Futurama

In the beginning: The Leela Zone was created by Mark LeWald on July 27th 1999 and was the one and only site dedicated entirely to our favorite one-eyed mutant from the animated series Futurama. It was at first hosted at Freeservers, which was a terrible host. It later moved to Virtual Avenue, but it was not until Matthew Riley from There's Something About Futurama decided to give TLZ some space that the site got a "stable" location. Unfortunately, Mark LeWald was unable to continue working on TLZ for time reasons, and on January 11th 2000, the site stopped updating. A little later, TSAF closed too. On April 1st 2000, Leandro Pardini reopened The Leela Zone at Can't Get Enough Futurama with a slightly changed layout and more content... a lot more content. The site stayed on CGEF until November 11th 2000, when it moved to Killbots. Later, Killbots became part of the 24/7 Entertainment Network, and later 24/7 was sold to the Smoove Network. By October 2005 the site had run out of space and bandwidth and found a new home on Omnis Networks where we remain today.

Name changes: In August of 2004 the site's name was changed to The Futurama Madhouse. It was felt that since Futurama was not being produced anymore and since the site had evolved into a general Futurama fan site, restricting it to one character would mean the site would whither away faster than it should. So, facing reality, the site's name was changed, which caused “a small storm” as one administrator put it. For a few days during the transition, the site decided to play a joke on (some might think wind up) its visitors by calling itself Futurama on Drugs and then Futurama Communist Front (complete with a MIDI sequence of the Soviet National Anthem).    Much earlier, shortly after Parasites Lost first aired, the site was sub-titled “The Self-Righteous Bitch Zone” for a short time ... boy did that cause a ruckus.

Today: The site is jointly owned by Leandro Pardini and Graham Fenwick. Leandro is the coding wizard who built and maintains TLZ/FM and generally keeps it on the air. Graham, who for many years was the primary updater, is the overseer of the site and looks after it's day to day operation. Kenneth and Teral are still involved with the site, and although they are less active now than in the past, they have contributed the Graphic Guides and to The Links Zone respectively, as well as to the other sections. Tim came on board in August of 2006, cleaned out a backlog of fan submissions, and has kept up with the influx of material ever since. Keep up the good work guys!

Content: This is a fan site, so we encourage fans to submit their creations. Anything Futurama-related has a place at The Futurama Madhouse. If it does not fit in any of the existing sections we'll simply create a new one. Mark LeWald, creator of TLZ, said “The Leela Zone is an establishment for all genres of creativity. Drawing, writing, graphics, etcetera. Express yourself.”   And even though the name has changed, that is as true today as it was in the beginning. Any Futurama fan stuff has a place here.

Mark LeWald - USA
Leandro Pardini - Argentina
Graham Fenwick - England
Dave Curtin – Australia
Paul Metcalfe - England
Scott (Scotty) Cochran - Scotland
Kenneth White - New Zeland
Michael Nissen (Teral) - Denmark
Kristen (Corrupt) - USA
Sebastian Szostek (S-Chan) - Poland
Tim (Red_Line) - USA

In the News:

November 2007: Freelance writer Marc Allan wrote an article on the return of Futurama entitled Back to The Futurama that appeared on AltWeeklies.com. Mention of the Madhouse and portions of an interview that he had previously conducted with Tim are featured.

August 2003: the Spanish newspaper El Pais wrote an article on web sites that deal with fan fiction and after interviewing Kenneth White, mentioned The Leela Zone amongst its list. The article was, of course, in Spanish. But here's a quick translation of what the snippet about The Leela Zone said: “Dedicated to Futurama, especially to Leela, a "a tough, no-nonsense, sexy, female cyclops, which appeals to both male and female fans", as described by Kenneth White, one of the webmasters of the site, who lives in New Zealand. "Futurama: Universe of Malice" is the title of one saga that has 13 chapters written, "with no end in sight." The quality of the website, that's written in English, is exceptional.“   Pictures from the original article can be found here and here.

Rated Excellent by Planet Roadmap! (2000.05.08)
Rated Excellent by Futurama Nerve Center! (2001.12.29)
"Site of the Week" at The Futurama Oscars! (2000.06.15)
"Site of the Month" at Planet Futurama! (2000.08.12)
"Site of the Month" at TV Futurama! (2001.01.01)

Last update: 2007.04.20 by Tim