I am not a member of the The Escapist Forums. On a scale of one to retarded they fall somewhere between Paris Hilton and Donald Trump (wheras Destructoid is merely between Steve Jobs and Peter Molyneux), which is a bit lower than most gamer forums dip. That said, when they ran a poll of the best post-2000 kids' cartoons, I was disturbed when Invader Zim overwhelmingly topped it.

What's worse is that this is not a phenomenon unique to the Escapist. Oh, no, go onto DeviantArt, Myspace, and any given site that markets to the subcultures of generation Y, and you will find an overwhelming amount of support for that brave little cartoon, canceled after only two seasons. "They just didn't understand Invader Zim," complains the pudgy goth girl with the superfluous nose piercing, "it was too edgy for kids so they canceled it." Meanwhile, the gamer guy in the headphones that I take the bus with notes that, "Jhonen Vasquez was a really subversive artist, and the corporation"-he emphasizes 'corporation' to establish how much he hates Nickelodeon-"put him down for expressing himself." The "Edgy" crowd leans toward referencing the "Dark Harvest" episode, wherein Zim harvests organs from the children in his class, whereas the "art and expression" crowd tends to draw comparisons between Zim and Vasquez's indie comics work, most notably Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.



Let me get this out of the way, first. I love Invader Zim. I own all of the DvDs. I've got some Zim merchandise hanging around somewhere. I can give you quotes from basically all of the episodes. However, somewhere along the line my generation got it into their heads that Invader Zim was the end-all, be-all of cartoons, and set Jhonen Vasquez up to be some kind of martyr figure, and this is both ignorant and a complete and total fallacy. This is not up for discussion.

And as someone who has spent his entire life studying animation, I take this very, very personally.

First and foremost, it was canceled because it was needlessly expensive and time-consuming. Was this the corporation's (hiss) fault? Hardly. Jhonen Vasquez, as an artist mostly experienced in the two-dimensional, comic image, was not properly trained in rendering his characters in a 3-D environment. Now, though Invader Zim is a two-dimensional cartoon in the strictest sense, every cartoon needs to be able to properly render its character in three dimensions to facilitate smooth actions. Very basic smooth actions. Like, you know, running, or turning around. Vasquez didn't have the proper experience in this sort of thing, so a lot of the character animation process was basically him dictating back and forth between designers and animators, unable to do enough of the work himself. This, in turn, made the series completely unnecessarily difficult to produce, because they couldn't go directly from the concept art to the show; they had to turn Vasquez's concept art into workable, usable art, and THEN work that into the show. Basically, Nick either had to cut out the creator or sacrifice the show, and they chose the latter. Even now the animations look jerky and crude in comparison to a lot of the other works of the time.



Secondly, it was canceled because if you take an indie artist and put him in a mainstream studio and force him to do mainstream things, he becomes a combative asshole. I have it from a good source (in this case, a former head animator from the show, who also taught me quite a lot more of what I know about the industry) that Vasquez regularly butted heads with his studio "superiors" because they were exercising too much control over what was, in essence, his brainchild. Now, I know that this is moving Vasquez closer to martyr territory again, but that's just the problem. In the animation industry-in TV in general-you have to deal with the studio keeping your show appealing to all. That involves editing it. That involves changing it. If you go into a studio setting, you have to be cooperative and accept the changes. That didn't happen with Invader Zim. Instead, Vasquez told off the people who were filling his paycheck, which is moronic. You may idolize the guy for being "anti-authority," but if you had to hire some too-cool for school douchebag to work under your management, you'd probably fire him after the umpteenth, "no, you may be my boss but I'm not doing things your way," too.

So please, people. Invader Zim was not the best cartoon ever. It was a decent cartoon with a troubled man heading it, that most of you have romanticized in retrospect because of its comparatively dark humor and quick cancellation. If you're looking for excellence in cartoons, here's what I'd much sooner turn you on to:



Samurai Jack, a stunning and utterly beautiful experiment in animation and its capacity to amaze, ran for four full seasons and an Emmy, and yet I never hear anyone mentioning it these days. This is a shame, because it was groundbreaking exactly where a show like Invader Zim was not.



Spongebob Squarepants, which is decidedly mainstream (hiss!) and still running today, is popular among children and adults for a very good reason. It's silly, it's entertaining, and it's honestly endearing. I would even go so far as to say that it's better than most of the cartoons that I grew up with in the 90s, such as Johnny Bravo or The Powerpuff Girls.



If you're going to complain about a cartoon canceled after two seasons, complain about Megas XLR, the stellar parody of the giant-robo genre. Though I wouldn't say that it has the lasting appeal of Spongebob or the artistic merit of Jack, it took everything we anime fans held dear and thrashed it a new one to a punk rock soundtrack. It made me grow hair on my chest with its fight scenes, and the subtle, referential humor (and big, bombastic humor) always kept me laughing.

So please, people. Stop humming the "doom song" as you browse Hot Topic. In Biblical terms, all you're doing is worshipping a golden calf.