Issue 28

'@'Thanks to everyone for everything you've done but now it's time to go...

Beavis and Butt-head #28 was the final issue of the Beavis and Butt-head comic. The strip was written by Guy Maxtone-Graham, with Rick Parker doing art and lettering, with colours by Rob Camacho; Glenn Eichler was consultant.

Time Cap

Mr. Van Driessen's class has been asked to contribute to the Christian Businessmen's Association's time capsule, to be collected in 2496. He explains the concept to the class and how they can leave things for future generations to see what the 1990s were like. Beavis and Butt-head remark all the things he list suck and should be buried - and Butt-head is horrified to learn that is what a time capsule does, so he just made a positive contribution to class.

The students are asked what they want to leave for future historians:

• Van Driessen: Daria?
• Daria: I think we should leave a candy bar and a heavy metal poster...
• Beavis: WHOA! COOL!
• Daria: ...to reflect the shallowness of our hollow, consumer-driven society...
• Beavis: YEAH! Heh heh THAT WOULD RULE!

Van Driessen asks Earl if he'd be willing to leave one of his switchblades; Earl refuses, but after Van Driessen gives a speech about how being considerate of the future generations "is just another way of being considerate of others", Earl agrees to leave a brick he planned to throw through the cafeteria window ("I guess I could find another brick"). Cassandra wants to fill the capsule with dust, to remind everyone that's what they'll be in 500 years. Beavis and Butt-head, when asked to contribute say they'll contribute the dust in their belly buttons and butts to her project; Van Driessen gently says that's Cassandra's idea and they need their own. The lads get into a fight after Butt-head says he'll leave a "small" piece of "wood" so everyone in the future knows what Beavis was like, but Beavis offers to leave one of his turds.

Soon, the class are watching the capsule get buried and listen to Clark Cobb explain it's being buried so future Christian Businessmen's Association members can see "how wholesome Christians were in the 1990s" (Butt-head tells Beavis "I think he means, like, this is some hole or whatever..." "heh heh heh heh... hole."). Cobb oversees the burial of the wooden capsule, using it as a sales pitch for the awesome products at Cobb's Hardware. Beavis believes the future sucks, until Butt-head explains women in the future will be really stacked because "every time some stud does it with a chick 'cuz she's got big thingies", he's contributing to "a newbreed of super chicks who will all have huge thingies in th' future..."

• Daria: Don't tell me you morons wanted to leave your phone numbers in the time capsule.
• Butt-head: Uhhhh.... no.... huh huh huh... don't be a dumbass, Daria... {thinking of big-breasted cyborg women)

At night, the lads set out to dig up the capsule, take the candy and heavy metal poster, and leave their numbers (and Beavis has saved up a special dump). It takes them four hours to dig up the time capsule, the time passed with Butt-head playing Pull My Finger; Beavis protests he's busy with work and the least Butt-head can do is "like, HOLD THOSE IN until I have a hand free to pull your finger!".

The next day, they try to sell the stuff they looted from the capsule. Mr Anderson is having none of it though, viewing it as junk and not even being persuaded when he hears the "dirt" is dust "from th' belly of a hot chick". He tells them they're selling a bunch of crap and leaves, Beavis saying they left the crap in the capsule but will sell him some more if he'll buy it. Butt-head swears their junk will all be valuable in 500 years time...

A while later, Beavis asks if it's 500 years later yet, but Butt-head doesn't think so. He asks later still, and it still isn't. He asks a third time - "Beavis... don't make me hafta kick your ass..."

Features

• "Might As Well Jump", a strip not featuring Daria

• Cool and Unusual Punishment, matching panels to which of the 28 issues they came from

• "Naughty Nancy" Poletti's Laust Letters, the fan mail section (Nancy Poletti being the current editor; all pages at this point were named for her). One letter suggests the boys ask Daria the hook to a really dirty joke; the response shows Stewart Stevenson asking Daria it for the lads.

• Stewart: Hey, Daria! Beavis and Butt-head asked me to ask you a question...
• Daria: Shut up, Stewart...

Trivia

The writer does have a point...

• This is the last appearance Daria will make in Beavis and Butt-head media before the start of her own show.

• In the second strip, Rick Parker has written a farewell on a 'piece of paper' in the background.

• Again, someone has put an insulting label on Daria's chair. We again don't know if this is Beavis and Butt-head or someone else. If it's them, it's more nasty than they usually are; if it's not (and in one issue it can't be), it again shows Daria's the victim of bullying at Highland High.

• Using the teacher's request to get in a cynical jab: Daria is closer again to her Daria depiction than her earlier Beavis and Butt-head one, where she didn't do this. By this point, Daria was in production and Glenn Eichler would have been planning things.

• Earlier issues showed Daria thinks little of Stuart. Off-canon canon or not, the letter's page is the most cutting she's been to him, not even letting him get the words out!

• Butt-head is trying to sell the twenty-third issue of his own comic...