The Ant and the Aardvark a variety of names as sly terms of endearment (Ol' Sam, Ol' Ben, Ol' Blue, Claude, Pal, Buddy, Daddy-O). In several bumper sequences of "The Pink Panther Show", he is called "Blue Aardvark." "The Ant and the Aardvark" series was originally released by United Artists. Seventeen theatrical shorts were produced in the original series, and were subsequently featured in various television syndication packages, usually shown with DFE's other characters such as the Pink Panther and The Inspector. Most of the 17 entries appear in their television syndication form (complete with an audible laugh track added by NBC-TV) on the video
Cerebus the Aardvark took a substantial drop over the next 50 issues, however, and Sim commented that the fact that readers could not simply "jump in" to "Cerebus", and had to read the entire series in order to be able to understand the current issue, was a major reason for the sales drop. In July 1984, "Cerebus" publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim was threatened with possible legal action by Marvel Comics over a parody of Wolverine in "Cerebus". When Sim guest-wrote the 10th issue of Todd McFarlane's comics series "Spawn", he donated his entire fee—over $100,000—to the fund. "Jaka's Story", a tragic character study dealing with