Image Credit: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty ImagesNot many musicians can hang with the likes of Harry Potter, Homer Simpson, and Carrie Bradshaw. But when EW assembled its list of the 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years for the cover story now on stands, we had to include Gorillaz, the fictional cartoon quartet that’s fronted three real albums (2001′s Gorillaz, 2005′s Demon Days, and this spring’s Plastic Beach, all stellar). I spoke with Gorillaz’ human creators — Tank Girl visual artist Jamie Hewlett and Blur singer Damon Albarn (pictured, seated left to right) — about the project’s past, present and future. Read on after the jump for our full Q&A.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: A good place to start might be the late ’90s, when you first hit on the idea of making a cartoon band. What was the initial spark for that?
JAMIE HEWLETT: We shared a flat in London, and I think we were just sitting watching MTV. We felt that you had to wait a long time before anything decent came along. There would be the odd Spike Jonze video or Hype Williams, and then the rest would be pretty bad. So we had the very simple idea: Let’s do an animated band. There was no great formula or great plan. We started messing around for about six months. I was doing designs, Damon was doing demos. It sort of grew from that. And it’s still growing now, 10 years later. It’s a project that is growing larger all the time. For me, definitely I don’t feel it’s complete. I don’t know about Damon’s thoughts on that. But I think it’s something that can continue to grow until it reaches a point where we can’t really go any further with it. We haven’t reached that point yet. I don’t know if we will. READ FULL STORY »