Evening, geeks.
If you were an edgy teenager like me in the early 2000s, you’ll probably fondly remember INVADER ZIM, created by Jhonen Vasquez. INVADER ZIM had fun, twisted humor that was refreshing in a time of almost “too happy” cartoons, airing against shows like RUGRATS, CATDOG, POWERPUFF GIRLS, and FAIRLY ODD PARENTS.
There were suddenly a lot of scene kids decked out in INVADER ZIM merchandise from Hot Topic who used “tacos” as their go-to word, in a lame attempt to be random and “quirky”. That’s not random, that was just one of Gir’s catch phrases/favorite foods.
INVADER ZIM was a show about an alien named Zim, who was from a society where respect appeared mostly gained by being tall. One of the “tallest” was voiced by KIDS IN THE HALL’s Kevin McDonald. Zim was not respected because of his past failures, so the Red and Purple Mighty Tallests assigned him to invade Earth as a joke. To add insult to injury, they gave him a broken robot named Gir to aid him in his mission. On Earth, he is discovered by a very paranoid (perhaps bipolar) kid named Dib who would not rest until Zim was exposed and stopped.
It was such a shock when Nickelodeon dropped a teaser trailer for a new INVADER ZIM special late last night.
This looks just like the old show, which was sadly cancelled in 2006 due to a number of reasons. Probably the main reason was that it was just too expensive to produce. Fortunately, creator Jhonen Vasquez had a number of comics on the market to take refuge in. Perhaps his most famous comic at the time was JOHNNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC, which was far less tame than INVADER ZIM. While still maintaining that twisted Vasquez humor, it went to some dark places that were strangely thought provoking.
The new special is titled INVADER ZIM: ENTER THE FLORPUS. “ZIM discovers his almighty leaders have no intention of coming to Earth and he loses confidence in his own amazingness for the first time in his amazing life – which happens to be the big break his human nemesis, Dib, has been waiting for!”
No official date of when we’ll see the special just yet, but we got a “coming soon” out of the trailer. It will be aired on Nickelodeon.
~Big Eyes
