We were getting royalties off the book, which I think was something Viacom hadn’t anticipated. So after the first issue, they embarked on a campaign to get me fired, which finally happened after Issue #5.
Don London, writer on the Beavis and Butt-Head comic book and TV series: I don’t know what they’re talking about. I never got any royalties from this.
Herdling: MTV didn’t want to use Marvel writers. They had their own writers they were trying to keep busy, and they kept pressuring us to use them. Eventually, I had to let go of Mike, which I wasn’t happy about.
They gave us a bunch of their writers. But let’s face it, when you’re working with people who are also on the cartoon, what are you going to get? You’re going to get the ideas that they pitched to the cartoon and the cartoon rejected. One of them even admitted to me that that’s what they were doing. We were getting their leftovers, and the book wasn’t quite as much fun anymore.
Parker: The first issue did really well. I thought that meant they’d keep doing better and better, but a lot of people only want the first issue of a comic. And so, Issue #2 sold about 400,000 copies, and it slowly declined after that. But it did really well for the first 20 issues, and I had a lot of fun with it. My favorite issue was Issue #23, written by Glenn Herdling. That was when Beavis and Butt-Head went to Intercourse, Pennsylvania and stayed with an Amish family — it made me laugh out loud.
London: I did one issue about the Model U.N. that was a lot of fun. The central joke was basically that they thought it was going to be about models.
Herdling: The Christmas issue was my favorite. I still remember having Butt-Head on the cover saying, “My Chestnuts are roasting.” After Issue #20 I was moved back over to the marketing division at Marvel, and the book ended a few months later with Issue #28. It just kinda ran its course.
Parker: I was surprised when it ended. Nothing good lasts forever, I guess. Unfortunately, a few years later, an actor friend of mine met Mike Judge and told him that he knew me. Mike Judge couldn’t quite recall the name, so my friend explained that I drew the comic. Then Mike Judge said, “Oh, I never liked the comic book.” So Mike Judge is the only person that I heard from who didn’t like the comic book. Maybe it wasn’t his pure vision of Beavis and Butt-Head, I don’t know. But hey, I certainly had fun with it.
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