This one is for all you out there who’ve ever wished they could float around in the clouds, spending your days sinking lightning bolts into various heads (also works for wishes involving said wishers’ heads caved in by bolts of lightning).

There was a bit of a preview of this print for the folks that showed up at the SD Comicon, but the final version is upon us thanks to the fine folks over at Gallery Nucleus, hopefully as the first of several ventures to be output by the elves they hire and beat into productivity there.

CLICK HERE TO IMPROVE EVERYTHING!

Bolt cougher actually began life as my section of a collaborative piece with J.R. Goldberg, Mr. Gauky, and Flawn, but after those fine artists all died mysteriously in a mysterious fire, I mysteriously rescued my contribution from the flames just in time, and transformed it into the image known the world round as ‘Bolt Cougher’.

Bolt Cougher is a 19″x13″ giclee print on archival watercolor paper and won’t be a limited run, but the first hundred buyers will get the only signed copies, so if signatures are your thing, be sure to grab one early or all those other people into signatures will torment you in ways only the damned would know.

This image shows you how big the print is compared to a Norton.

I really like doing this type of thing every now and then, and I hope you guys like buying this type of thing as well because people are starting to complain that I should maybe invest in a new pair of pants to replace the garbage bags I use as summerwear.

PAAAAANTS!

P.S:  A few people over at the Facebook fanpage were asking if the unsigned prints would have anything special and I had to dash their dreams against the rocks like so many kittens dashed against…the rocks.  Here’s what I told them:

“The unsigned prints, though not visibly altered like the signed ones, will have absorbed my power by sitting in a tiny room with me for up to ten hours. If you squeeze them, you might just be able to extract the “essence” that I “emit” every now and then and have used against me way too often in a court of law. Hope that’s cool enough if you don’t end up with a signed one.”

IT'S THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!

*UPDATED*

This upcoming convention marks my 900th appearance at the San Diego Comicon, and to commemorate this I shall be sitting and signing things for a change.

If you plan on attending this year’s event, and are hoping to have me sign things things in dead silence while I stare down at the table recalling everything that went so so wrong, then this post is for you!

Here’s what you gotta know:

DATES:

I’m there from Thursday the 21st to Sunday the 25th.

Personally, I think that’s way too much time, but that’s what I got for not reading my email messages from Slave Labor Graphics until it’s too late to change anything.  But my prolonged nightmare means more chances for you to get stuff signed!  YEEEHAWWW!

WHEN AND WHERE:

Thursday

panel – ‘Comic Book Sunday’ – 1:30 -2-30 (Room 7AB):  I’m actually not sure why I’m on this.  I think mainly I’m friends with the Comic Book Sunday guys and they just looOooOoOove having me around because I’m so cool and I always make everyone happy.  Ah well.  I’ll get to sit and listen to people talk about things for an hour.

signing –  2:30-4:00 and 5:30-7:00 at the SLG booth (#1815)

Friday  2:30-4:00 at the SLG booth and 5:30-7:00 at the TopatoCo booth (#1231)

Saturday 2:30-4:00 and 5:30-700 at the SLG booth

Sunday  2:00-3:30 at the SLG booth

At night, after each signing, you’ll be able to find me in my hotel room, curled up and screaming into a pillow.

SPOILS OF WAR:

Aside from the usual library of comics and such available through SLG, there will be a few special items for con that, if you’re lucky (or real unlucky, I guess) you just might be able to burden yourself with…

ZERO DAY poster – Comicon will be the first place to pick up the poster I did based on the cover artwork I did for MC Frontalot’s Zero Day album.  Like Frontalot, and album artwork, well maybe you’ll dig the poster.  Hate Frontalot?  That works, too!  The poster isn’t actually him, so it’s not like you even have to think of him while enjoying the poster!  The image is a color variant from that used on the album and is actually extended into a wider format with a whole mess of new bugs drawn in.  These things are shiny.

More bugs!

Frontalot and I will be signing these things together at the TopatoCo booth on Friday at 5:30-7, so watch for the two guys in glasses (we’ll be the only two such types there).

Posters are going for $15, and, once con is over, the remaining ones will go up on $Z.99.

BOLT COUGHER print -

Now this one’s a bit covert.  BOLT COUGHER’s a wee sneak preview of a giclee print I’m going to be putting out through Gallery Nucleus in the THE FUUUUTUUUUURE.  Until then, there’s only be 20 of these mini-versions, and I’ll have them with me at Comicon.  Printed on matte at  8.5 x 11, this micro-edition will, unlike the larger, upcoming ones, be customized by a particular me, with each print having a different wood-ghost painted and inked onto it by my barely human hands.

Here’s the thing.  I won’t actually have these out on display.  Only people that know the secret password will get to buy them, and that password is “BOLT COUGHER, PUH-LEEEZE”.  Once those words are spoken, you will have agreed to buy said print, whereupon my leg will open up like Robocop’s gun-storing leg, and I shall remove a print for you.  If the leg malfunctions, I’ll just remove a print from a little folder I keep next to me.

These’ll be $30 and are perfect for spending $30 dollars on.  These won’t be available online after con, but the larger, non-customized ones will be.

If you’re a regular follower on Twitter you’d know that you probably regret adding me on Twitter.  You’d also be familiar with the fact that each month I name my collective followers something new.

I was overwhelmed by the one or two people begging me to make shirts based on these names and so this month marks the beginning of the Twitter Name of the Month Collection.

This month sees the arrival of the FILTHY DICKENS shirts, complete with flies to mark you as just the sort of fragrant type who’d wear the thing.

Rather than going with a print on demand type of thing such as a Cafe Press, Question Sleep, in association with me, in association with nothing sensible, has teamed up with the fine people at TopatoCo to produce these shirts for the month the name is still active.  I’ll tell you why.

Would you pay over 20 bucks for a shirt that says “Filthy Dickens”?  I sure as hell wouldn’t, and I’d feel even worse asking fans of either filth or Dickens to pay it.  Never had any reason to investigate those p.o.d shirt companies, but for something fast and dirty like a name of the month shirt, the costs versus quality were just silly.  Enter TopatoCo and their ability to make much finer quality items at less of a cost to you, the fine, topless reader in serious need of frivolous garments.

Only downside to this is that, since it’s not a print on demand setup, pre-orders have to be made to give them time to make enough shirts for the people that actually want them, limiting the time you can actually buy them to just about a week!  Get your asses over there quickly so you can hover your mouse cursor over the “add to cart” button, decide you’d rather actually “eat this week” and then move on

June’s name of the month, GOATSPLOSION, however, is a special case and will stick around for a bit, as it seems to have captured the hearts and minds of the people, all of them clamoring to own a piece of this awesome band that doesn’t actually exist.  Get your stinkin’ GOATSPLOSION July tour shirts, yeah?  I made that thing with no small amount of help from Eliza Gauger.  We both hope you make our long hours of screaming back and forth at each other over instant messenger worth it.

There’s a hoodie version, you know, if you’re the type with something to hide.

One neat feature of the TopatoCo site is the option to send in photos of yourself wearing their shirts, so be sure to take advantage of that.  I’m not sure, but I think any photos of you wearing GOATSPLOSION stuff require you to be throwing devil horns.

PEE ESS:  The Crazy Vee’s shop on ToptoCo is kind of a separate entity from my $Z.99 shop, selling mostly things related to my Twitter account and such!  $Z.99 is a fancier place, requiring you to wear shoes and already HAVE shirts before entering.

You’re only up out of that stinking hell, what, once every month or so, so I could either feed you, or tell you a little bit about how that album cover I did for MC Frontalot came about.  I could tell by the frenzied look in your eye, a look often mistaken for insanity brought on by starvation bordering on the cessation of all your life functions, you would settle for nothing less than even the tiniest bit of background on how that album cover got made, so that’s what you’ll get!

That delicious, drool-inducing aroma coming from the dining room?  Oh, that’s just the feast I had whipped up for you guys, but fuck that nonsense!  We have art to discuss!  ONWARD!

As you maybe know, I did the album cover artwork for Frontalot’s album, Zero Day, and it made life just a little bit better for everyone that has ever been nice to me (If you watch the news you’d know that everyone that wasn’t nice to me is now dying of everything that kills you).  Thing is, some people aren’t content with simply living in a world where there is no war or pain thanks to what I created, and they agonize over just how such a thing could come to be, how I of all people, I, a former prostitute turned artist, could have made something so beautiful.

I will tell you now.

To get the full experience of my tale, I want you to put on these 3-D glasses.  No, I didn’t write this in 3-D, but it was converted in post to jack up the prices and make you clutch at your throbbing head and eyes throughout.

So it was last year’s San Diego Comicon, and I was trying to fall asleep at an hour that would make it relatively struggle-free to not sleep through the entire next day so as to not miss attending the convention.  Must’ve been around 3 in the morning or so, and was tossing and turning and punching and berating my pillow in that way neighbors back home or in hotels find so charming that they think the police would enjoy experiencing as well.  As I had not yet quite fallen asleep, I was awake enough to hear the rapping at my 30th floor window.

I leapt from the bed, naked as all,  and threw the curtains aside with such force that Frontalot, hovering like that vampire boy in Salem’s Lot, screamed and screamed as if losing his mind.  ”PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!” he howled insensibly, and shrieked, swiping at the air as if trying to bat away the photons from entering his eyes.  He fell from sight, and, commotion ended, I returned to comforting, pulsating gelatin I excrete in preparing a resting spot.

The next day, I dropped by Front’s booth at the con and inquired as to what the deal was with the late night visitation.

“What are you talking about?” he responded distractedly, signing a cd for a fan as he spoke to me.

“Last night.”

“Okay.”

“Last night at my hotel.  What the hell was it about?  Did you want something?”

“I was doing karaoke last night.”

“I mean late at night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jhonen.”

“You were hovering 30 floors up, banging on my window and then you screamed and flew off.”

“Oh yeah!  I wanted to ask you if you’d do the cover to my next CD.”

“Sure.”

And that was the start of it, pretty much.

I had done some album artwork before, for Mindless Self Indulgence, and this new thing wouldn’t be nearly as extensive as what I did for them, so it was more like a fun little diversion than anything.  This would just be the front image and not the entire packaging.

Another thing that differed from working with MSI was that Front was a bit more involved in what the actual design would be.  MSI gave me the go ahead to do whatever the hell I wanted, so long as it wasn’t horrible, and since everything I do is amazing, that worked out pretty well, I think.  There were only a few emails back and forth between myself and Jimmy Urine, and then he came over to my shack under the bridge to view the mostly completed pieces.  Before he swore never to return, he said the stuff was cool, and that was that.  I thought it ironic that he’d be so repelled by the smell of his own namesake.

Jimmy Urine of the MSI Urines basking in the glow of my creations and begging for a gasmask

Front, however, was a bit closer to a concept, and, though vague, gave me enough to wonder just how his previous album covers came about.  When prompted, he sent some doodles he had done for the artists he had worked with before.

You ever see those books or websites where some artist takes a child’s drawing and turns it into something much more elaborate and polished?  Looking at Front’s sketch ideas alongside the artists’ completed pieces was something along those lines, with the original doodle having almost the entire idea there, only more raw and squiggly.  I actually loved seeing those sketches and wondered if maybe he should do the cover himself.

His basic idea for me was “some bugs coming out of a thing.”  Not in those exact words, but just about.  Zero Day was the theme, and so it was the basic idea of foul, gremliny critters pouring, crawling, pooping, or generally blasting out from some piece of gear, be it a calculator or old PC.

Here are the wee doodles Front sent me to illustrate what he was going for.

I actually love this one.  It could easily be a finished cover image as it is!

This one’s just about the worst thing I’ve ever seen.  I can’t believe this guy can fly.

And this is the one I found most fun for the imagination.  The angle of the hardware made for a more dynamic stream of critters, and if there’s anything that gets me going, it’s critters streaming, blasting out of things into your face.  It’s probably why I have all those sexual harassment suits going on these days.

As you can see, that last doodle is pretty much what ended up being the finished piece!  Again, I thought that Front’s child-like scrawl was pretty damn cool looking for what he was going for, but he insisted on it looking amazing, and so I took over from there.

I go back and forth between doing things like this digitally and non-digitally.  Like the MSI cover, this was a pretty typical mix of the two, with me penciling on paper, scanning, converting to a blue line, printing that out and inking on the blue line so only the black is scanned after the inks are done.

The only real big difference from my initial designs and the final piece is that I had originally placed a shadow farther down below the calc, as if the thing were flying above some indistinct surface below, but Front had a fear of heights, and wanted the calc more firmly rested, actually touching the surface, so as to lessen the appearance of the calculator flying so much as simply releasing the critters.  He also wanted something to represent mankind’s endless struggle against ignorance, so I dropped in a gradient.

The FRONT cover. Get it? GET IT?!

With the design finalized, in Photoshop, I scream at the keyboard until the spirits in my computer make everything look more or less like I want it, with the right colors here and there.  In this case, I output a few color variants, and Front ended up going with the powdery blue palette that you see today on the album cover, billboards, tattooed on the side of pets and so on.

An actual tattooed pet

So that’s the story of how this particular thing happened.  Neat, huh?

And here’s a wee peek at the revised version I did for an upcoming poster.  I extended the format so as to allow for more bugs, and went back to the flying calculator with the distant drop shadow, because I’m stubborn.

I TOLD you it was wee, dammit.

I hope you learned as much as I did throughout this whole process, and I hope it gives you something to think about as you spend the next few months back in that sweltering nightmare hole.  Yep, get on back in there now.  You heard me.

Don’t change the channel!

I know you want to, because that’s the natural instinct when the screen suddenly shows you some sad-faced kid with flies all over him and you’re wondering why the hell the kid’s not even swatting at them when they’re clearly walking across his eyes and going into his nostrils. Even as you wonder this you’re reaching for the remote because you want to be entertained and watching kids host fly-cons with their heads is not your kind of entertainment at all for some reason.

But wait!

This is about entertainment, and revenge, and murder (not really, but how awesome would that be?)

If you’ve been following me on Twitter lately you’ll notice I’ve been retweeting Aaron Alexovich’s frantic screams for help in getting his comic submission to Zuda Comics to be the ultimate champion this month. As far as I can tell, the winner of this battle of the comics gets enough money to not worry about snacks for several weeks and they continue their comic to complete the story for you guys to read, love and emulate with comedically disastrous results.

I would love to see you end up on the news, explaining through gritted teeth to the reporters why you chopped your arm off like in the comic before you pass out from blood loss, but this just won’t happen if Aaron and illustrator Drew Rausch aren’t allowed to bring the comic to completion.  If they lose, they’ll just end up old men telling stories of how it would have ended to disinterested younger folks who have better shit to do than to listen to two obviously broken old men long past their vital days.  That’s just too sad and just the thought of it makes me laugh but it also makes me sad.

A little about Aaron, so as to help you sympathize and think of him as an actual human being, making it easier for you to do your part and help him win and make that creepy face he makes when he is feeling some approximation of happiness:

Aaron was the character designer on INVADER ZIM and drew some of the most horrifying children and aliens I had ever seen.  Despite that, I think it would be cool to see him win.

Check out some of Aaron’s work on ZIM.

Frankenchokey, famed ZIM cereal mascot

Voting’s almost over with for the month, and the comic, Eldritch, has been neck and neck with another quality entry, so it’s been pretty tense, with both comic entries trading 1st and 2nd place slots seemingly every week!  Voting results are updated weekly, so even though Eldritch is #1 at the moment, the votes for the competition have been surging behind the scenes, so here’s what you can do if you haven’t done so already.

Click on this banner, register to vote (I know, but t goes quickly), then vote, and be sure to rate and fav the comic.  If you have ANY friends, or people that just do what you say because they’ve no real minds of their own, get them to do the same until there is nobody left on the planet who has not voted.  It’s that easy, and you’d actually be helping determine the future of a comic book project, and quite possibly the very future of the human race.

So why do I give a shit, personally?  Well, I wouldn’t say it’s because one comic is better than the other, really.  Let’s just say that, with Aaron coming into the prize money that he’d get from winning this thing, he’d be a pretty sweet target for a mugging, and I could use the cash.

Like I said, it’s super close right now, and they need your help!

FOR THE CAUSE!

Generally I deal with it efficiently enough so as to not bring any more problems down on me than usual, but this time I ran into storage issues, so I had to start clearing out some space wherever I could, and that’s what brings me to this silly little post.

Before emptying out a chest to make room for my new friends, I thought it would be fun to document just a few of the items inside of it before putting them in storage.  This thing had become a repository for old gaming hardware from days long past.

Have fun, try to identify as much of the magic as you can while I look on and nod every now and then, taking down notes that you’ll never get to see.

Click on the images to go over to the Flickr page hosting them for the super high res versions!

Maybe I'll be buried in this chest, with maracas in hand like a crook and flail.

Ghouls N' Ghosts is better than people.

The INVADER ZIM factor in the making of Portal?

Some gamers out there might get a smile out of this (I know I did!)

Got this email on the ol’ fanmail account a few days ago, and though I usually don’t make a habit of waving fanmail around, prancing about like a lunatic, this was one that stood out a bit.  That’s not to say that getting fanmail isn’t always nice, but now and then you get something from people that had something to do with something you yourself are a fan of, and it makes you realize that everyone else writing to you is shit.

I kid!  Stop with the sad eyes.  You know what I mean.

Anyhow,  I asked  Jeep Barnett if it was cool to reprint his email here for you guys to read, and after he edited the email, removing all the racial slurs and threats to kill the President and such, he said okay.  Thanks, Jeep.

(No, he does no misspell my name.  I sometimes write it out without the O for a more staccato effect.  No kidding.)

Hey, Jhnen! No, we don’t know each other. However, I have a bonus INVADER ZIM Fact that I believe even you aren’t aware of!

FACT:

Valve’s “Portal” may never have existed if it wasn’t for Invader Zim. It’s true! I know this, because I’m one of the programmer’s who worked on Portal and predecessor, Narbacular Drop. Here’s how it went down…

For our final year at DigiPen IT, our game team wanted to create something awesome that would become DigiPen’s “flagship” of the year… to take us to independent game festivals and propel our budding careers. After a lot of design work, we came up for the portal/puzzle concepts in Narbacular Drop (and Portal).

However, we were missing a key ingredient: artists! While I was at DigiPen, the art and programming students were generally kept apart, except for the final year where artists could choose to work with a programmer game team. There was a very limited supply of art teams that wanted to work on games, so the programmers had to pitch their game to them and pray to be selected.

Well, that year there was only 2 art teams and 15 programming teams, so we knew that we’d have to have a kick ass impressive pitch. We built a small prototype of the game to show them and did a lot of thinking about potential art styles that would make the game an attractive pick. We finally decided on a sort of “twisted fairytale” theme and in our presentation we used JTHM and Zim as examples of the direction we were going for.

I honestly have only seen a few episodes of Invader Zim (I really enjoyed it, but never got around to watching them all), but I love JTHM and Squee (also the Bad Art Collection was awesome). Others on the team are huge fans of Zim. And as it turns out, the art team that decided to work with us were also rabid fans of Zim. Mentioning it in our presentation made our game stand out and was a key factor in acquiring the art team.

So the teams worked together for 8 months, made Narbacular Drop, that went on to great success, got the whole team picked up by Valve, made the spiritual successor Portal, and the rest is history… all thanks to Invader Zim! And in Portal itself, maybe you can see some of that morbid humor that your work inspired in us.

So… thanks!!

And thanks for putting so much time into the 31 facts posts! I’m a slow reader so I’m a little delayed on finishing them, but I was throughly surprised and entertained! I’m especially glad that I didn’t need to be a Zim nerd to enjoy them. I learned a lot and it’s inspired me to add the Zim DVDs to my Netflix queue.

-Jeep

Only a fraction of the people reading the entry were clicking on the link to the video so here it is on its own.

Can’t have a final ZIM Fact without a ST:TNG reference, right?

You can, actually, but it’s too late to go back now.

Looka that artwork up there!  Thanks to Vincent Perea for the beautiful likeness and for being one of the three people who read every single one of these entries.  Check out Vincent’s work over at HIS WEBSITE! I am currently ahead of him at a Words with Friends game by ten million points.  Vincent did all that shmancy artwork for the Misadventures of PB Winterbottom, so he’s pretty good at what he does, but he can’t match my masterful use of the word ‘fart’ for more points than he’ll ever see in a lifetime.

In case you forgot, I started writing these at the start of the month to coincide with INVADER ZIM airing for just one month only, this grizzled month that we’re now seeing come to an end.  That ZIM was actually airing I can’t say I verified with my own eyes as the only things my television is hooked up to are a power outlet, a receiver, and a variety of gaming consoles.  If ZIM was back on the air I didn’t see it, but some people have told me they’ve been watching it, enjoying it, and even not throwing up while watching it and they seemed liked reliable sorts.

I probably had more fun writing all this stuff than anyone had reading it, and that’s pretty much what it’s about – my selfish enjoyment of myself.  Still, I wanna thank the people who’ve been checking these out tirelessly and even those who can’t stand this shit but have been enjoying the show all these hundreds of years.

It’s people like you who make me a bit sorry that I don’t have anything better to finish off the month with, having counted on getting something rare and amusing to leave you off on.  The “rare” video interview with Rikki Simons, the voice of Gir,  I’ve been promising over the past weeks turned out to be sort of a bust as it’s just the usual thing only this time worse.  I searched around online for other interviews with the guy and found some pretty bad stuff on youtube, and this lil’ thing I’m uploading for you isn’t that much more informative.

Still, we had some fun, and I, for what it’s worth, this video is at least new, and I know some of you guys are just completists.  That’s something, yeah?

Anyhow, thanks again, and have fun.

Rikki Simons and Eric "da fist" Trueheart in happier pizza restaurants.

Actually, a bit of info on the video:  It’s apparently a fragment from a documentary about voice actors by “Ani-Mazing” Magazine, one of the many publications I’ve never had the pleasure of taking with me to the bathroom.  The thing never got completed, and Rikki was actually the last person the filmmakers interviewed.  That’s just what the guy told me who gave me this thing.  If you ask me, AniMAZING Magazine should have stuck with magazines because the interview sucks as far as interviews go, and the sound and camera work is just awful.  The title of this last post comes from something the interview touches on, that Rikki, besides playing the lovable GIR, also played the lovable Bloaty the Pig.

Sorry!

Anyhow, here’s the thing.  Knock your socks off if it’s your cuppa.

Until the future!

CLICK TO PLAY

ZIM Facts, say your peace, for the reaper is giving you the bloody eye.

You’re not a kid anymore, INVADER ZIM Facts!  You’d better shape up and get your priorities straight because it’s not all fun and games now, you hear?  No more galavanting around and thinking you’ve got forever to leave your mark.  You see the dark at the end of this tunnel you just thought went on forever and ever now, don’t you?  I know you do.  There’s just one more day of this left, so I hope you have your affairs in order before I take you out behind the shed and put you down with the ol’ shotgun.  That’s right, just like we did Grampa.

But you’re here for today, and isn’t today, right now for that matter, this very moment all that we truly ever have?  Live for this moment, try not to think about the horrific nothingness of the void that awaits in so little time, the empty dread of having your being dissolve into zero, and then that which isn’t even zero, for even zero is something, and you shall simply be nothing.

Forget I said that.  You just try to have fun, yeah?  Good.

Wow.  30.  How about that?  Did you ever think we’d get this far?  I sure didn’t.  I’m walking around looking over my shoulder every couple of seconds, wondering when some of the people featured in these entries will decide I’ve said too much, and try to take me down, or when a rift in space-time will open up like an angry, white-hot anus in the very fabric of things, and shit out a time-traveling toddler bent on revenge.

I don’t even have to ask if you learned anything over the past month, but I didn’t expect to learn so much myself in the process!  Did you know that when you write in a conversational tone, often times addressing a “you” that is no actual person in particular, certain readers will take that as an opportunity to write to a very particular me and speak as if they actually know me?  It’s true!  There have been some truly horrific things said, often, I’m assuming, meant to be in the “spirit” of my entries, but instead coming off as just unpleasant and overly personal!  Pretty neat, huh?  The things you can do to the human mind with just a few words and the occasional jab at cat lovers!  Here’s an example!

“Hey, Jhonen!  Your entry today and some stuff right?  I hope you fucked your mother and also time-baby is my brother because you’re a pussy!  Maori ZIM please!”

Okay, I made that response up , but writing it made me laugh, and using Maori instead of “more” made me happy, and that’s what matters.

That’s another thing I learned.  People unfortunate enough to be around me when I’m writing stuff like I’ve been, recently, they tend to get sick of my constant giggling while hunched over the laptop.  I can’t help it, the truth just makes me laugh, ya know?  The more truthful, the more likely I’d be to start gasping for breath for the sheer, ridiculous sincerity of it all.  The truth shall set you free and laughter is the best medicine, so they say, and what better remedy than the one made from combining the two?  Potent shit, that Laughtruth.  Potent and not tolerable for more than a few minutes, too, I guess, as the sound of my shrill, girlish giggling is apparently not “cool” to some people who just don’t appreciate the healing power of piercing laughter.  That I can’t help but grab people by the sides of their heads and shriek my laughter directly into their faces when I laugh is not “cool”, too, I guess.  Fuckin’ people, man.  I don’t know why I try.

It should be mentioned that I have also learned that speaking ill of certain child-murdering lunatics as Jason Stiff gets you sleepless night of having certain child-murdering lunatics, freshly escaped from their internet-enabled asylum, chasing you across the rooftops for hours and hours until you throw a feral cat at their face, buying you enough time to gather up a whole mess more of feral cats to bury Jason Stiff with.  Feral cats, you served your master well that night.  I’m your master, by the way, feral cats.

It's not funny when you're the one being chased by the crudely drawn monster.

Look at me going on and on as if there wasn’t one day more of this stuff!  Forgive me, I’ve gotten emotional in my old age, and I do like to reminisce about the good ol’ night ago.  What say we get on with things and not wallow around in the maudlin recollections of an broken old man?  What say we get on with today’s fact?

What’s that?  Oh, I know, I know.  You’re overwhelmed with how sad it is that it’s almost over.  I know.  I’ve enjoyed having around, too, but like with everything, this has to come to a conclusion, and isn’t it better that we part ways with glad hearts while we can do so?  Let us be like the BBC Office, come and gone having left the best impression, leaving us happily wanting more, and not like the American version, overstaying its welcome and practically starring sharks jumping over one another.

Shark Week is awesome.

FACT:

OH MY FUCKING GOD.

Sharks are fuckin’ scary.

Sharks have nothing to do with ZIM, regardless of how factual or scary they are, so let’s try to stay on the subject, yeah?  Thanks.  No, what I think INVADER ZIM fans would be more interested in knowing is how a person even comes up with an INVADER ZIM show.  That’s the sort of thing people have been tuning in for day after day.

“But Jhonen,” you crap outta your face, “you already talked about how you came up with INVADER ZIM!”

Wrong.  What I talked about was how I came up with the name, and a little bit about how I got the show, but that’s not really much about how the overall idea for the show came about, is it?

“No, I suppose n-”

IS IT?!

“No.  It’s not.  I’m sorry I-”

You’re damn right you’re sorry.  Your hair’s getting a bit long for my tastes, too.  Get that mop cut and go start up the bath, woman!  I’m all sludgy from getting angry.  You know how this weird stuff seeps from my pores when I get angry.  I hope you’re happy with yourself now.

The story begins with…hey…why are you looking at me?  You know I don’t like it when you look at me.  Peripheral vision only, remember?  Right, you forgot.  I’ll give you something to try to forget, dammit.  By god I’ll give you something and you just try to forget it!  Woman, don’t think that because you’re the only one of my golems to survive, you can just fuck up however you please and think that I will not tear you apart and scatter all the pieces of the women I built you with!  I will do it!  I’ll do it!

D’ohhh, I can’t stay mad at you when your head sags to the left like it’s doing right now because I’m terrible with stitching.  Eeheeheeheeee!

So I knew I was into the idea of having a cartoon show on the teevee, was one of those dreams of mine and to have the opportunity to scratch that off my list of things to do before I blow myself up in a final showdown with mortality was just something I couldn’t pass up.  From the day, early in my childhood, when my father decided that entering me in cage fighting matches was not going to be a path for early retirement for him, the day I was given the freedom to choose my own career path as well as which diapers I would have to wear for the rest of my life (my last opponent kicked a hole in my bowels), I knew that I was going to ride dinosaurs.  When that didn’t pan, I knew that I would be a storyteller, and that what attracted me most was the manipulation of the audience, the control over the minds of the hungry reader, the eager viewer, the screaming listener.  I took up this career path with an enthusiasm unmatched by even the most vicious blow any of my cage-match enemies had ever delivered.

“Guess what, daddy?!” I said to my father one day, eager to show off my developing skills as a weaver of dreams.

“What’s that, my son?”

“I don’t need the diapers anymore!  I’m like a normal kid now.”

“Really?  That’s great news!  Wonderful!  I was so ashamed to tell people that my son – wait, what’s that smell?”

“I made it up, daddy.  I just soiled myself and didn’t know it was happening because I am like a jug of apple juice with a hole punched through it.”

“A jug of apple juice filled with…”

“Don’t cry, daddy.”

I'm sorry, daddy.

By the time NICKELODEON came around in their big green limousine  with the flames of slime painted on the sides, I had already regaled up to three people with my work in comics bookery, and, though I had much to learn, my eagerness to take on new media, new avenues of delivering narrative into mankind told me that I had to reach a bigger audience, fill them with MY MIND.  Man, was that a stupid thing to do.  Most people don’t even read books, and I was about to pull in a shit-ton of those loonies!  You ever try to talk to people who spell words wrong while SPEAKING?  What the hell was I thinking?

Wait, I remember now, I was doing it because I just love making things up!  Always have and I always will.  It’s why I’m terrible in relationships: because what I consider to be ingenious “micro-fiction”, romantic interests see more as horrific, life-shattering lies and it’s kept me out of many a happy time, really.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this in the previous posts, but what NICK wanted was more of a SQUEE! nature, and perhaps even some modified version of SQUEE! itself.  At the time, I remembered Evan Dorkin mentioning that some similar situation had popped up with a kids’ network approaching him and hoping to get a Milk and Cheese animated idea.  Milk and Cheese solve everything thing, sometimes things that aren’t even problems, by punching the bloody shit out of them, and though SQUEE! is about as much of a pacifist as you can get, what goes on around the kid is anything but friendly for children’s television.

People read about how I don’t hold the rights to ZIM or anything to do with it, how I don’t really have a big hand in the merchandising and they are shocked and sometimes angered, but like I said before, it was clearly expected on my part.  One of the biggest reasons I wasn’t interested in adapting anything from my comics was that I saw ZIM as my “screw me” project, my entry into animated television, and the thing that I would have to take the bullet for if I wanted to show people what I could do to an audience of unsuspecting wee ones.

This meant I still needed the idea to go charging into the fray with, and that’s why I came up with the a show about a magical beaver that solves mysteries and warms hearts while slowly gaining the trust of Clue-Town.

I did a few sketches, got the general idea down in writing, and felt confident enough to leave it at that until going in to meet with the NICK people.  The night before the meeting, I had trouble sleeping, and so I walked out onto my porch to drink some sleepy tea.  ’Sleepy T’ is my rapper name, by the way.  That’s when they came.

What I thought was just another plane crashing on my law turned out to be a smoothly descending vessel about the size of a spaceship, and when it touched earth it was without so much as a whisper.  I spat out more tea than I had actually drunk, and while my mind grappled with that, the vessel split  down the middle like a giant silver egg, pouring out two blobs of animated, gelatinous matter.

The blobs approached me and before I could utter a word, the blob to my right, spoke.

“How ’bout a show about aliens.” it said.

“What?” was all I could get out before gagging on my tea again.  It had gone down the wrong way and I was feeling stupid because the aliens probably thought I was handling the shock of aliens poorly when really I just drink weird sometimes.

The other blob spoke next.  ”He could be all crazy, but sorta cute, but not too cute-”

“No, no.  Not too cute, no.  That’s not really your style, anyhow.” interjected the other.

“Yuh.  Not too cute, but it’s a kids’ show, so you know, you gotta make it acceptable for the audience.”

I was getting over the choking, but was still finding it hard to speak.  ”Mhmm…”

“He’s gonna need a sidekick.” said the first blob, scratching a place on itself that I assumed was its belly.

“Well, duh.  Gotta have a sidekick.  Maybe a cat.  Cats are always good.”

“But I hate cat-PEOPLE.  UUUGH!” the first yelled, its hand joining the other as the blob raised them to the sky in anger.

“Gotta agree.  They give me the willies.” I finally said, regaining some composure and wanting to be in on the process.

The first went on.  ”You’ll end up with a bunch of creepy girls stunted by anime and huffing catfood.”

I hi-fived that blob.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said to the second blob, seeing that he wasn’t so happy about all of this, “I think cats are nice, but come on…cat people.”

“No, no, you’re right,” it said, “but the show can’t NOT have a morbidly obese homeless man in a pig-suit, okay?”

The first blob turned to me at that point and grabbed me by my coat, shaking me as it implored “My fellow traveler is right, this is a thing that simply must be!”

I agreed (how could I not?), and added that “the man should be fatter outside of the suit than he was inside.

“Oh, my god, that’s brilliant!” said the second blob.  ”Is the show out yet?!”

“Nope.  We’re talking about what the show should be just right now.”

That blob nodded slowly, understanding.

We went on and on like that for hours and hours until the sun rose and the blobs exploded from the sunlight.  Their kind could only visit the earth in shadow as direct contact was lethal to them.  Despite that, they were still a thousand times better than those idiot invaders from SIGNS.

And so I went in, not with a pitch about a magical dog, but with the show you now know as INVADER ZIM.

You’re welcome.

Well, that’s that.  Until tomorrow when we reach the end of these ZIM facts, have yourself a merry something or other.

—-

In case you’re curious, I finally got my hands on the video interview of Rikki Simons that I’ve been promising the past couple of entries.  It’s not quite what I was expecting, not quite the big finale that I was hoping for, but I’ll try to make up for it with a few little bits of information that leave you with a better impression than yet another boring behind the scenes glimpse into the show.

WAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!

–ZIM FACTS. Here’s why—