Dark, Zany, Goofy; If you do not love this show you are not a geek at heart
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It's interesting to look back and try to comprehend how much of an impact Invader Zim has had on my life. As a scifi geek, the show plays right into my hands. And in the same fashion that it garnered such an impassioned cult following, so too did it snare me with its dark zany comedy and perfectly executed style. Zim is a series created by a demented man, Johnen Vasquez, an artist with a habit for the dark and morbidly hilarious. With the sharp contours of his art clearly reflecting a strong eastern influence, Vasquez creates these startling, unique characters that leap off the screen as ambitiously as the Simpsons did in their infancy. Even animated, you see the same jagged, twitchy berserker energy in the characters onscreen as you do in his comics. Zim is a pint-sized alien bent on conquering Earth, a task which was inadvertently given him by his leaders in an attempt to get him out of sight and out of mind. At his side is his trusty robot companion Gir, a surprisingly functional droid with the heart and common sense of a child. Out to stop him is the ever-vigilant Dib, a large-headed boy with a fascination for the paranormal. Begrudgingly backing him on most outings is his sister Gaz, a video-game addict and downright scary little girl. This show was aired on a children's network but was clearly never intended for the 12-and-under crowd. There is a goofy, oddball humor underlying the entirety of the show, but its comedic darkness makes it much more appropriate for the older audiences. Some episodes have moments that are downright horror-worthy, "Bestest Friend" and "Dark Harvest" in particular. But the strongest parts of the show, after the style, have got to be the voices and the music. Richard Horvitz was born to be Zim. He has a unique voice, one that was put to perfect use capturing Zim's paranoid, egotistical and panicky nature. Rikki Simons' voice has a lot of electronic processing on it to become Gir, but it works so well. The high digital voice of the hyper little robot helps develop his childish personality, which only enhances the irony of how incidentally dangerous he can and frequently does become. The music in the show fits it as smoothly as the voices. Kevin Manthei's score captures the idyllic and irregular settings, his themes showing everything from commercial-jingle catchiness to the dark, disquieting and jarring movements of the more intense scenes. I can honestly say I have never heard music as unique what Manthei created for this show.
I would have to argue that the show may never have had the popularity it currently holds were it still active and airing new episodes. It's an unfortunate circumstance, but shows of this caliber often only earn their due respect after they've seen the axe. We may say "we wish it was still going, bring it back" but those of us who can happily say Zim has changed our lives know that it can't come back. Bringing it back would only spoil what we love about those three seasons, and you need only look at Family Guy to see exactly what I mean. If you are a geek, scifi or cartoon, if you like dark humor, if you like goofy, giddy humor and absurdist concepts, you have to watch Zim. If you are all of these combined and have not seen Zim yet, you owe it to yourself to buy this show as soon as humanly possible.