

==Trivia==
This is another entry in xkcd's [[:Category:Comics_to_make_one_feel_old|genre of comics]] that emphasize how surprising the passage of time can be.

This was the second ''[[:Category:Fun fact|Fun fact]]'' comic in three weeks, following [[1950: Chicken Pox and Name Statistics]], after more than two years break from the series. It seems that [[Randall]] returned to his [[1960:_Code_Golf#Revitalizing_old_themes|old themes]] this month.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Fun fact]]
[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Harry Potter]]