StopTheCarnivore!

In the episode "Apocalypse Cow," which you can watch for free (with commercials) on Hulu.com, Bart joins 4H and raises a steer he names Lou, who gets sent to a feedlot. Lisa (and her vegan activist) friends help Bart — who can’t become a vegetarian because he "loves the taste of death" too much — rescue Lou. It’s got it all: corn subsidies, bovine growth hormones, slaughterhouse rescues, and some regrettable farmer stereotypes. Also, thankfully, a happy ending.

Simpsons Illustrated was an official Simpsons magazine that went on for 10 issues in the early 1990s. Each issue featured exclusive Simpsons comics, news, and pictures of people who worked on the show (Disclosure: the header and title of IN THE NEWS is an, er, homage to this magazine). It was the forerunner to Bongo Comics Group and the Simpsons Comics series.

In 1992, they did a special 3-D issue featuring a barbecue-themed comic with an interesting moment:

Yes, Lisa requested a vegetarian alternative three years before becoming a vegetarian in the 1995 episode "Lisa the Vegetarian."

Was this quick moment merely an indication of Lisa’s multiculturalism and non-conformist personality? Was her character so predictable that it was assumed she’d eventually turn vegetarian? Was it simply to set up the use of a long prop, in this case a shish kebab, in order to take advantage of the 3-D gimmick? Or, more likely, did the writer of the comic have access to Simpsons episodes from the future, thus allowing him or her to retro-plagiarize "Vegetarian" writer David X. Cohen?

You can read the whole issue over at the astoundingly comprehensive Spanish Simpsons Comics blog Tebeos de los Simpsons, including an early comic version of the Hey Arnold! pilot.

Science may have found a cure for most evils: but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.