Judge's cartoon became controversial -- he was charged with fomenting pyromania and general grossness -- but Beavis and Butt-head stumbled ever onward. Now comes their greatest test, a full-length movie released this month. Critics are advised to wear splatter guards.

"People expect a skinhead with swastikas when they meet me," says Judge, a balding 33-year-old millionaire who dresses in jeans and T-shirts. He drives his rusty trash-can of a car to a posh Century City office provided by Fox TV, home of his new cartoon series, "King of the Hill." Judge spends 16-hour workdays there, then races home to his wife and two baby daughters.

We sent Contributing Editor Kevin Cook, another balding dad with a potty mouth, to meet Beavis and Butt-head's creator.

"Judge is everything his work isn't -- calm, thoughtful and self-deprecating," Cook says. "He works hard but never forgets how Warholian his story is -- Texas egghead musician hatches cartoon craze. "Now Judge must somehow top himself. He must point Beavis and Butt-head toward midadolescence. I think he'll succeed because he has that rare artistic gift -- a perfect memory of junior high."

PLAYBOY: What will you remember about 1993, the year your show stormed pop culture?

JUDGE: Beavis and Butt-head supposedly made a kid start a fire in a trailer park. It was all over the news. Later it turned out the place wasn't wired for cable. I was also charged with causing a cat's death. But Butt-head had only joked about putting a firecracker in a cat's butt, and anyway that practice has gone on every summer since there have been firecrackers and cats. After that I went on the Internet and told people, "Imitate everything you see." It was funny how Beavis and Butt-head were talked about like real people. My name was hardly mentioned. I liked that. And I liked getting letters from women in their 50s, saying the show helped them break the ice with their sons. It helped them talk about sex without awkwardness. I still get letters like that.

Photography by Stephen Sigoloff Illustrations by Sharon Fitzgerald, Kaori Hamura, Monica Smith
Reprinted from Playboy, January 1997. Copyright©1996 Playboy Enterprises, Inc. No part of this article may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means--electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise--without the written permission of the copyright owner.