MORRISON MONDAYS! By BILL MORRISON When people come to my table at comic book conventions across the country, the question they ask the most is “How are The Simpsons writers able to predict the future?” The second most-asked question is “Are you really the artist who painted a penis in The Little Mermaid video box art?” When I answer “Yes,” the follow-up query is always “Did you do it on purpose?” It’s a great question. According to the urban legend that went around after the release of The Little Mermaid on home video, the anonymous Disney artist who painted the box art was fired while still working on the illustration, and as a final act of revenge, he hid a phallus amid the towers in King Triton’s castle. As urban legends are wont to do, the account got more and more salacious as time went on. It was like that game, “Telephone,” and it seemed that every time someone said to a friend, “Did you hear about the penis in The Little Mermaid video box art?” something new and more outrageous would be added to the story. But staying with that initial rumor for a bit, is any part of it true? And is that level of rebelliousness something that I’m even capable of? To answer those questions, a little history on the origins and specifics of my career may be helpful. Before I started writing and drawing comics, I worked as an illustrator in Hollywood. My first job was doing movie poster art at B.D. Fox Advertising, a sort of boutique ad agency that specialized in film and TV campaigns. It was like the Sterling Cooper agency in Mad Men, but specifically for showbiz ad campaigns, and it occupied a cool 1920s building on Sunset Boulevard that was designed to look like an Art Deco ocean liner. There, I illustrated posters for horror movies such as House and Blood Diner, art house and foreign films like Choose Me, and The Hit, and low-budget action films, most notably Cocaine Wars, and Roger Corman’s Wheels of Fire. But I was the in-house illustrator, so I did whatever needed to be done, art-wise. I drew a lot of rough sketches and painted a bunch of comps for ’80s classics like Return of the Living Dead, Fright Night, and Maximum Overdrive. I...