Jhonen Vasquez (born
September 1, 1974), also known by his pseudonym Chancre Scolex, is a
cartoonist living in Los Angeles,
California
, United
States
. He is the creator of a number of
alternative comics published by
Slave Labor Graphics including
Johnny the Homicidal
Maniac,
I Feel Sick,
Fillerbunny, Bad Art
Collection,and
Squee!, as well
as the creator and writer of the short-lived
animated television series
Invader Zim.
Early life
Jhonen
Vasquez was born to Mexican
parents and
raised in East San Jose. He
attended
Mount Pleasant
High School, where he often spent much of his class time
drawing in sketchbooks. Taking part in a contest to design a new
look for his school's
mascot, the
Cardinal, he submitted an entry that the
judges rejected. On the back of a preliminary drawing for the
contest, he drew his first sketch of the character who would later
become
Johnny C. His high school's
student newspaper published a number of
his
comic strips titled
Johnny the
Little Homicidal Maniac.
Vasquez also created
Happy Noodle
Boy while attending Mount Pleasant. According to Vasquez, "So
many years ago, [my little romantical friend in high school] was
the unwitting reason Happy Noodle Boy was created. [She] always
asked me for comics. But I couldn't draw as fast as she requested.
Thus, I tried to create the worst abomination of a comic that I
could, so as to make her not want comics anymore. That abomination,
my friends, was Happy Noodle Boy".
After
graduating in 1992, Vasquez went on to become a film student at
De Anza
College
in Cupertino, California
. Though he had little formal artistic
training, he soon dropped out of De Anza to pursue a career as a
professional cartoonist. He met
Roman
Dirge, Rikki Simons, and Tavisha Wolfgarth-Simons at
Alternative Press Expo in 1995. Dirge later became a writer on
Vasquez's
Invader Zim, while
Rikki Simons became the voice of the show's crazed robot GIR, as
well as a member of the show's coloring team. Rikki Simons also
worked with Vasquez on the coloring seen in his two-issue comic "I
Feel Sick".
By September 1996, Vasquez announced in his introductory text to
the sixth issue of
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, he had
reached sufficient success in his artistic career to be able to
quit his day-job and devote himself full-time to his art.
Comics
Many of the characters in Vasquez's cartoons are highly
geometric and thin nearly to the point of being
stick figures. The
protagonists in his comics are typically insane
characters who live in dysfunctional societies, and whose manias
are able to speak through other objects (as with Johnny and the
Doughboys, or Devi and Sickness.) His storylines tend to follow the
basic
black comedy formula.
Smiley faces are often found in his artwork,
trying to evoke an ironic sense of happiness in a world of chaos
and darkness.
His comic works often feature an outside narrative in the form of
notes and comments left in the corners of his strips. This can be
found in the vast majority of Vasquez's comics, such as in issue #5
of JTHM: A large monster is shown bursting through a wall, arms and
hands flailing, tentacles sweeping through the air. It is a scene
that surely conveys a sense of violence and danger, yet in the
corner of the panel, a small box contains the text "Kids - Don't be
scared! He don't bite!" These small touches help with emotional
connection to Vasquez's work, and are likely one of the factors in
his cult following.
Carpe Noctem magazine published early
one-page strips featuring Johnny in the early 1990s. In 1995, Slave
Labor Graphics began publishing a series of Johnny comics after
Vasquez submitted samples of his artwork to them. Vasquez's first
comic,
Johnny the
Homicidal Maniac, ran for seven issues and was collected
as a hardcover and a trade paperback book,
Johnny the Homicidal
Maniac: Director's Cut. The cover features the logo "Z?",
meaning "question sleep," which appears frequently throughout
Vasquez's work and relates to his characters'
insomnia and his own
hypnophobia. The series follows Johnny as he
searches for meaning in his life, a quest that frequently leads to
the violent deaths of those around him as well as, briefly, his
own. A photograph of one of Vasquez's friends, Leah England, serves
as the middle of a portrait collection on the cover for the second
issue of
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. England also gave
Vasquez the inspiration for a filler strip about a child who was
dangerously afraid of losing sight of his mother, as well as the
notorious "Meanwhile" filler piece in the second issue of
JTHM.
Vasquez's next project was
The Bad Art Collection, a
16-page one-shot comic. Vasquez stated that he did the book's art
while he was in high school to discourage classmates from asking
him to draw for them.
In 1997, Vasquez gave
Squee, a supporting
character from
JTHM, his own four-issue series. It
chronicles Squee's encounters with aliens,
Satan's son, and eventually Satan himself. The trade
version (which features a cover image of Squee with the words "Buy
me or I'll die!") contains, in addition to the actual Squee comics,
the Meanwhiles that were left out of the Director's Cut of
JTHM, as well as comics of Vasquez's "real life" and
Wobbly-Headed Bob.
Vasquez's next project was
I Feel
Sick, colored by Rikki Simons.
I Feel Sick
follows a tortured artist named Devi (another character introduced
in
JTHM) as she tries to maintain her sanity in an insane
vision of society, despite conversing with Sickness, one of her own
paintings.
Slave Labor has published three
Fillerbunny mini comics, the third having
been released in March 2005. The mini comic was a spin-off of a
filler comic designed to replace a vacant page usually reserved for
advertising space in the
Squee! comics. Vasquez said at
the 2007 New York ComicCon that the original
Fillerbunny
comics would be done in a single night and he would rush through
and do whatever he could in a small amount of time. The third
issue, however, broke this mold. According to the introduction, it
took over nine months to complete, and he feels it is of much
higher quality than the first two.
At Comic-Con 2005, Vasquez mentioned that his next comic was a love
story. Since this, however, he attended an event in early 2007 and
stated he was not working on his 'own' comics - he was
collaborating on two comics in the style of
Everything Can Be
Beaten, acting only as author. The first, titled
Jellyfist was intended for release on July
25, 2007. However, the initial print run of Jellyfist was
incredibly poor, and so it was re-released in October 2007. It is
unknown what has happened with the love story comic since 2005, but
it is assumed he has shelved it.
Television
After the success of
Squee!, the children's cable network
Nickelodeon approached
Vasquez about producing an animated television series. The series,
Invader Zim, was canceled after
little more than a year; only 27 half-hour episodes were made, most
split into two 11-minute episodes but several full half-hours, and
many episodes unfinished. Episodes in the second season aired first
internationally and later aired on Nicktoons Network in 2006. The
show was cancelled despite its good ratings, ostensibly due to its
dark tone and violence, although in the DVD commentary Vasquez said
he would never go back to Viacom. They had signed a contract
agreeing that they would make a season finale (which was
intentionally the unfinished movie, "Invader Dib"). Vasquez states
in the commentary that September 1 is Zim Day, which is also his
birthday.
AnimeWorks, a branch of
Media Blasters, released the
DVD collection
Invader Zim Vol. 1 on May 11,
2004. It contains the first nine episodes plus audio commentary by
Vasquez and various cast- and crew-members, including
Richard Steven Horvitz,
Rosearik Rikki Simons,
Melissa Fahn,
Wally
Wingert, Andy Berman, and
Kevin
Manthei. The company released Vol. 2 on August 31, 2004, Vol. 3
on October 12, 2004, and a boxed set was released on April 12,
2005. The boxed set contained a "Special Features" DVD with
audio-only episodes never aired on Nickelodeon, as well as the
original uncut version of the
Christmas special.
Although
Invader Zim merchandise has
been an immensely successful franchise at Hot Topic since the show
was on air, Vasquez makes no profit from sales of such. All rights
to
Invader Zim merchandise are owned
solely by the Nickelodeon television network, which does not
consult Vasquez regarding the designs of said products.
Invader Zim has also run on the cable channels
Nicktoons Network,
YTV (a Canadian youth network) and
MTV2 (in the "'Sic'Emation" block of the latter) and is
available on
iTunes in the United States and
in Canada.
Vasquez also directed the
music video
for "
Shut Me Up" by the band
Mindless Self Indulgence which
centers around a store clerk having a "meltdown." In the music
video, you can see Vasquez's character, Happy Noodle Boy, on top of
the aisles.
Other works
Vasquez collaborated with Crab Scrambly to produce the storybook
Everything Can Be
Beaten, published by Slave Labor in 2002. Vasquez,
credited as Chancre Scolex, wrote the story and Crab Scrambly
illustrated it.
Everything Can Be Beaten is about a
strange person who lives in a room in which he can do nothing but
beat kittens. However, an adventure into the outside world changes
his perspective, and he discovers that "everything can be
beaten."
At the
New York Comic Con and
more recently on his
LiveJournal, he has
stated that he is currently working on a movie. It is still in the
early scripting stages at the moment but if it moves past that he
has stated that he will be
directing
it.
Vasquez did the entire artwork for the deluxe edition of the new
Mindless Self Indulgence
album
If as well
as the digital single, "Mastermind".
He has also indicated that he shows his artwork in galleries from
time to time.
He also did an art rendition of
Bioshock
2 called "The Sisters". He was quoted saying the following
about the rendition:
Style
Vasquez's writing often conveys
misanthropic and
pessimistic themes, often used for the purposes of
parody,
satire, and
scenes meant to shock the viewer. Similar styles and mannerisms can
be found in many of his characters as well as
running gags and common themes, including
repeated references to
moose,
meat,
bees,
chihuahuas,
monkeys,
tacos,
pigs,
cheese, morbid
obesity, and
"
dookie". Vasquez also frequently sneaks cameo
appearances of characters such as Happy Noodle Boy and Johnny The
Homicidal Maniac as well as himself, into unrelated works. His
influences include
David
Cronenberg,
Chester Brown,
Kurt Vonnegut,
Franz Kafka,
H.
R. Giger,
Terry Gilliam, and
David Lynch.
Several of Vasquez's works have featured
gothic characters or depictions of the goth
subculture for the purpose of
satire. In an
interview on the show
The Screen
Savers, Vasquez responded to host
Kevin Pereira's comment that fans considered
him "a goth king," saying disdainfully: "King, yeah, but goth... I
mean, that's just arrogant."
Awards and nominations
- Squee! was nominated for 1998 Eisner Awards for Best New Series and Best
Humor Publication.
- I Feel Sick won an International Horror Guild Award in
2000 for Best Illustrated Narrative.
- Invader Zim won an Emmy, an Annie, and the award for
Best Title Sequence at the 2001 World Animation Celebration awards.
It also garnered seven other nominations.
- Vasquez and his work were honored in the National Design
Triennial: Inside Design Now, a 2003 exhibition at the
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
- Awarded at the New Orleans poet society for his work doing
"Dustin's Mom"
Selected bibliography
Filmography
| Title |
Position |
Airdates |
| Invader Zim |
Creator, Head Writer, Original Character Designer, Voice
Actor |
March 30, 2001 – December 10, 2002
June 10, 2006 – August 19, 2006
|
| Mindless Self
Indulgence's "Shut Me Up" music video |
Director |
Not Applicable |
References
- Johnny The Homicidal Maniac: Directors Cut trade
paperback (SLG Publishing, 1997) ISBN 0943151163
- Invader ZIM - TV.com
- QuickTime video clip, "Shut Me Up"
- chancrescolex: Chumming the waters...with
chum
- Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Issue #6
- BioShock 2's
- 1998 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Nominees
- "The Mammoh Book of Best New Horror" by Stephen Jones, Carroll
and Graf, 2002
- "Invader ZIM" (2001) Awards
- [1] "National Design Triennial"
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