It’s just you and me now, man.  Everyone else has pretty much given up hope that there’ll be anything worth learning from these entries and they’ve gone back to their 40 character snippets of info fired from the Twitter cannons into their brains.  Not you, though.  You love the torture of reading beyond a single paragraph.  You’re special.  You’re also so terribly brain damaged that you think you’re a roll of duct tape.  You’re my only friend now.

I’ll be honest with you, Sticky, taking on this ZIM FACT a day thing was a bit of a major undertaking for someone with as many video games and bars of fine candy to eat as I have.  Right now I should be playing God of War 3, trying not to cringe at the horrible dialogue and voice acting while stabbing monsters and nearly choking on the pool of chocolate attracting bugs in my open mouth.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good exercise, keeping my writing muscles active and all, all while my muscles atrophy more and more, making this Rascal more and more necessary.  What’s making it so difficult just past the halfway mark is how exhausting it is to be so transparent in what I’m saying, so honest, dig?  Not only that, it’s downright boring to just constantly be talking about real life, letting people in on how things really went down on the show, or just writing about dry, factual bits of trivia.

So today I want to try something a little different.  Today’s entry is going to allow me to relax a bit and maybe even have some fun.  If you could just open your minds up a bit and think of this entry more as entertainment rather than the usual textbook injection of truths, then maybe we’ll both get a little something out of it, yeah?  YEAHHH!!

Don’t be alarmed if what you read in today’s post sounds crazy and implausible.  Like I said, unlike the other entries, this one’s not exactly going to be the sort of thing you should swear by when telling your friends or judges what’s what about the ol’ INVADER ZIM show.  Hee hee!

Let’s begin the zany hijinks!

So, I get this question several times a day, I think.  Several times a day for as many years as ZIM was pulled out of production.  The question usually goes something along these lines wondering why I just don’t take ZIM elsewhere (usually Cartoon Network), and restart it the way Futurama or Family Guy were resurrected from the cancellation grave.  It’s  a surreal thing to be asked even after so many years, and especially after so many, as it just reminds me of how people just keep finding the show and not realizing just how long ago we stopped making it.

There’s this very special sandwich shop around here, one of those higher quality, upper scale places that I started rewarding myself with a few years back.  I’m pretty modest in the way I live my life, not feeling the need to show off what I’ve got, rub my success in the faces of others, but if something just makes you happy I say do it, and sometimes those things happen to be of the fancier variety.

Anyhow, this sandwich shop, or “SUBWAY” as the cultured locals refer to it, used to make a sandwich that I was crazy for.  I’d stand in the huge lines every single day just to get that same sandwich over and over again.  This “Tuscan Chicken” sandwich was pretty much the highlight of my days back then.  President Obama was in office and something else.  There came a time, however, when they simply removed that sandwich from their menu.  I was devastated.

Now, I didn’t keep asking the lady behind the counter why they removed the sandwich, or suggest ways of bringing that sandwich back from sandwich hell (there IS such a place) but I understand the sentiment, and the longing.  This wasn’t even a year ago when they stopped carrying that item, but I’m already moved on and mostly recovered again, now just a shell of my former self instead of a soulless husk.

That someone’s life has been irreparably damaged for the lack of a thing I created so many years ago when the most reminiscing I have done about that thing has been in just the past few weeks means a lot, really.  It is the ultimate compliment to know that people have stopped feeding themselves or getting up to use the restroom for the fact that some integral part of their being has been ripped from them, and I’m not numb to the flattery.

I can’t say enough just how cool it is that people give a crap about that goofy lil’ show.  Hell, even the horrific lies and bizarre rumor-mongering is a form of flattery in the way that it’s still a thing that even awful people spend their awful lives discussing.  Much like the old Egyptian Pharaohs and their belief that their immortality is guaranteed so long as they’re names were spoken and carved in stone, so I shall live forever to haunt your dweeeeams.

Whoa…that got a bit odd, but you get the idea.

So, back to the question posed:  Why DON’T I take the show to Cartoon Network or some such place where the show could breathe on a bit.

“FACT” (eeeheeheehee!):

I don’t hold any rights to INVADER ZIM or the characters or anything!  I’ve been saying that for ages now, but I imagine the question will always get asked as the show seems to have taken on a sort of relentless undeath, sinking its teeth, and thus infection, into new victims.

I mentioned a few hundred posts ago about how I’ve no hand in the marketing and merchandising stuff.  In classic batshit loony-fan way, some peepsies took my less-than enthused opinion of what gets put on store shelves as a disdain for the people who actually buy the stuff.  Know the enemy by their absolute inability to marry logic with a logical response!  I made a show that I had a lot of fun making, and a lot of hell making, but it wasn’t a shocking hell in any way.  It’s television.  Making anything is going to be a pain in the ass, but you stick with it, if you want to, because it’s your baby, no matter how ugly and deformed. That people would want to own some little piece of that, no matter how ugly and deformed, is awesome.  It means something worked, some little bit of the neato slipped through the processes that usually iron out anything memorable you were trying to put in.

That merchandise thing was simply a part of the contract, and the rights to the show and what is done with it are also part of the contract, a fairly basic contract that puts everything about ZIM in the hands of a corporation.  Is this evil or horrible?  Not really.  It’s just the way that stuff works.  Hopefully it doesn’t always work that way, but so long as there are monsters with money wiling to take chances on smaller monsters, those big monsters are going to want to retain as much of the material as possible, even if all they plan on doing with it is aiding in the pretty colors resulting from all those GIR sandals going up in flames when somebody sets the mall on fire.

Essentially, what this means is that some people could maybe get their dreams made real and see INVADER ZIM return again, but the network can do it on its own, with or without me.  When people find that out, the reactions range from appalled gasps, or outright massive coronary failure (always hilarious), and I’m not sure if they’re aware of doing it or just trying to be nice, but sympathetic rage is always part of it.  To me, it’s not upsetting or any such thing as it’s simply the deal as it was set up long before the show ever aired.

There were places I wanted to take the show, there were definitely fun things to be done, but if it wasn’t working out it wasn’t working out, and I just don’t spend my time thinking about it.  Like I said, I’ve done more talking about the show in the past few weeks because of these posts than I have in the entirety of the hundred years since I cleaned out my office at NICK, wiped down the fingerprints, and vacated.

But that’s not an important part of why anyone likes the show, and those details are rarely ever a factor in its consumption by the general audience.  There are people NOW being introduced to the show who will wonder why the hell the episodes suddenly stop at a Christmas installment who will write to ask me why I don’t make more.  WHY DON’T I JUST MAKE MORE!?

There will always be those people who, when I say ANYTHING, often on my Twitter page, will think I am referencing a ZIM episode, or something from my comics, but it’s usually ZIM they think I am talking about.  It’s funny (NOT FUNNY AT ALL), because I don’t ever really reference my own stuff.  If I talk about a pig or mention Mexican food or anything with some possible connection (often no connection at all), ZIM is usually as far from my head as a thing gets, but the show has so infiltrated the minds of the innocent that there’s really no room for me to be anything other than some walking ZIM machine!

“Oh, god, I think I have food poisoning.  Somebody please drive me to the hospital…”

“HAH!  I love that episode!”

“What?  Please…call me an ambulance…it’s killing me….”

“You eat too many pizza!”

“Pizza?  No…I didn’t have any pizz- oh GOD please, why aren’t you calling for help?”

“You’re just like GIR!  HAH!  TacooOOOOOS!”

“I had Cuban…What…what the hell is wrong with you?”

“What episode is that?  Wait…wait don’t tell me!”

“AUUUUGH!  HELP ME, SPACE JESUS!”

Bizarre, but again, also a fun reminder of just what you can do to people’s heads, and what can be accomplished when you’ve removed their ability to think of anything but what you’ve plugged into them!  I only wish I had programmed them to rob banks for me or something instead of just sit around with blank stares while soiling themselves.

Would it be bizarre for me to see my own creations brought back from the dead by some corporate monkey’s paw?  Sure.  Of course it would be!  It was weird enough when Rikki Simons told me he was going in to read some GIR lines for some terrible video game where GIR cavorts with a bunch of NICK characters.  On a few occasions I’ve seen ZIM or GIR zombies on commercials for something or other, and the way they speak, the dialogue coming out of their mouths is so off sounding, but why wouldn’t it be?  It’s like someone shooting your babies and then crawling inside of them to awkwardly puppeteer them.

Is there bad blood between any of the major parties involved (or not involved!)?  Why would there be?  The thing an audience tends to do so much is personalize things that go on behind the scenes of a show they dig.  Does Nickelodeon have an effigy of me that they burn every day? Maybe…I mean…that’d be sort of awesome, but I’m gonna assume that it’s highly unlikely.  They’ve long gone on to other shows, some hugely successful and monstrously forgettable, and some decent stuff that is actually doing well because it deserves it.  Are they a creature with a heart?  Sweet christ no, they’re a business operation.  Do I have a dartboard with the faces of all the NICK execs on it, riddled with holes that bleed from blood-packets packed into a hollow inside the thing?  No, although that’s sort of a sweet idea for a dartboard.  Those executives are either long dead, or have moved on to the next level of executive-hood (Executrons), and there are way more important things to focus my ire on, like the saggy pants thing.

So there ya go.  Maybe it was a selfish thing for me to choose to write about, to spare me maybe a few people sending me that question about why I don’t take the show elsewhere.

What’s amazing is that people who worked for the network around the time ZIM was going on and getting axed, they now work elsewhere and now and then they call me in to talk ideas and such.  For someone to actually call me in to talk ideas AFTER ZIM (A.Z.), knowing the nature of the show and so on, is pretty fucking awesome, and even though those things don’t usually work out for various reasons (TOO AWESOME usually), it’s just cool to know that the people who have an affection for the show come from all sorts of places, and sometimes even places that might have some say in some other thing I do that might just ruin a few more lives!

The show has obviously changed lives, healed wounds while tearing souls apart, made the world a better place in patches while making entire territories unlivable.

And isn’t that what it’s really all about, why we, and especially I, do anything?

Leave no life untouched, even if you have to touch them in a way that makes them cry.

S’what I always say.

So remember, I don’t take ZIM elsewhere because it’s not legally mine to take anywhere. Simple as that. Crying about it will only power my tear-powered jet a bit longer, so don’t be too sad, unless you want to see me do a barrel roll.

–ZIM FACTS. Here’s why—