I would like to forward this with a lil speech that I’ve prepared. Ahem. This is a script for a youtube video I was going to make in 2021. But then I didn't. I didn't want all that research to go to waste so. Speaking of research, I’ve done my all to make sure all this information is correct or at least from real sources. IE any source that didn't seem straight up made up. In a fandom so strife with hearsay I think it’s important to make sure everything’s square. All my sources will be in the bibliography, and since things do get a little vague at times there is a little speculation, some mild interpretation, but trust me, I'm an Invader Zim scholar. I got my bachelors in Invader Zim studies. I'm not here to bullshit you. My goal is to illuminate the obscured. Also to prove to my friends Invader Zim isn’t cringe, guys, it’s cool okay? It’s cool.

Also a warning for a lot of the things I’ll be talking about and showing which has a lot of dark content, gore, that kind of thing. Suicide. Real life violence. Not a vibe. So if you're not good with that kind of stuff, just skim the page really quick, you'll get the idea.

So yeah I’m going to be infodumping on Invader Zim for about an hour, baby girl I know things about Zim production details you wouldn’t even care about, but on god you will learn about. Yes, I will be going on the sound effects wiki and telling you the exact sound effect programs they used, yes, I will be discussing viacom stock trends. Yes I’ll discuss ship drama, it’s all here. This the Super Smash Bros Ultimate of Zim articles. It’s the Invader Zim autopsy report.

start

Let's do this. In uhhh sometime before 2001, history was made when then comic artist then (and currently) known as Jhonen Vasquez, remember him, I’m going to be saying his name at least forty times within the next hour, was approached by Mary Harrington of the glamorous Nickelodeon Studios and given the opportunity to create one of the most batshit insane cartoons ever made to an audience reaction of relative lukewarm acclaim and as a result shortly thereafter being cancelled in cold blood.
A cancellation that occurred between its only two seasons, leaving many episodes unfinished and still in production and nine of them already been completed, not airing until 2006, over four years after the end of the second season’s production. Showing that Nickelodeon no longer, if ever, cared for Zim.

This sad fizzling out of an early 2000's cartoon with low ratings and mismanaged timeslots (more on that later) makes all too much sense and yet none at all why years after it had been off the air, a Zim renaissance would be beginning to take place. In this article I want to dissect exactly how Zim came about, what made it notorious to begin with, and go into the unearthly amounts of fan content and culture it has spawned since then because there’s just so much, happening, that has happened, and that will continue to happen in the future with this horrible little alien garbage man. But to do that I have to start where the nightmare began.

Jhonen Vasquez began his career in the early nineties publishing under the magazine Carpe Noctem^[24]. This is where his first notable creation that of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac was born, or rather, a version of him inspired by his predecessor Johnny the Little Homicidal Maniac that of whom was published in Vasquez’ highschool newspapers. Because that's what you could get away with before Columbine. JtHM ran in Carpe until 1995 when it was picked up by Slave Labor Graphics and was thereon published as a seven issue series and was maybe their most popular title. After the success of JtHM, he would go on to write a few other comics which I'll talk about soon before his break into animation.

For this next part I’m going to be going to be recapping JtHM and what could be learned from it, a lot of this is my own interpretation, but I think it’s important for the reoccurring themes that will be present in later works. Also I want to.
Cue Shut Me Up by MSI.

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac stars Johnny, a homicidal maniac, and what appears to be his descent into a cartoonish portrayal of mental illness and nihilism. This comic is for one thing dark, and for another gory, explicit, disturbed, and disgusting. ... Depraved, apathetic, pretentious, etc. And to match, the world around Johnny itself is bleak, self serving, and ugly. Lot of adjectives. Every wall in his house is dripping and splattered with stains and grime and no absence of gratuitous lines. It’s as if this empty barren home needed to be filled with something, anything, if not cracks in the walls.

Johnny C, last name unknown but presumed to start with a C, is completely alienated from the rest of society and finds himself lashing out at those who don’t conform to how he thinks the world should be. The people around him living their lives obsessed with petty little things that don’t matter, things that create their own misery. Here we see the comic honing in on the absurdity of mundanity. Every day Johnny deals with this utter stupidity, meeting people who only ever seem to cause problems for themselves and others, Johnny doesn't know what to do other than to make the world a better place, to channel his rage, the only way he knows how.

For all intents and purposes. Johnny C. lives in a society.

Now Johnny, or as he prefers, Nny, isn’t a one dimensional gag character, maybe he starts off that way, but as the comic went on you can see how some of the dialogue goes into his indecision, his tortured psyche, his existential fears.
And you see sort of a split between him. A hypocrisy. Often he has a sick glee in killing juxtaposed to when he just feels obligated, he needs to continue his work, he needs to keep exterminating the rodents of society, he needs to keep the wall wet. Like someone twisting something they once loved into their job, a means to an end. This is Nny’s job now. Homicidal Maniac is on his business cards.

And he can’t quit. He’s trapped in an endless cycle of compulsion and misery. Even when he dares himself to be happy for once, he can’t help but self destruct. In this case going so far as attempting to kill one of the few people he actually enjoys the company of, Devi. (We'll get back to her later.)

The comic is named after Johnny and he knows it. Everything’s always about him, everyone’s so mean to him, even actions like talking during a movie is of course a direct attack on him. But of course he’s important, he’s the main character. Now you could say this a commentary on goths and the culture of self victimization, so much of the comic is, but I think it also speaks to his character.

Johnny's torn, what appears to be his delusions grapple with him. The doughboys, nailbunny, the big boy mascot. They're all pulling him in all different directions, whether to give into despair and just die or to keep continuing his work. Telling him no one can help him, he’s too far gone. But then again no he should seek help, he can live better. But what’s the point? People like him don’t deserve happiness. They're used as a way to give manifestations of his own thoughts but also for the comic to dissect it's own premise.

Johnny has a sense of self awareness, knows that whatever he does he’ll never be caught, he’ll never be allowed to die, the status quo will never change no matter what he does. He’s knows he’s in a edgy boy goth murder comic. Maybe not that exactly, but something to that extent. And no matter what he does, it’s going to stay that way forever. He's trapped in this endless cycle of killing and this house, this wall is keeping him there.

But almost as if to spite him, just when he thinks it'll never end, it does. He straight up dies. Despite his previous suicide attempts never working, he leaves it up to nothing but fate. A gun wired up to a phone. Obviously it’s futile, because there’s no one in his life who would ever call him. And yet, someone does, Devi, the girl he spent that fateful night with, the relationship he sabotaged almost immediately, a girl who has been shut in and paranoid ever since she met him.

A reasonable response, real consequences to Johnny’s actions, she calls him just to see if he’s still alive, if he's still out there, and now, he’s not. He’s alone on his floor, delusions shot straight out of his self-righteous head.
And once he’s gone the rest of his house, the rest of reality, the rest of the comic goes with him, of course it does, he’s the main character after all. There’s no world of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac without Johnny, the homicidal fucking maniac.

And so he goes to heaven but he finds out that not only is he not supposed to be there, he’s not supposed to be dead at all. Nny is not a person who’s supposed to die.

And while he’s in heaven he meets god, and finds out he’s a lousy neglectful father. Lazy and unconcerned, illustrating it’s not enough to just create something, you have to take care of it. Once you put something out in the world you’re responsible for what comes from it. You can’t just pretend it has nothing to do with you. I’m sure that won’t come up later.

Eventually Johnny gets kicked out for making a scene and is sent right down to you guessed it, hell. Where he right of the bat meets the devil who proceeds to go off on a wall of text which I never bothered to read when I was younger, but for the sake of this video I will brave the task. Senior Diablo explains that Johnny is a 'waste lock', someone who takes the refuse of humanity and removes them from the world. There’s so much garbage and trash in society that it needs people to simply pluck out the worst of the worst. Like a toilet.

So then Johnny gets to wander around hell for a little while and realizes hell is just modern day capitalism and the worst of society just naturally creates capitalism. JtHM is marxist, guys I swear. Hell really is just made by the people who inhabit it. For instance there’s a giant eye everyone thinks is watching them in particular so they have to perform constantly, I know this was in the nineties but something something social media.

So yeah, hell is basically the world he just left, why wouldn’t be, it’s filled with people he put there himself. What does he expect?

But after everyone’s had enough of him there, including himself, he’s sent back to his life to continue his slog of killing and murdering for who knows how long, forever?

He’s awake in the real world serving a fresh new haircut and with all other manifestations gone, destroyed by a tentacle beast that lived in the walls, by the way that's happened when he died, or did it? Who fuckin knows. Now Nny is left with just a burger boy to talk to. Not the worst of his options.

So he’s chilling, adjusting to his new cosmic revalations and he meets Jimmy, literally called Mmy, and we get a type of I wanna say, meta commentary on the fanbase. I don’t know what kind of fan culture there was in 1997 but ok, this is a recurring theme, fan meta shit, but I’ll get to that later. But not only is this a comment on fans but an example of what Nny is not. Bitch’s a foil. Mmy's having a great time, killing people, being on TV. It’s telling us Nny isn’t having fun, usually, but this is what he’s compulsed to do, it’s not a hobby, it’s still a job. A job he’s sick of.

Soon after we get closure on Devi, who Nny calls to say goodbye to, and to apologize, Devi doesn’t buy it and soon goes off on him for being a hypocrite, selfish, and destructive to everyone he meets. Basically a summary of character flaws and how everyone would be better off without him.

And he takes her advice. Big Boy says he should eat and he says he's through with obligations, from his job, from his body. And the story ends. Johnny leaves, leaves his house, his neighbors, the voices in his head, leaving to get better? Maybe. But living how he wants to live, ignoring his emotions and sticking solely to logic. He'll be free.

Real quick I want to talk about the references littered throughout to Kafka’s 'The Metamorphosis', from the lovingly named Mr Samsa the cockroach to the movie Johnny was seeing at the theater. Were these put there just for pretentious points? Maybe, but lets look a little closer.

The Metamorphosis, along with several other of Kafka’s works, is about a man trapped in a dead-end job forced to do so by the circumstances around him. And SOMETHING happens to him, something that lead him to become isolated and alienated, met with anger and fear from those outside. Whatever happened before Johnny started killing, how he got to where he is, it doesn’t matter, that’s no longer who he is. He’s Nny now. Just like Gregor Samsa, we don't see him beforehand, we only see the monster he's turned into.

Or maybe Johnny’s just like everyone on the internet and sees a bug and goes, damn that’s kafkaesque.

Either way the allusions may be off base, but between Johnny’s fixation on the book and similarly the fly, there is certainly a desire to be like insect, thoughtless and driven only by survival.

Conclusion:

I think overall it’s a metanarrative on the nature of the gag comic. Intentionally or not. Eventually you run out of things to do. You can only draw so many scenes of people being tortured in fresh and exciting ways. At some point you have to confront the characters, their motives, and take plot devices to their conclusions.

Yeah, Nny is sometimes suicidal, no he can never seem to die, but what if he does? What if the main character just goddam dies? Then what? Yes, Johnny tried to kill his date and got the shit kicked out of him, but then what? What kind of repercussions would that have on her life? Johnny’s a gag character, a killer living in a random piece of shit house, killing everyone and everything that moves, but why? Why does he never get caught for such public murders? How did he get there? He doesn’t even remember. Of course he doesn’t. Does John seem to remember when he got his dumb cat??????????

But I digress.

Intercut in the issues are short comics sometimes oneshots or they’re own recurring characters like Wobbly Headed Bob and Happy Noodle Boy which is cannonically drawn by Nny. And in reality was originally drawn in high school by Jhonen for his friend so she'd stop asking him to draw shit for her.^[37]

Jthm was followed up by three spinoffs, Squee, following Johnny’s child neighbor, I Feel Sick, following his one time date partner, and Fillerbunny, a side character originally meant to take up spaces in other properties. I’m not going to talk about the bad art collection because why would I?

I Feel Sick

Of these the one I’d like to is highlight I Feel Sick as it expands on a lot of the themes JtHM was touching on.
That’s right, we’re not talking about Zim yet, just hold on I’m going somewhere with this. It follows Devi, sporting a new look just in time for color. And Tenna, revamped from her cameo as Tonja in JtHM. Like in her previous appearance we see Devi’s history of bad date partners and her growing disillusionment with people, leading her to become introverted and engrossed in her work. Isolated. Sound familiar?

Devi works as an artist currently employed for a big name corporation. Devi paints, well more like she IS a painter. It’s part of her identity and lately she’s been fixated on a single painting of hers. And much like Johnny with his delusions it’s begun to speak to her, or so she says. After all the only thing we’ve seen to this point is Devi talking to herself.

She confides in Tenna about this, she tells her it’s saying 'the screws are coming loose' and it’s not far off. All through the comic’s two issue run screws are littered around the margins, slowing coming undone much like Devi’s sanity. And Tenna, well-meaning as she is, can only tell her she just needs to get out more not unlike the placating advice given to mentally ill people today.

And as Devi tries to reach out to Tenna with what she’s been going through she notices something about her is changing, Tenna is slipping into the background along with all the other yuppies, the society that she has grown so much contempt for.

And maybe Devi is crazy, maybe she is just hearing things. But then we hear Sickness, the creepy little doll in her painting, now speaking for us to understand of her intentions to occupy Devi’s mind. It wouldn’t be hard to get into, after all the screw are coming loose. We see Devi's boss, constricting her creativity in her art, all the mediocrity and nitpicking and soullessness of corporate oversight weighing down on Devi, she’s feeling pressured and overworked.

But then we see a flashback to her date with Johnny and we finally understand what this whole damn series has been about, not just Devi’s but Johnny’s as well.

They’re sitting on top of a cliff, staring down at the city, just talking. They relate to each other about creativity and Johnny’s inability to draw anything but Happy Noodle Boy anymore and the inevitable loss of his sense of self. And Devi says he’s not not being creative now, he’s rerouting that creativity into something else. Now she doesn’t really know this means murdering people, but, c’est la vie. Creative people don’t just stop being creative. Even if they feel like that might be the case.

Remembering this quiet moment above the city where everything seemed so small. Where you can’t even see the people infesting it. Being there with someone in this world she can relate to inspires Devi to quit her trash job and get back to her own creative endeavors. And with this revelation, the world fights back. It wants the screws the come out, the world wants to drive her crazy just as it did Nny.

But despite the universe’s efforts to keep her at bay, Devi soon comes to her confrontation with Sickness, who out of desperation has emerged from the painting, disfigured and wrong. She's unfinished. She beings to berate Devi for not cooperating, for not becoming what Sickness wants her to be, to not let her take over her mind. Sickness claims she can take any anxiety and worry away, no more paranoia, no more depression, Devi who at this point has been mumbling about how much she just wants to kill these people, can do anything she wants without consequences, even murder. And. that. sounds. familiar. Doesn't it?

But Devi won’t have it, she grabs hold of Sickness and concludes the final act by undoing the screws herself. And at the very end Devi doesn’t destroy Sickness, she keeps her, she knows sickness is already inside her and here to stay, once you undo a screw, you still have the hole, but even if Devi can’t get rid of it, she can take control of it.

What we have here are two characters who seem to have gone through the same thing and the heavy mental illness themes imply Johnny and Devi are similarly sick. Whatever’s haunting Devi is called sickness for a reason. But where the two diverge is how they cope with it. Devi accepts her sickness and keeps a tight grip on it, finds a way to deal with it, where Johnny doesn’t seem to know what’s happening or how to process everything that’s going on in his head. And one isn’t necessarily better than the other. And where Johnny was alone, Devi at least has one friend. Johnny is by no means healthily coping but he is surviving, despite his attempts to the contrary.



You’re always a slave to something.

What does it mean?


What does it all mean?

But anyways. Other than the obvious themes in both comics there’s also a lot of sardonic takes on the hypocrital lives of the gothic scene at the time. From Anne Gwish to many of Devi’s dates. Goth culture in the ninties is extremely present in all of Jhonen’s works. Honestly that’s probably why it was so popular. It was at the time a relatively unexplored niche. What comics are you supposed to read as an eyeliner wearing teen? I don’t know, Batman? Sandman? Too many men.

Now don’t get me wrong, these stories are definetly uhh, products of their time. In fact there’s a lot of fat jokes? Like? Still today? I don’t know what’s up with that. I’m sure the point of it is just, fat people are funny? But like are they? That funny to bring up like all the time?

Moving on. Squee is pretty lacking in any deeper themes but has a lot of elements we later see in Invader Zim. We got supernatural kid blending into a school environment, we got aliens, we got miss bitters. Zim is straight up there. Todd is basically Dib, just by looking at the shirt, the paranormal shit always happening to him.

What ties together the main characters in Jhonen's works is they seem to feature people who are real, maybe the only real people in the world. And it’s hard not to interpret Jhonen’s own self in Jhonny much like most artists reflect themselves in their characters. But I won't get too into that. (but hypothetically youre a young artist whos only ever drawn comics for yourself and now you're making issues for a corperation, and mayhaps you just got a job at a major children's programming network and suddenly you have so much more pressure than ever before, how do you even find time to work on things for yoursef?) The point is it's similar okay.

Jhonen has said he doesn’t really care if young fans of Invader Zim would find and read his comics. Kids can handle horror. If they couldn’t, they wouldn’t read it.

Anyway that’s what happened to me baby.

I read these comics when I was about thirteen, fresh out of middle school, and trust me it was a hell of a time for me to get my hands on these. Back when they were too niche to find scans on the internet which was already a wasteland to navigate. Every weekly trip to barnes and noble I’d check the indie comics section and every time they’d come up empty, I’d frequently send them requests to stock it and finally one day, in front of me was the directors cut of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Granted I had to lie to my parents and say it was a Naruto art book or something and pray they wouldn’t look inside. It was all the same nerd shit to them.

Every day I’d bring it to school to show off to people, hiding it from teachers like a dirty magazine, just to show off how edgy I was. And all my emo friends sure liked Invader Zim, but didn’t care much about any of this shit. But that was fine, as long as I could read it over and over. I copied the panels and stuck them in my binder, I had a custom I Feel Sick desktop. I was obsessed.

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t understand it. Often I’d skip over the walls of text and high concept conversations just to marvel at the unmitigated edginess and gore.

In fact it wasn’t until years later when I was older that I managed to find I Feel Sick on some torrent site and realized that there might be like a plot and stuff.

Anyway Invader Zim Baby

Invader Zim

Fresh off of I Feel Sick in the year of our lord sometime before 2001 (1999) I don’t know, I’ve seen a lot of different years, ya boy Jhonen was given the opportunity by Nickelodeon’s animation producer Mary Harrington who was so impressed by Squee and its potential she encouraged a 22 year old Vasquez who, at this point, had no experience in animation, to pitch a show for the network.

And so Zim was born. Born from a testtube filled with a gross amalgamation of Jhonen’s interests at the time. I’m talkin aliens, robots, the paranormal, assorted scary shit, snacks. It’s all there.

As for the plot, the show didn’t have much in the ways anything overarching or uh long form narrative, More of a wacky adventure of the week type beat like most cartoons at the time. However the original premise’s base formula would often deviate into utter chaos and nonsensical episode conclusions. There were no morality tales or lessons learned. It would start off with a basic do this or get that thing and devolve into a mishmash of sci fi trope subversions and characters making the worst possible decisions all to serve the worst possible outcome.

However.

The first episode is fairly cohesive and basically sets up the plot. In that regard it is an outlier, in that the events of the episode are one of the only to be fully canon. I’ll explain that later.

Okay. So it opens with a menacing and spooky score by composer Kevin Manthei and a colorful title sequence introducing us not only to the animation style but the blending of 3d and 2d animation which will be crucial to the look and feel of the show. The general aesthetique. Zimcore, if you will. We see aliens file into a convention hall and gather around a stage like a buncha peas in a real big bowl for something called The Great Assigning for Operation Impending Doom 2. We are then introduced to our first two reoccurring characters, known as the Tallests, the leaders of these people. And in the next couple minutes of exposition we find out OID is a mission for elite invaders to go to an assigned planet and gather intel for an upcoming invasion.

Everything is going smoothly and we proceed with the great assigning, but who’s that coming over the horizon? Why it’s our main character, coming to fuck everything up.

The tallests immediately recognize Zim on voice and vibes alone, implying there’s a bit of a history there. And one immediate confirmation later, we find out there is. You see Zim’s back from a banishment vacay he was sent on for screwing up the first Operation Impending Doom and he’s ready to step back into his invader pants. The Tallests try and juke the trouble of dealing with his zany antics, but end up caving in order to trick him into banishing himself and end up assigning him to Earth. Hint, that’s where we live.

And with that we get introduced to our coprotagonist, Dib, who turns out was listening in on the whole thing. Or at least that very end bit because he seems to have missed any of the other crucial details. What is he using by the way? How can he hear so far? He's been trying to prove how aliens are real for years, why doesn't he record this?

But enough of that nerd, back to Zim. Zim can’t carry this show alone. He needs a marketable sidekick, thankfully the tallests have a solution. A cool robot slave to do his bidding. Except bad. It’s a garbage boy made of garbage. Because if zim had a good thing that’s good he might, you know, do Zim things with it. Anyway despite his faults, Zim, and us the audience, accept Gir and his advanced capabilities all the same. And now that the gang’s all together, Zim heads to earth.

First thing’s first, he needs a disguise. And after some data gathering, he flawlessly pulls it off. After all he can’t just be walking around looking slightly more like an alien. Gir also gets a costume, simultaneously going undercover and launching a line of hoodies the likes of which never seen before. Then in a whirlwind of 3d animation and sound design, Zim sets up his base.

But Zim can’t stop there, his mission is to gather information, and where better than human school. It’s here where the formula is set into motion. You see, this is Dib’s school and he and Zim instantly clash, Dib seeing through his disguise instantly. Thankfully for Zim, Dib has a reputation for making these kinds of things up and no one seems to believe him. But Dib won’t back down that easy, as he confronts the poor boy with the skin condition after school and chases him all through the streets of.. whatever town this is. It’s never specified.

You see whereas the beginning episode gives us some backstory on how Zim came to Earth, the latter half of the episode illustrates the dynamic of our two opposing forces. And the conflict between these characters is the crux of the plot. Hereon the show establishes the formula of Zim, an alien who wants to destroy the earth, usually finding himself in a predicament of typical Earth shenanigans, and Dib, who doesn’t want the earth destroyed, tries to stop his evil plans, even if the threat is nonexistent, in the end no one gets what the want. Simple. Versatile. Timeless. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Usually this all ends going back to the status quo but sometimes plays with an unexpected disturbing horrific ending. Take Bolognius Maximus, my least favorite episode, ending in a tragic incurable gross, bad, did I mention gross fate, and yet out of all of them that one’s still considered canon, even continuing to be referenced later in the series. Despite that there’s not really a canon in invader zim, and yet simultaneously everything has happened but also nothing has happened since the first episode. Ya know what I mean. Like Zim didn’t really crash into the sun at the end of Hobo 13. The school didn’t really get destroyed at the end of the wettening, and yet. They kinda did.

I’m just going to put all this in some sort of canon solar system where The Nightmare Begins is the sun and the closer to canon something is, the closer it is to the center. Here you go.

Irregardless. Other than the first episode, if I was given one episode to show to someone that encapsulated the entire series and it’s energy, it’s characters, it’s comedy, it’s tone, it’s humor, I’d have to pick Backseat Drivers From Beyond the Stars. Almost every character in the show is present and giving their absolute most hitting every note, fuckin interacting? Unheard of.

Side characters often forgotten, like say, the roboparents, Professor Membrane, the tallests, Tak, everyone’s there with their own motivations, creating interweaving plots that come together beautifully. The gags are immaculate, the dialogue impeccable. I’m torn between whether this would be the best episode to introduce someone to the show to or the worst. Because all these characters are encapsulating their entire personality in their scenes, and yet the level of realizing this is the kind of dynamic the previous episodes were setting up you’d get from already knowing all these people and seeing them interact and come together is pretty damn satisfying. This episode really shows off the show’s potential and what it could have achieved if it was only given more of a chance.

In the commentary for this episode, Jhonen said “this episode is all that is good and went right in the show.”

In my opinion this is bittersweet, Backseat Drivers gives a glimpse into the plot points and worldbuilding that were just beginning to be put into place for a wider story never able to reach its full potential. We got the Resisty, prisoner 777, characters seen once and never able to return. Dib finally repairs his ship, previously owned by another irken, Tak, which would be a major focus in later episodes, but not quite to the level it was going to be. After all Dib has the potential to travel off planet now. Previously all offworld adventures would be solely zim focused.

Hell, Tak herself was supposed to return. But she didn’t, none of this stuff is touched on again, of course it didn’t. It didn’t get a chance to. At least it's touch on in the movie, but we'll get to that.

Unfortunately this was one of the nine episodes that was delayed from airing for four entire years. Episodes most people didn’t, me included, even see unless they had the DVDs released two years prior. Which I didn’t.

But I knew someone who did. And boy did I convince him to lend them to me. Sadly he bookended handing them over to me by asking me out. And what was I supposed to do? If I rejected him he might take his DVDs back and that was just not an option. Because I saw a synopsis of this episode online and I had been searching streaming sites for weeks, nay months, looking for an upload, to no avail. The internet was not the same back then, streaming was hard and torrenting was harder. So I saaaid uhh maybe. And after a month of rewatching them and avoiding him, I finally said no and conceded the discs. (if it had been the house box set, that'd still be in my possession to this day.)

Evolution

Unlike the fleshed out show, the Invader Zim pilot was created in 1999 using cel animation, however because of the look it's speculated that it was enchanced digitally later. Zim here is voiced by Billy West who well tried his billy best, but doesn’t really convey the same level of unbridled absurdity as my boy Richie.

Lookswise there are some noticeable color changes, everything seems very uh yellow, not yet coming into itself as more cool toned spooky zone.

As for plot there is little shown in the episode, but we can look to the show bible for that. Oh lore. Here we see some backstory changes, but they’re pretty minor. The Irkens were originally called the Noyings but other than that Dib and Zim were relatively unchanged personality wise.

However from the proposed episode ideas it seems the show would have most likely taken place in outer space more. I believe this change took place because Nickelodeon wanted more episodes to take place on earth to be more relatable or whatever but I may have lost the source on that. And these changes were pretty sad, the offworld episodes were some of the shows best and really highlighted it’s style and world in my opinion.

Also 'scared of BEANS, space boy?' lives in my head rent free.

Animation

Zim was known for its distinct animation style. You can see how similar it looks to Vasquez’ earlier art. Very sharp and very skinny extremities. A style that was apparently hard to keep on model and very hard to animate. Not to mention expensive, blowing large portions of its budget on what at the time was costly cgi.

As for the world, it’s gross, it’s grimy, the backgrounds very intricate, there’s so much added detail you can’t even take in at once. That also reminds me of JtHM wheres just so many fuckin lines on screen. How long did this take?

"I was instructed to paint with stains." - Rikki Simons, Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom commentary

Steven Ressel, art director, and disgraced sex pest, claimed this was the hardest style he’s ever worked on and it’s not hard to see why. Everything is so angular and loosely defined but at the same time you know when it looks wrong. The show also makes use copious cgi and wildly enough manages to not have it look out of place. A huge feat for the time it was made. It probably worked so seemlessly due the flat colors and unconventional shapes also yeah everything already looked strangely uncanny as it is. This was made easier by having the cgi team in studio.

The show was heavily storyboarded and the boards themselves for invader zim had at least double the amount of pages of most other animated works. Most likely because all the movement was very deliberate and dynamic. The performances of the actors were so over the top the motions had to match. Just look at zim just speaking (megadoomer beginning), how every line is punctuated with new poses and expressions. It’s just so punchy. Everything is happening all the time.

Speaking of punchy. There’s a lot of action in the show, lotta fighting, lotta dancing, and always some kind of mechanical parts on screen designed to move in complicated and very deliberate ways.

Just compare all this to its contemporaries on nickelodeon like say rugrats or its premiere partner the fairly odd parents. The amount of backgrounds, the sheer number of detail in those backgrounds. Rikki Simons said he maybe colored about 700 of them. The level of design put into how all these scifi thingawhatevers work and look and feel was crazy. I mean look at all these damn wires. I desperately wish I could get the budget information on these shows to compare but any information I could find on Invader Zim’s budget seems vaguely made up.

Actually hold on. Quick update, it took awhile but I did find a ballpark of what an episode of invader zim cost. 500,000 dollars. And that’s in 1999 money. Thats about 800,000 today money. Maybe probably. I'm not a moneyologist.

As for the backgrounds, I did manage to dig up some design images on a few of the designers portfolios, but they were pretty scarce. Except for my boy maurice. Look at all these. Comin in clutch with pngs. Tyv m. Behold the transformation from sketch to screen. Inspiring.

Other notable blackground artists are Jairo Lizarazu and Spencer G Davis.

Just. It’s insane the level of weird art ideas went into creating the look for the show, I could easily take item and zimify it and it’d fit in just fine. Just add some stripes and section off some pieces et viola. Zimified.

Speakin of zim.

Characters

Zim

What can I say about Zim? He’s just a little guy. A real scamp. A freaky little bug baby man with big ol eyes. And he absolutely carries the show. He should, he’s the main character. But still Richard Horvitz completely knocked this performance out of the park with such a distinct style and flair, I’d go on a limb and say if the same actor we heard in the pilot had played zim, the show just wouldn’t be the same.

Zim as a storytelling device perfectly embodies what it means to be both the villain and the protagonist. Incompetent and genius, the guiding force for nearly every episode. He’s a very proactive protagonist compared to how many main characters are often very reactive.

His design? Muah. chef’s kiss. He’s the generic irken, but you could easily pick him out of a crowd. He’s just got the energy. That je ne sais quoi. The irken design in general is iconic. Making them look like weird little bugs. Their uniforms are segmented like beetles, the antennae, the eyes, the tongues that remind me of bee tongues and proboscis, the paks that look like ladybug shells, the spider legs. Even the female irken antennae look like a butterfly’s. Peak character design. He’s just so iconic. A real tragedy he never took a forefront on merch.

Speakin of merch.

Gir

Gir, the man, the myth, the marketing drive for the show. Every pasty emo preteen worth their salt had at least a gir hoodie, a tacos shirt, one of those fluffy hats that double as gloves. Because what else are you supposed to wear to all the anime convention raves you went to?

Gir was voiced by Rikki Simons, who at the time was not a voice actor. Jhonen felt displeased with professional voice actors, finding their (put that part of episode 14 podcast here) delivery too rehearsed and typical.

Rikki brought his own personality and take to the character. Often just taking whatever Jhonen directed him to do and doing whatever with it. And Rikki was already on staff, working as a colorist. He also colored I Feel Sick and continued to work with a similar pallette on Zim.

Gir as a character, was supposed to add some, I want to say innocence, or some good natured insanity. Gir isn’t really a villain, he’s not really anything. He has been described as having not an inch of malice in him. He doesn’t have much of anything going on, his head on multiple occasions is shown to be empty. He’s a broken robot, that’s it. Unless. Unless he was never broken, and the reason he’s so obsessed with snacks is because his master is still encoded as a food service drone and- no wait that’s stupid.
Speakin of stupid.

Dib

As a kid I never really liked Dib. Compared to the other main characters, he’s more of the everyman, the generic main character with a standard moral compass. Zim has a plan, Dib works to stop it. That’s the formula. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought this because due to negative feed back from New York during production, the team made tweaks to Dib to make him a little more unhinged. And that really shows, he’s very obsessive, selfish, and doesn’t really care about most people despite wanting to save them. You can tell he mostly just wants the attention that comes with exposing zim.

Another reason I didn’t like him is I could never get over that ugly ass hair cut.

But now I’ve seen the light. And the light says. Dib good. I now realize Dib, though smarter than the rest of society, is just as eccentric, despite of, or perhaps because of the world he lives in.

Dib is contrasted as the ‘smart’ person amongst the rest of humankind. Even among other sensible characters he’s one of the only one’s that recognize Zim as alien. Why is never explained. Or wasn’t yet explained. Perhaps it really was the brain erasing ghosts.

Gaz

Gaz is an absolute girlboss. The og gamer girl. Fake gamer girls vs real gamer girls. Melissa Fahn said that the inspiration for the voice was a bit of a female Jack Nicholson and you can hear it in her slow deliberate lines. You can feel the anger and threat in her voice and you know she has the power to go through with it. Not in a supernatural way, ZIMWIKI. Gaz seems rather one note, but you can tell despite her feelings on Dib, she loves her dad, going through extreme measures just to spend time with him. Take Bloaty’s Pizza Hog in which she goes though the trouble to save dib from zim’s clutches in space and sacrifices the world just to go eat pizza with him. Heartwarming stuff.

Side Characters

Side characterwise we have characters like the tallests played by Wally Wingbert and Kevin Mcdonald. They were never given actual names in she show but merchandising labeled them as Red and Purple. You can guess which is which. They’ve probably had the most significant changes from the pitch, irken society was a little more loose and now it’s a lot more focused on the tallest. And that’s for the best.

The two are some of the best characters of the show. The absolute shade they throw at Zim everytime they’re on screen. They’re catty and mean and stupid, and I love them. Absolute queens, we stan.

Then we have Professor Membrane, the absentee father, not only in his children’s lives but also the show. He makes very few appearances. Played by Roger Bumpass. What we know about him is, he’s disappointed in his son, but he still loves his children even if he’s too busy to spend time with them. He’s got his own tv show. I assume he’s very rich. Husband material. Not to mention he’s a total dil- (gagging)

Then there’s Tak, my beloved. Played by Olivia d’Abo, she’s every thing you want in a female character. Spiteful, driven, and an egirl who is ruining my life. She’s so good, even after she leaves the show, her presence is still kept alive in her ship, they could not let her go. Who could ever. Tak, what a girlboss. How many times am I gonna say girlboss.

Ms. Bitters. She’s a teacher. She’s something else. Some sort of shadow snake vampire? We don’t know. We don’t care. We stan all the same. Look how much she hates children, can you get any more iconic. The show bible claims she’s in her fifties, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was tweaked to impossibly old.

Skoodge? No one ever talks about skoodge. He shows up like three times, he was supposed to be a regular character like living in Zim's basement maybe. Something like that. Need more Skoodge merch. Where my fellow skoodgeheads at?

The other children? Eh. They’re there ig. Who gives a shit, we've already talked about Skoodge.

Alot of the background characters were designed by the legendary Aaron Axelovich who will come up again later.

Nickelodeon at the Time

Ok for context, Nick’s history is important.

1991 is when Nickelodoen started producing their own animated tv shows. AKA nicktoons. Now at the time Nicktoons began, and still to this day, Nickelodeon was owned by Viacom, and Viacom in 1998 had roughly, a shitton of money. Enough to have a steady stream of new programs from just random ass artists. Just whoever's on the street. However in 2001 is when viacom’s stock started falling and has steadily been declining ever since. Well, steady not including 2006. (eric trueheart blog)

Invader Zim at the time being one of the only nicktoons to be produced inhouse, ie not from a production studio like Klasky Csupo or Billionfold.

Viacom opened nick animation studio in 1998. (Talk about the studio.)

Animated shows airing on Nick at the time were, Hey Arnold, As Told by Ginger, Rocket Power, The Wild Thornberrys, CatDog, Fairly Odd Parents, Angry Beavers, and Rugrats.

These are all a bit too family-friendly for what Invader Zim was going for. Just look at Cartoon Network at the same time. Samurai Jack, Billy and Mandy, Courage. Hell, Powerpuff Girls had crossdresser satan, and what did Nick have? Girls who are mean to the main character? How can you compete?

Something I've heard is that Invader Zim didn't get good ratings because it had a bad time slot. However, every time I've seen listed was around 5 or 5:30, which are very good timeslots, Compare that to Spongebob or Rugrats which were normally on at 4:30 to 6:30. In my opinion, 3-6 are the best time slots because it's after children get home and before shows parents want to watch come on.

But all good things have to end. And after the final airings of season 2, it was over.

Comic

"Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." - who knows

We needed him. We needed Zim.
But it was too late.

That was until two thousand nin- fifteen! In February of that year Onipress announced the bug was back baby. Jumpcut to July 8th. Zim has finally returned, back from the grave, returning with 50 new issues of zany adventures, not counting quarterlies. All your favorite characters are back, Zir, Gib, Daz, Dim, Professor Membrane, Ta- well not Tak. . god I miss Tak, Red, Purple. All back for more goofs and gags. Jhonen himself working on a few of the beginning issues and popping in for the occasional writing.

Some of the issues even written by Eric Trueheart, an original writer on the show. Some might objectively say the best writer on the show. We even had a few written and illustrated by K C Green of this is fine fame. Danielle Koenig returns as a writer. Aaron Alexovich. Remember him, I mentioned him two seconds ago He’s there. The gang’s back together.

Not everything was the same ofc. It’s been like thirteen years since it was canceled.

In episode 14 of the Nick Animation Podcast Jhonen highlights the key difference between the comic and the show, and that’s warmthness. Where the series was completely devoid of affection, the comic has brief moments of sweetness, which, is really cute actually.

The comic contains mostly one shots. Small bits of worldbuilding and a maybe few arcs. The characters have been redone slightly to fit a more modern art style and the tone is a lot less bleak. However there are much more offworld adventures, this time the world’s not being contained to the guidelines of the original show. Many of the issues are even somewhat coherent and focused. And some of them are a neat showcase of certain artists or writers.

Listen, you need to read the Zim comic. It’s fun, the art is colorful and expressive, it’s still got that zany energy the show had. It is the creation of recap kid, there’s body swaps, prison breaks, motherly love, a cronenberesque clown transformation, commentary on the toxic optimism of election culture, zim becomes a chair. Idk what else you want. Read the Zim comic.

In issue one it start off with Dib being stuck in a chair waiting for Zim to return, another dig at the fans, meanwhile he's becoming gross and-
Oh more fat jokes. Cool. Anyway.

All the stories play out how you'd expect, just like the show, always a new Zim plot, always Dib trying to defeat him or capture him. The usual. But maybe there's something more? Maybe with cool arcs like the zimvoid we could really get into these characters and

nope just kidding the comics over, everything’s over. No closure for anyone. NOT EVEN ANY TAK!!

(Just thinking about Zib and his impact on what fandom there is now and how he would have done numbers on deviantart in the early days.)

Enter the Florpus

A few months after this clip C H Greenblatt, creator of Chowder, responded to a fan on tumblr asking about a potential Invader Zim movie he might be working on. And Greenblatt just happened to answer, no, that he will not be a part of the upcoming Zim movie. Blowing the whistle on this entire operation. And Jhonen, possibly under contract, had to deny it’s existence on twitter.
But then five months later, it was announced. Zim would be returning to the small screen in the new form of a movie. Which upon I, and many others, proceeded to loose our fucking minds. To get our boy back, moving and speaking, all the bells and whistles.

And on August 16th, 2019 it was here.

he movie’s here and it’s absolutely pristine. The art style is changed to closer resemble the comics, the animation is smooth and modern but in a recognizable way. It was everything we hoped for. It’s gorgeous with art direction now from J R Goldberg.

The movie starts off with a near identical sequence as the comic. Dib. Chair. Zim returning. However instead of humiliating Dib like in the comics, Zim doesn’t have a second part to his plan.

It’s like, it’s like an alternate timeline in that instead going through with that whole nonsense, he just forgot that’s what he was going to do. Instead Zim has a bit of an ordeal trying to figure it out and ends up finding out something close to truth about his mission and the disillusionment he experiences sends him spiraling into a depressive episode liken to that of Mopiness of Doom, an unfinished episode from the original series, and that actually wasn’t the only callback, the trial, a fan favorite, was referenced in an imagination sequence. So a lot easter eggs for hardcore zimheads.

Listen. Enter the Florpus hits different. Different from the show and different from the comics. Florpus has direction. It has an arc. It has character development. It’s gotta. It’s a movie, it’s over an hour of one plotline. And damn if development doesn’t happen, Tak’s ship finally gets fixed. Zim had an existential crisis. Dib works out his neglect and mistrust issues with Professor Membrane. Membrane btw in this movie is fuckin killin it. Look at those arms.

The movie is stunning btw. Like, the characters have been redesigned to match their comic counterparts and thus making it easier to animate. That’s why I assume they gave the tallest thumbs. Also I never understood how Red held all those drinks.

Gaz is noticeably rounder and she and her brother are a little darker skinned. Zim overall looks pretty the same if not only changed by the art style. Dib has little shoes and spooky shirt. Also Dib gets a last name here, previously Membrane was just his dad’s name. Uhh, Justin Roiland’s there, that rick and morty guy, he was actually supposed to play Clembrane, but he was busy at the time. Good.

And for a show canceled by poor ratings and unclear demographic, Enter the Florpus blew everyone out of the water, with a 100% on rotten tomatoes. And keeping up with the usual style, it was met with confusion by critics and adulation by fans.

(facts about jhonen in nick animation podcast episode 27)

Who Killed Invader Zim

"There is no story for why it got cancelled. It's just a whole sequence of disconnected events led to it being shuffled around, didn't build an audience. Nickelodeon at the time - was no home for it." - Jhonen Vasquez, Emerald City Comic-con

For awhile there were rumors about various things leading to the cancellation of Invader Zim. One such rumor was the discovery of Bloody Gir. Bloody Gir was an off handed doodle of Gir standing silently, eyes red and covered in blood. These would be snuck into various shots of the show for a single frame, making them hard to find and easy to miss. People assumed the discovery of these made Nickelodeon outraged, leading to them canceling the show entirely, but in actuality it seems they never really cared.

According to the Invader Zim wiki Steve Ressel claims that Nickelodeon didn’t notice or really care about the Girs, but this is sourced from a buzzyworld page on a fan site from 2003 and didn’t go into quite so much into any specifics so.

And that’s the problem with finding sources for this, the Invader Zim sphere is rife with so much misinformation and rumors it’s hard to figure out who’s just making shit up. A part of that is that much of the information anyone got was from an era of the internet where things were hard to verify and most of the people posting about it were fifteen year olds. It was speculation. Hell for most of writing this I assumed that Dib being some sort of clone was a rumor until I saw an interview with Trueheart saying it was a plot for a future episode.

Not to mention the creator himself.

"I don't like people knowing things." - Jhonen Vasquez, San Diego Comic-con

Shoutout to the way back machine by the way, as you’ll see I had to use it for pretty much everything as most things are just gone. I mean I get it, it tracks. Like if I were them I would have deleted any trace of me before 2014 too. And I have. Any time before then was just the wild west. Wild west of uh cringe.

By the way, in Trueheart’s book of scripts, he calls out the invader zim wiki by name to tell how much they got wrong. FUCking fuck em.

Invader Dib

But now I’d like to spotlight Invader Dib. Invader Dib was a rumored series finale that circulated around the internet, since as far as I can remember. For awhile Invader Dib was just accepted as fact. I believed it. It was going to be the end of the show before it was canceled by Nick. It featured Dib going across the galaxy in order to defeat the Irken Empire. That, however, was not the case. In The Medium-Sized Book of Zim Scripts, Pigs ‘n’ Waffles, Eric Trueheart, my beloved, confirms this was never in the cards. Hell guys, cartoon hangover even listed it as one of their facts. That’s not true.

Actually there’s lots going on here. (g standing for garbage) Guys, he was on your staff. So many of these I just can’t deny nor can I say they’re fact. Like I can’t find anything about the zim tamogatchi and I’ve literally read every interview.

Wikipedia says nintendo tried to sue Nickelodeon because they didn't like the parody of the gameboy advance and their source is a fucking listicle!

But I digress. As for invader zim getting the axe for being too violent, in a 2004 ign interview, Jhonen says there was never much of an issue getting all the more absurd scenes past censors. In fact, Nick was looking to capture a slightly older audience. The only things they couldn’t get away with were more things like new york being in ruins after 911, a kid dying at the end of an episode. Stuff like that.

And you know what? I understand, I do. Every one asks why Invader Zim got cancelled, not because they don’t know the real reason, but why did something they love so dearly have to have such an abrupt end. The truth of the matter is, that sometimes shows just get canceled. Sometimes with very little reason behind it. Aside from the obvious. Which is that network executives are losers. We’ve seen it so many times, especially in the early days of Nickelodeon. Things like Zim just die before you even have time to buy the flowers.

Merch

Zim doesn’t stop there baby, no way. The funeral’s over and now it’s time to party.

It’s time to uh yknow. Buy a buncha shit.

DVD

The Invader Zim box set was released on may 11th 2004 after Media Blasters approached Nickelodeon the previous year asking to distribute it. Media blasters is primarily known for distributing anime, horror, anime horror, exploitation, and illicit content. So yeah, not entirely apropos for Zim, but not exactly a bad fit.

The second dvd originally had a piece of custom art by Jhonen on the cover but was rejected due to the horrifying nature of it and was replaced with a piece by Bryan Konietzko, art director (and avatar boy), after Jhonen refused to make any revisions. Which I think might be for the best stylewise but it’s a shame I’ve never even seen this image before now, it’s sick as hell.

The dvds also had a few specials like animatics, irken subtitles, and a spanish track, along with episode commentaries.

This was soon after followed by the house box set in 2005 and if you open the top you see the duty mode gir palisade figure I’ll talk about in just a second. I want these dvds SO bad. But they go for like 300 dollars. I check every fuckin week for a new listing.

This version included an interview with Kevin Manthei, the composer, an uncut version of the christmas episode, and the recordings for the unfinished episodes.

There was one more release after this but was generally unchanged.

Toys

Merchandise, a cartoon’s lifeblood, for some reason did not release with the show. Or very little did. For a show with such a high budget, little to none was returned in sales. Not until 2004 did we even see any toys. I get they were aiming for more teens but still. It’s a cartoon, you gotta have some toys. What is this, pre reagan era?

But toys would come. Or action figures I guess. Collectibles perhaps. Series one of the Invader Zim figures released in 2004 by Palisades Toys with a couple hot topic variants shortly followed by series two.

The figures were praised for their acurracy and articulation, there were quite a few of these, from the tallests to ms bitters, the robo parents to variantions of the main characters with convention exclusives. The second series even came with parts that if you put them together they form the house. Alot of attention to detail were put in these and it shows.

I even have one my friend gave to me about a year ago that she found in a bunch of junk and said hey you like zim here take this.

I can’t find any records of the full hot topic lineup of zim merch, but we can get a sense of how much and how far back it goes through the wayback machine.

In 2001, Zim hadn’t been out long enough to accrue any merch yet. Not until 2002 do we see a section for Invader Zim. In 2001 through 2006 the merch stayed pretty steady and tame. 2003 there’s a little more, like shoe laces... panties.

Anyway. 2004 and 5 pretty par for the course. But in 2007 there was blood in the water. And in 2010 the emos were hungry for it. Thereafter zim was everywhere. Gir being the go to mascot for whatever quirky sayings you want to plaster on a t shirt. Still today zim shirts are mass produced. Well I say zim, the funny thing about most of this is, zim ir rarely featured. Not rawr xd enough for everyone ig.
(artbook interview merch)

List of what I’ve found: Zim shirt, Gir shirt, Gir hoodie, Gir socks, Gir shoes, Gir bracelet, Gir necklace, Gir earwarmers, Gir tutu, Gir suspenders, Gir hat, Gir fingerless gloves, Gir armwarmers, Gir binkini, Gir purse, Gir lunchbox, Gir totebag, Gir backpack backpack ssssss, Zim lunchbox, Gir whiteboard, Gir compact, Gir baby onesie, Zim clock, Zim giftcard, Zim PDA, Zim underwear, Gir computer sleeve, Gir perfume, Gir bedspread, Gir blanket, Zim lip balm.

When asked about this in a 2004 interview Jhonen said this:

“I hate feet. Hot topic sells ZIM sandals... that people put their disgusting feet in. I hate anything that results in people showing their rotten toes with the help of ZIM brand sandals. I like making merchandise for things that I'd actually want, but we were pretty cut out of it early on. ZIM sandals, man - what the ****?”

Too bad though, I could never find the sand- oh shit there they are!

Fandom

Listen, this isn’t a deviantart cringe comp, I’m not here to make fun of any of these artists who were what I can only assume to be children and in 2009 no less. I was one of these people, I’m not forgetting my roots. I’m not trying to be mean, I won’t say oo hoo look at this. Can’t believe these loser children made bad fanart. No it’s just if you look into the old fandom this was it, this is here, it’s been here for years and that’s it. It’s never went away. These are just the kinds of things people made back then end of story.

There have been so many fanworks and fan creations, projects. People have really taken whatever wishy washy lore from the show there was and stretched it to its absolute limit. Details like background characters and offhand jokes were stretched into gospel to the extent you wouldn’t see for like, idk hey arnold? Maybe spongebob.

One particular trend were several efforts to animate or at least storyboard the unfinished episodes of the show, especially those with completed audio recordings or performances at conventions. Like say soapy waffles, a fan collective who even had a presentation at invadercon, but more on that later.

There were a lot of fansites, back in the day before fan wikis, and these were crucial in staying in touch with other fans and keeping all the information somewhat straight. I do say somewhat because again, there were so many rumors. Roomwithamoose is probably the most professional and popular. They usually have the most up to date info than anywhere else and little sprites and cursors (like the one I'm using) and fonts.

Fanart

Obviously there was fanart, fanfiction, fancomics, the whole shebang.

Truly and honestly a lot of these back then were great for the time. People didn’t fully know how to utilize digital programs then but some of these turned out really good. Obviously since the fanbase was mostly highschoolers there a lot of room for improvement but when I saw these I couldn’t tell the difference, anyone with a skill level higher than me was a master of fine arts in my eyes.

Like these pieces drawn by Krusnik007, these were everywhere, even later used in a comic hosted on snafu-comics called Manifest Doom later taken over by. . by bleedman, but I’ll get to him in another written thing. But despite its popularity, it didn’t run that long and I think it was about silent hill or something, idk.

Ocs

"You see kids, they create these whole characters for themselves. Like they're Invader Billy or whatever. And it's so pathetic because there aren't any other invaders. - And I want to crush those kids dreams - but I don't know where they live."
- Jhonen Vasquez (whos picture I have taped to a dart board), The Nightmare Begins commentary

Making your own invader was common, sometimes people made some of other aliens. No one made humans unless you were going to selfship.

There were definently trends in oc creation especially on deviantart. Obviously if you’re gonna make an oc they’re gonna be an irken. Long antennae usually to an extreme degree was very popular, they were usually styled to fit into more alternative subcultures. Uh, what I really mean is they were edgy. And that’s okay! Edge is fine! And there were a shit ton of these, I remember this one thing, called bloodsport, an event just for drawing your oc beating the shit out of other peoples ocs. And this wasn’t the only one.

Deviants of art even made whole plots with their own irken characters. I believe that this was one of the first sci fi worlds alot of children were really familiar with, so they used that as a means of creativity they couldn't get with other shows.

InvaderCon

The fandom was big, too big to stay online and green mustard entertainment knew this.

So in 2011 in Atlanta, georgia attended by Richard Horvitz, Rosearik Rikki Simons, Melissa Fahn, Andy Berman, and Eric Trueheart, invadercon reared it’s disgusting wonderful miserable head. Ten years after its first airing, fans arranged an entire convention based solely on invader zim.

It had all the usuals. Cosplay contests, panels with the cast, something called the dinner of doom. I’m makin waffles breakfast. You know the usual. They had uh some amv contests but zmvs, zim music videos obviously.

And one year after that, the second one, DoomCon happened in Los Angeles, and Jhonen actually went to that one seeing as it was in his state. This one seemed to bigger better and all the hoes were there. Wally Wingert was originally not coming but showed up anyway. We love it. They got Jason stiff, a production supervisor, who doesn’t know Jason Stiff.

Following that was a 2014 final doom convention in Austin texas. This one wasn’t as popular from what I can see but they still had the dinner of doom and what more could you want. And technically there was a fourth but since it was only a couple months ago it was exclusively on zoom.

The very existence of invadercon is a testament to just how popular this short show was. You don’t normally see cons that aren’t part of like massive fandoms like Star Trek, My Little Pony, Harry Potter.

Side note, I was reading eric trueheart’s blog post on the first invadercon and he mentions a few titles of episodes he never got to write. Like Pants and Burrito King which later did get adapted into comics. Fun facts. Also Gronya in part was originally intended to be a lesbian. There you go lgbts, your gay zim icon.

This is where they did script readings for unrecorded episodes.
(parts of episode 27 nick animation podcast)

Scene Culture

It’s no secret how prominently zim style was featured in goth looks. And in 2004 the scene and emo culture was on the rise. Traditional goth was dead and middle schoolers killed it. Vive la popunk and idk blood on the dancefloor? Death to the cure. Sure emo meant emotional but we didn’t want to actually feel sad, we wanted to rave to aqua at anime conventions and get free therapy by talking to our friends at lunch and telling them how much we hated our parents.

We wanted to wear fingerless gloves and pretend mortals just couldn’t understand how deep our kandi bracelets were. I’m gonna come out and say it. Emo and scene? Are same thing. Scene just has more colors. And bigger hair ig. More bracelets.

And don’t get me wrong we WERE sad. Sure saying lol im crazy rawr xd was fun and shallow, but actually going to therapy was met with weird looks and rumors. The closest to diagnosis any of us got was a rofl how insane r u quiz. Like some people use pictures of anime men in straightjackets to cope??

And where did all of us go to shop for all our fishnets and pants with so many chains they announced whenever you came into the room? Hot topic. And hot topic, didn’t seem to get the memo the show was canceled and year after year kept rolling out new merch and we ate it up especially as it evolved from just t shirts and bags. Look at this gir tutu, I didn’t even know it existed until I found one just last year at salvation army. At first I couldn’t believe it was official merch, I thought that mayhaps some parent made this for their kid, but no the tag read hot topic. Say what you want about capitalism, if this is the kind of shit we get via the working man’s dollar, maybe it’s worth it.

So what’s up with zim, and let’s be real, gir, being the face for emo at the time? I don’t want to say gir started the lol random xd movement, but, he did. Can I prove this? Of course I can’t. Google won’t let me into the forbidden trends before 2004. But this has got to mean something see how the rise of zim once again coincides with the use of rawr, a popular scene word. I couldn’t use anything generic like tacos or random because normies exist.

The point is. They style. The vibe. It fit right up in that scene niche. The bright greens and pinks. The already goth looks everyone’s wearing. That’s probably why it hit it off in hot topic. A cartoon where everyone’s goth? It’s a no brainer.

However this is much less so the case these days. Yes you can buy a god forsaken amount of gir online but in stores the zim pool seems to have dried up. Do kids these days simply not care about robot dogs? Do they not care about chocolate bubblegum? What is the world coming to when you can’t buy a shirt about a horrible screaming rat dog yelling at you about tacos?

I wasn’t sure where to put this next part but I guess in between emo and shipping is good enough.

Dark harvest controversy

On October 15, 2005 Scott Edgar Dyleski bludgeoned his neighbor to death and eviscerated her corpse. Afterward at his trial his friends and family described him as always wearing weird clothes like trench coats and always talking about how he wondered how the body would function without certain organs. I’m not going to go into too much detail into the investigation however during the trial, the episode Dark Harvest of Invader Zim was cited as a motive for the murder, despite the defense claiming any comments made to his peers about the episode to be a joke.

Dark harvest was maybe the most disturbing episode of the show, I remember it pretty vividly from when I was a kid as opposed to the other episodes which I have no real memories of at the time.

"That was the first episode we showed to a group of kids. - And it got quieter and quiter and I'm sitting in my office thinking oh my god the kids are dead silent, we are so getting cancelled - And the kids are just slack jawed - and Ray looks at them and says so do you like that and at this moment they all just go yeah! That was awesome! And I was like okay, I have a job for at least a year." - Eric Trueheart, Invadercon

But let’s get into shipping!

Ships

Cause everytime we touch, I get this feeling. And everytime we kiss. I swear, I could fly.

Ugh okay. This may possibly be the part of the video I was looking forward to writing the least. Because obviously. Shipping in general seems to be a point of contention in the show, despite being around since the very beginning like all the way in 2001.
(watching the show wrong clip)

The Invader Zim fandom has a unique naming convention. For instance. ZaGr which would stand for Zim and Gaz romance. You could also apply the same principle to friends and enemies. ZaGf ZaGe

Why is this? I’m so glad you asked, the first instance I saw of this being used was in a zagr fanfiction from 2001 which maybe the first use, it might have also been created on like a fansite or something. However it does state that there someone whose name was 'advanced gir' claimed to come up with it. So. There you go baby. I can’t find this advanced gir but they defined a generation.

Speaking of za-

ZaGr

Zim and Gaz. Cue Katy Perry’s ET. The closed off goth girl and the mysterious guy not from around here. There was quite a bit of this for two characters who rarely interact, but when has that ever stopped anyone from pushing two characters together.

Besides, who else where they supposed to ship the only girl with? Her brother? Basically what I’ve seen of this, it’s made mostly by girls who wanted to insert the twilight dynamic into everything. This sort of died out, not to say there’s none of it but fandoms overall did see um a shift from main girl with main guy to uhhh (gay)

ZaTr

Okay, so you need you guy girl who barely interacted kissing fix but you’re a bit uncomfortably with an elementary school student. The solution? Tak. Two aliens, same size, got some history? Complementary colors, both evil, it makes senses.

Tak had very little appearance in the show in non ship form and her episode was romantically charged, so I see where people are coming from with this.

DaTr

It’s like the inverse of Zim and Gaz. Except Dib and Tak did have a little more I don’t know, romantic interaction?

There used to be alot of pairing up ZaGr and DaTr as some sort of double dating kind of thing. I don't really understand it. Now people do that with... other pairings.

Also Dib now has Tak’s ship with her voice in it. Like they still interact. Where’s the Dib and Tak’s ship fandom? If you’re gonna go there, really go there.

RaPr

Red and Purple romance. The tallests, but in love. Honestly, pure ship. No complaints. We stan.

Gagr

Question 1. Why. Question 2. Bye.

TaGr

Tak and Gaz. This is just the next one but for bad bitch gaslight gals being pals whatever girlbosses. To be honest if the time of my zim phase coincided with my girls kissing phase not but one year later I might’ve hopped right on this. Not that there was much content to be found.

Honestly since the names are so simple you can easily apply them to every pair of characters in the show and you get a ship name whole sale. GaMr GaSr ZaZr TaTr DaZTDrljs gfkhsa and my personal favorite, ZaMr aka zim and membrane romance. Watch the scene from tak the hideous new girl and you’ll get it.

Welp that’s for the ships, all of the major ones covered yep mhm.,. .
oh all right

ZaDr

Zim and uh, Zim and, Zim and Dib romance. Listen I know you been waiting for this, I know I haven’t. God I gotta be nice about this. Listen I get it. Most the kids shipping this were just that, kids, close to dib’s age. I get it. But hindsight 2020 or something. It’s definitely got different connotations now shipping a 12 year old and a hundred and something guy, right?

But let’s extrapolate on this. And I am spotlighting this pairing in particular because it’s just so damn prevelant, even if other ships have the same problems, so let’s dissect this ship for a moment.

Granted, whenever I see this ship at least nowadays the characters are aged up and for the sake o argument the two characters do have an interesting dynamic, lord knows a bitch loves enemies to lovers. And since they’re basically foils they have such similar circumstances that I can see the two bonding about but damn chill.

I’ve been putting this off, but in issue 50 of the invader zim comics, there is a plotline that’s not hard to compare to the shipping culture present in the fandom. A new character arrives at the school and she’s immediately pertrubed by the absence of friendship between zim and dib. This character is bright eyed and pink haired and wears a hat not unlike. .(put gir hat here) She will stop at nothing to get these two together FRIENDSHIPWISE OF COURSE, saying just how perfect they are for each other even though the narrative keeps pushing against her. She breaks into dibs house and tells him if he didn’t like zim so much he wouldn’t be so obsessed with him. She interrupts their schemes to show them fanart she made of them thus halting the story.

And yeah we all know what’s happening here, it’s a metanarrative on if zim and dib got along there wouldn’t really be a story yadda yadda we know.

But what does it mean that this issue was the only one Jhonen Vasquez worked on since issue 20, three years ago? Ok, we know what it means, it’s a sick burn at fans or shippers or whatever.

Jhonen

"People form all kinds of horrible and completely delusional opinions of you as a person." - Jhonen Vasquez, Emerald City Comic Con

Jhonen has always had a sort of sarcastic approach to his fans, snide comments and references, in the early days even drawing himself interacting with them. And fanwise there’s always been a sort of bitterness towards this. ‘Jhonnen hate his fans’ and all that. One time I read on a message board a girl mailed him a comic she drew and he replied telling her she should never get into comics. I have my suspicions this is not true.

Personally I think it’s all in good fun saying

“The Zim fans(or “horrible screaming goblins”), they went nuts and started a petition, and pretty much kept the show alive online through fansites and whatnot. They dressed up as the characters at conventions, and they wrote nightmarishly bad fanfics that creeped us all out. The Zim awareness was bigger than it ever was when the show was on the air.” - ign interview.

Babygirlboss tbh. What do we want as fans, if not to suffer?

But there is also a sort of. I’ve been trying to avoid saying cult this whole time but I’ll go ahead and say it, cult-like following of Jhonen. That’s why people watch Invader Zim and go back and find the old comics. They see his work and are like yes, more of this. And the thing about people and fandoms is that they’re very normal and composed especially when they’re made up of preteens. I’m kidding of course.

Ok. So some context. Back in the days of early fanfiction there was a paranoia that you’d get sued if you claimed to own the characters. Thanks Anne Rice. So you might put a little forward to stop the lawyers in their tracks. Who me? Own the fairly odd parents? Why no sir that belongs to mr butch hartman. I am but a lowly worm. You get the gist. So. POV you’re a goth teen. You watch a goth show you read the goth comics, now what? You’re outta media baby. Maybe you read some adjacent shit like uh lenore or idk sandman? But you need more to obsess over? Maybe the man himself. And so the cult of vasquez was born.

There was like, a lot of comics of like people meeting jhonen, I can’t find a lot now but I remember a ton of them. There’s a really good one I’ll get to in a minute. I don’t blame people for deleting them but to fill the void I’m gonna make one as a show of good faith.

Why?

Why was it so popular? I don’t see people dredging up old llyod in space episodes. Except for that one. You know what I’ve been asking myself that for awhile, and I think I’ve cracked the code.

As previously discussed, Zim really hit its stride during the height of the emo subculture. See where it picks up in 2004, when the dvd came out and hot topic started consistently carrying merch.

And its hard to judge just when the show became popular to watch and consume and discuss. But I did anyway. I’ve done some complex maths and calculations to determine approximately when the show gained traction in the fanbase. That’s right. I have counted the number of fanfiction written in each year since the shows release.

In 2001 here is when the show came out and 2002 is when it came into full swing. But after cancellation and what I can assume is low rerun rates it fell out of popularity pretty quickly until a slight uptick in 2007, if you can recall when I said hot topic was amping up their merch and then in 2010, skyrocketed to higher than when it first aired and stayed there a few years til what I can’t tell is it slowing down again due to less popularity or just that people stopped using fanfiction.net.

The best part is, that people were writing Invader Zim fanfiction in 2001. Invader Zim did have an audience then, one that could go on the internet and write about the characters. However these were a small group, after all what Nickelodeon needed was a younger audience. There were more kids who would sit there and watch whatever cartoons were on than people who could read who would watch the show. I couldn't read back then.

But like I said, I couldn’t read when the show aired, I didn’t know what fanfiction was, I watched the show but could barely understand it. Even at the time, people into the show couldn’t experience it as a whole unless they recorded it all on vhs, they didn’t even see the later episodes. IE whatever got people to write so much fanfiction for a 2001 cartoon clearly had something going on in it and so in 2009 when people actually started to talk about it again, kids who’ve grown up and had semi formed brains now and access to all the episodes on the intenet could finally engage with it. And it made sense that teens around fanfiction age would be writing for it in 2001 because that’s the audience Nick was going for in the first place. Kids too young for that in 2001 grew up with Hot Topic keeping Zim in the public consciousness, especially among those in alternate scenes that were catching on, were just finally catching up to it.

The Cartoon Rut

Let’s take a look at the time period. People like to forget that before steven universe and after avatar, there was this sort of dry spell in cartoons. Adventure Time didn’t start until 2010 and the last of the really classic shows like samurai jack or powerpuff girls had either ended, or succumbed to season rot. I didn’t know what was going on with spongebob and I didn’t want to

During the period invader zim saw a resurgence, what else was there to watch? The mighty b? Planet Sheen? Whenever I think of this era I think Chowder and Flapjack, and that’s basically this time’s only saving grace.

Influence

"There are people now who are just doing amazing stuff and they are saying they were inspired by Invader Zim and I'm like that's neat." - Jhonen Vasquez

It would be FOOLISH of me not to mention the impact Zim had on society.

Bryan Konietzko who worked on the production of zim said the work was grueling but applied what he learned from the production to avatar before directing on zim he was a storyboard artist.

Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe, wrote a forward in the Invader Zim artbook

You think you would have your hazbin hotels without Invader Zim? There’s a reason vivziepop cast Richard Horvitz.

Awards

Kyle Menke won an emmy for outstanding acheivement in animation (53)

Richard Horvitz for voice acting, best animated television programming, and sound design at the golden reel (49)

A world animation celebration award for best title sequence.

Florpus was nominated again at the annies for Richard Horvitz’ voice acting and nominated again for sound design at the gold reel.

Not to mention being nominated for achievement in animated primetime, music score, production design, direction for dark harvest.

Steve also won an annie for storyboard achievement (29)

Okay, okay fine, I’ll talk about steve for like one second. I don’t want this to ruin the good times of this rant.

In July 2020 Steve Ressel was accused for grooming by two twitter users. And even before that it’s pretty interesting to note that he was never really invited to cons, or interacts with the former crew members. And that’s not surprising he seemed over all disliked. Rikki Simons had some particularly bad things to say about him in his 2003 blog posts. And he didn’t really get any more animation work after zim, except for something called trubble bub which doesn’t seem to exist. Oops.

Anyway on to something more uplifting.

Rebecca Sugar

"Zim became a massive part of my high school experience. I found other fans at school to gush about the show with. I followed fan artists online, and read and wrote fan fiction. I doodled the characters all over my schoolwork. I drew a comic imagining what it might be like to meet Jhonen, and how I would definently faint. I couldn't understand he was human. Or I couldn't understand I was human." - Rebecca Sugar, Invader Zim art book

Now I’ve been debating showing this as it does feel like a breach of privacy, in fact a lot of what I've discussed and shown here does. Vis a vis projecting the artwork of what I assume to be minors at the time. But then again, it was on the internet, put out there publicly, and I can only assume the people who have posted it then are no longer teenagers. And if they wanted it deleted, I would respect that. However, what I’m showing you now was deleted, only accessible by the waybackmachine. The fanart of Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe. And you can see here the general fanbase atitude towards Jhonen and his works by fans. I know this was pretty the norm because I might as well have written this myself.

Anyway, the moral quandry is, should this be archived? I’m using it here as an important milestone and time capsule for Sugar’s journey and the influence Vasquez’ works had on them and many like them. And yet this does feel pretty perverse, there are things on this site that I want to show you, if not to illustrate the journey from emo 15 year old who scans their pencil drawings to incredibly influencial show runner.

Sugar basically changed the whole damn game in terms of storytelling, animation, and lgbtqia rep in cartoons, shows being made now would not exist without Steven Universe, and like would Sugar have even gotten there without shit like Invader Zim and Jhonen's comics? Hold on let me make a meme.

I don't even know if I would have kept drawing if not for Invader Zim. Half of my sketchbook was Invader Zim fanart! The other half was inspired by it.

But still. Even though Rebecca's wildly sucessful, this is still a 15 teen year old’s website, since deleted. And yet I wasn’t digging for this, I was linked from wikipedia. So I don’t think I’ll go too into this. But.

Here’s a few snippets because I like them. I love all this art. I want this in the Met Museum. Also yes they wrote invader zim fanfiction, no I won’t show it, yes I read all of it, yes they had a crush on Dib. I cannot imagine why, Zim is right there, but oh well. This was literally 20 years ago. Okay okay okay anyway.

Okay wait let me sumarise because I can’t stop thinking about it. Dib goes back in time to save his mother from a murderer but accidentally becomes the murderer and then purposely frames his father for it. Because I dunno.

It’s a puzzle. And I need the pieces

Conclusion

What have I learned from this? I only started this damn thing after I got the worst ear infection and I couldn’t get out of bed and kickstarted a week long hyperfixation watching invader zim on my phone. I’ve spent dozens of hours listening to commentaries and interviews, listening to this guy talk and talk. I’ve gone through all of his blog posts, tweets, and whatever else I could find. And for what? Why? Whyyyyyyyyy? To accrue meaningless facts about a show that was canceled twenty years ago. God.

And here’s my wisdom. After reading everything this guy has ever written, combing through tweets from 2008, I have come to a conclusion on him.

He doesn’t matter. He created invader zim sure, whatever. But other cartoon creators don’t often have the following he has. And yet. To a lesser extent now I’m sure but back in the day people were obsessed with this guy. It was spooky. You can see from just what I’ve shown of rebeccas sugar’s old art.

What I’m trying to juxtapose here is the legacy of the creation with the creators. What one gets from a work isn’t dependant on authorial intent. Invader zim has always been much more than its original context, you can see that in any number of fanworks. Most fanworks exist outside the canon content of the universe shifting and changing the characters and settings to fit their own purposes. And the show allows that. There is no such thing as canon in the invader zim universe.

And yet. You are responsible for the content you put into the world.

Now that the show’s been canceled, the comic’s concluded, the movie’s been released, what does this mean for Zim? Is that the end? Does Zim need to continue? When will enough be enough? When will this horrible bug boy relinquish his hold on media (and on our hearts)? Well Vasquez once described Zim as his hideously immortal baby. In other words, he just won’t die, there’s a reason I’ve see people call him a roach. So years down the line who knows. Personally I feel with the success of every new installment, we’ll never be rid of it. Zim won’t be banished, every time he’s cast into the void, he quits. Everytime he faces certain death, he lives without explanation. He keeps coming back in new forms. Maybe next time it’ll be, idk, in the realm of a video game. Maybe we’ll see those abandoned plot threads picked up, maybe, just maybe I’ll see my beloved Tak again, but eh probably not.
But maybe.

Uh closing remarks. Uhh follow rikki simons on instagram, the looks are immaculate.

Download aaron alexovich’s app. He seems to have worked really hard on it, it’s got like just over 100 downloads with is like nothing for an app and that’s a crime. This shit’s gorg.

Support dinolich, moss lawton, they have a comic called hellaween which is really cute.

Bibliography
1 - 2014 invadercon schedule
2 - mindspill on invadercon
3 - jason stiff
4 - rikki simons blog
5 – sound effects wiki
6 - zim sound fansite
7 - invadercon
8 – rebecca sugar site
9 - rebecca sugar fanfic
10 – voices of zim
11 – kevin manthei dvd interview
12 – comiccon florpus panel
13 – comikaze 2012 panel
14 – comicon 2005 panel
15 – invadercon 2012 panel
16 – florpus nick interview
17 – writers of zim
18 – ECC panel
19 – artbook
20 – nick animation podcast 14
21 – nick animation podcast 27
22 – galaxycon
23 – artbook interview chris mcdonnell
24 – screensavers interview
25 - roomwithamoose
26 – animationworld zim interview
27 – 2004 ign interview
28 - comicbeat interview
29 – avclub interview
30 – steve ressel thread
31 – questionsleep
32 - fansite
33 – maurice f morgan II background artist
34 - spencer g davis background artist
35 – invader zim sound effects
36 - suicidegirls interview
37 - bunnysneeze chatroom
38 - over the stars jthm/zim fanfic site