Mtv's Beavis and Butt-Head Greatest Hits

Rating:
Summary: Ah, the low-brow memories...
Review: Being both a fan of the Beavis and Butt-Head show and a comic-book nut back in the day, it was pretty much a given that I'd start collecting the Marvel comic series based on the show when it first came out... which I did of course. I snapped up all of the issues that Marvel printed (including issues 1 through 4, which are collected in this particular TPB), and enjoyed every single low-rent yuk and juvenile antic of this not-so-dynamic duo as they had fun making the Maxi-Mart clerk go postal, hit the tattoo parlor, tried their moves out at a local mud wrestling match against a couple of hideously overdeveloped ladies, and took a walk down to the local funeral parlor in the hopes of seeing a zombie.

I was surprised by how well writer Mike Lackey translated the show's brand of humor from the boob tube to the four-color medium; there was more than enough of the usual dumb double-entendre and "Huh-Huh, you said..." shenanigans to keep just about any Butt-Phile reasonably entertained. And their hilarious music video reviews from the TV show were adapted into occasionally funny critiques of such Marvel Comics heroes as The Punisher™, Wolverine™, Spider-Man™, and... Devil Dinosaur®?! Artist Rick Parker, known among Marvelites for his creative lettering and silly cartoon art, did pretty dead-on renderings of the title characters and the supporting cast (i.e. Stewart, Principal McVicker, Tom Anderson, Stewart, Daria, etc.) as they looked on the show. Also thrown in for kicks were several activity pages featuring various subversive pranks, gags, and very wrong arts 'n' crafts any aspiring teenage miscreant could have fun with to while away those long stretches of boredom.

Sadly, after picking this TPB up again recently and reading it for the first time in many years, I found the humor to be, for the most part, less than entertaining. A lot of the so-called "yuks" tended to be more dumb than they were funny, as well as gratingly repetitive. On the upside, there were a few bits here 'n' there that still gave me a good guffaw, but overall these comics aren't not quite as hilarious as I remembered 'em being the first time 'round. Guess I'll hafta stick with the TV show for the big laughs...

'Late