Jhonen Vasquez
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Vasquez in 1998 |
|
| Pseudonym(s): | Mr. Scolex, Chancre Scolex |
|---|---|
| Born: | September 1, 1974 San Jose, California |
| Occupation(s): | Cartoonist, comic book artist |
| Nationality: | United States |
| Writing period: | 1993 to present |
| Genre(s): | Comic books, animation, music video |
| Literary movement: | Alternative comics |
| Debut work(s): | Johnny the Homicidal Maniac |
| Influences: | David Cronenberg, Kurt Vonnegut, Franz Kafka, H. R. Giger, H. P. Lovecraft |
| Website: | QuestionSleep.com |
| Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Invader Zim | |
Jhonen Vasquez (born September 1, 1974), also known by his pseudonyms Mr. Scolex and Chancre Scolex, is a cartoonist living in San Jose, California. He is the creator of a number of alternative comics published by Slave Labor Graphics including Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Squee!, as well as the creator of the animated television series Invader Zim. Many of his works have developed cult followings.[citation needed]
Contents |
[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Jhonen Vasquez was born 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 newspaper published a number of his strips entitled Johnny the Little Homicidal Maniac. The logos of the bands Nine Inch Nails and Public Image Ltd. appear in the backgrounds of these primitive Johnny strips.
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".[1]
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.
[edit] Alternative comics
Carpe Noctem magazine published early one-page strips featuring Johnny in the early 1990s. Slave Labor Graphics began publishing a series of Johnny comics in 1995, 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 [1] and a trade paperback book, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut. The cover has the logo "Z?", meaning "question sleep", which apears frequently throughout Vasquez's work and relates to his character's insomnia. 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.
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
Vasquez's next project was The Bad Art Collection, a 16-page one-shot of intentionally terrible drawings. Jhonen said that he did the book's art while he was in high school to discourage classmates from constantly asking him to draw for them.
Vasquez 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. Dirge and Simmons have remained friends with Vasquez.
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 Jhonen's "real life" (with slight exaggerations as to the size of the moon and Señor Diablo's height) and Wobbly Headed Bob.
Vasquez's next project was I Feel Sick. It was originally intended to be a single issue, but was later broken in half due to it being longer than Jhonen anticipated. It features colors 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 Vasquez's typical 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. Jhonen said that he would procrastinate drawing the cartoon until only hours before the deadline and then rush through and did 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 is of a much higher quality than the first two.
Vasquez collaborated with artist 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."
[edit] 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. Episodes in the second season aired only internationally.
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, Rikki Simons, Melissa Fahn, Wally Wingert, Andy Berman, and Kevin Manthei. The company released Vol. 2 on Aug. 31, 2004, Vol. 3 on Oct. 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 the original uncut version of the Christmas special.
Invader Zim has also run on the cable channels Nicktoons Network and MTV2 (in the "'Sic'Emation" block of the latter) and is available on iTunes.
Vasquez also directed the music video for "Shut Me Up" by the band Mindless Self Indulgence.
[edit] Style
Many of the characters in Vasquez's cartoons are highly geometric and thin to the point of almost being stick figures. Vasquez's writing often conveys misanthropic and pessimistic themes, though these darker elements are often used for the purposes of parody and satire. 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, chihuahuas, monkeys, tacos, "piggies", morbid obesity, "dookie", and fursuits. Vasquez also frequently sneaks cameo appearances of characters such as Happy Noodle Boy and Johnny The Homicidal Maniac into unrelated works.
David Cronenberg and Kurt Vonnegut have influenced his work. [2] Franz Kafka, H. R. Giger, and H. P. Lovecraft are other influences.
[edit] Goth subculture
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 Vasquez "a goth king", saying he does not believe his work should be stereotyped as "goth comics", and that while his intention when creating them was not to create goth comics, that is how the retailers eventually chose to categorize them.
[edit] Awards and nominations
- JTHM was considered for an Eisner Award at one point, but was not nominated because one of the judges found Vasquez's lettering too hard to read.[citation needed]
- Squee! was nominated for several Eisner Awards.
- I Feel Sick won an International Horror Guild Award in 2000 for Best Illustrated Narrative.
- Invader ZIM won the award for Best Title Sequence at the 2001 World Animation Celebration awards.
[edit] Selected bibliography
- Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
- Squee
- The Bad Art Collection
- Filler Bunny
- Everything Can Be Beaten
- I Feel Sick
- Invader Zim
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Johnny The Homicidal Maniac: Directors Cut trade paperback (SLG Publishing, 1997) ISBN 0943151163
