His rude streak is indeed stoked by cartoons. After savoring some impossible TV torture that Itchy the mouse has wreaked on Scratchy the cat, Bart says, "Lisa, if I ever stop loving violence, I want you to shoot me." (Lisa: "Will do.") Maybe the Simpson home carries its own germ of carnage. In the episode where evil old Mr. Burns adopts Bart as his heir and whisks him away, sweet Lisa is seen ripping off strips of wallpaper. Confronted by Marge, Lisa explains that she is "just trying to fill the void of random, meaningless destruction that Bart's absence has left in our hearts."

We'll admit this: Bart has a riven soul. He needs to be loved ("Tell me I'm good!" he pleads of his friend Milhouse's mom). But do hold the pathos. The reason for his appeal is that he's so brilliant at being bad; his pranks have a showman's panache. When he drives off in what is touted as Hitler's car, he chortles, "It's Fuehrer-ific!" After impishly filling Groundskeeper Willie's shack with creamed corn, he listens to Willie curse, "You did it, Bart Simpson!" and murmurs, with practiced modesty, "The man knows quality work." So do we.

One of Bart's blackboard punishments was to write, "I am not delightfully saucy." But he is, he is — a complex weave of grace, attitude and personality, deplorable and adorable, a very '90s slacker who embodies a century of popular culture and is one of the richest characters in it. One thinks of Chekhov, Celine, Lenny Bruce, little boy lost. Anyway, we love the kid and his endlessly terrific show; so here he is on the TIME 100.

Congratulations, Bart. For once, you've overachieved.

TIME senior writer Richard Corliss has been an animated-cartoon fan for nearly 50 years

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Dec. 31, 1990

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