A SDCC Interview with Aaron Alexovich, Megan Lawton, Eric Trueheart and Jhonen Vasquez 

Friday, August 3, 2018 • Morning Edition • "Yellow journalism at its finest."

Zim Doesn\'t Have Nipples: A SDCC Interview With Aaron Alexovich, Megan Lawton, Eric Trueheart, And Jhonen Vasquez

Written by Tim Midura on Tuesday, July 31 2018 and posted in News with Benefits

On bringing Invader Zim to comics, a lack of Nickelodeon oversight, and a hidden anti-Megan agenda.

Jhonen Vasquez is a comic book writer, cartoonist, and music video director. He\'s the creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, its spin-off comics Squee! and I Feel Sick, and Invader Zim. 

Aaron Alexovich is a comic artist and character designer. His work includes Avatar: The Last Airbender, Serenity Rose, and Invader Zim

Megan Lawton is a storyboard artist and comic artist. Her work includes The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part and Invader Zim.

Eric Trueheart is a comic and TV writer. His work includes Turbo FAST, Yin Yang Yo!, and Invader Zim.

They all work on the Invader Zim comics from Oni Press.

Jhonen: Why not Megan? What do you have against Megan?

Tim: That\'s Q two. You all worked on the original series. Megan didn\'t.

Jhonen: Why would you assume that? Megan might\'ve worked on the original series.

Jhonen: What is this anti-Megan thing you have going on right now.

Jhonen: Megan is our friend and we don\'t like where this is going.

Aaron: Do you know how much money Megan donates to charity every year?

Tim: Was creating the comic like getting the band back together?

Jhonen: It didn\'t have that feeling? It just kind of happened very naturally. We still kept in touch. It was kind of effortless. This stuff has just been backed up in our heads for years and years.

Jhonen: Yeah, there wasn\'t a big effort to make it happen. When it was greenlit, we just kind of got back into the flow of it. Which was nice.

Eric: I did a couple of stories that had been left over from the show and the rest of the stuff I just made up. It was just like doing it again. It wasn\'t like, "Oh my god, I haven\'t seen all you people in so long. And Jhonen, your cybernetic arms are disturbing now."

Eric: "How did you lose your real arms?"

Jhonen: The weirdness came after a few issues. We realized how badly our skills had atrophied.

Aaron: And that we had to keep doing this and it was going to be embarrassing for us.

Jhonen: Seeing the end result and being like, "Oh god. We suck now."

Eric: We want to apologize for the quality. That\'s an upcoming issue actually. Just Zim apologizing for 22 pages. It\'s really going to be from us, but people will know.

Jhonen: I can\'t say enough positive things about Megan.

Tim: Megan, you were a fan of the original series growing up. What was it like hearing that you\'d be working on the comic?

Megan: It was really awesome. When Aaron told me they were interested in asking me to ink the comics, it was just really exciting to hear that it was coming back and I get to work on it. And work at all because at the time I was trying to find work.

Aaron: So if they were making a Fairly Odd Parents comic...

Megan: "Yes, that\'s my favorite cartoon! Thank you for the employment."

Tim: What are the benefits of bringing something like Zim to comics? Is it getting to tell more stories?

Jhonen: More stories with a quicker turnaround. And not waiting around for a year for animation to come back. I think you have a greater sense of what you\'re going to get with a comic. Much more control. There\'s tradeoff. You don\'t get money.

Jhonen: We don\'t get paid. You\'re hurting your hands. That\'s the tradeoff!

Eric: It\'s like a labor of love. But it\'s also like a labor of resentment.

Aaron: It\'s a labor of love without the love.

Eric: Because there\'s not a network spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars every episode, they care a whole lot less.

Eric: That means more freedom. We can do a lot of stuff that Nickelodeon wouldn\'t let us do. There is a Nickelodeon who looks at it and is like," Ehh, that\'s fine." "So that scene where Zim stabs Dib in the eyeballs, is that cool?" They\'re like, "Ehh, that\'s fine. Are they real scissors." "Yeah, they\'re real scissors." "Ehh, that\'s fine." They don\'t care.

Jhonen: I think we\'re probably more critical than Nickelodeon in terms of the comics. I saw a conversation between an artist on a recent issue. And Trueheart...

Jhonen: My only contribution was like, "I agree with Eric."

Tim: Are there any stories you couldn\'t get away with on the show that you can with comics?

Eric: We haven\'t pushed it. We have more flexibility. The "Pants" issue was a story we couldn\'t get through the network the first time because there had been a Jimmy Neutron "Pants" episode. They were like, "You can\'t do two pants stories on the same network. Ever." So that was something we could do. But also the weird Virooz arc I tried to do was something we wouldn\'t have been able to do. Maybe we could have. They didn\'t care. Just let\'s do this as a comic book now. We can do a multi-part thing like they do in comics.

Jhonen: You could do that now. Where everything has to be long-form, continuing storyline stuff. But back then it would\'ve been hard to do a multi-part episode.

Eric: They wouldn\'t know what order they were going to air them in. And they didn\'t like us.

Jhonen: And they didn\'t like us. There\'s that.

Jhonen: Aaron was character designer. Megan was a storyboard artist. I was me.

Eric: I said, "You should cut all this stuff you\'re trying to cut out." He said okay. He handed me an idea and said, "The network wants me to do something where Dib is helping children out of slums in Calcutta."

Eric: He asked how not to do that. So I said, "Cut these three scenes." He said, "Just the Calcutta soup kitchen scenes?" I said, "No, no, no. Leave those in. But cut the rest of these and it\'ll work completely."

Eric: Yeah, no. He didn\'t use it, but I got paid. More than I get paid for a comic.

Jhonen: So, yes. We were all involved in some way. Even though Eric doesn\'t feel like it, he was.

Jhonen: And that comes across in the final product.

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Born in the frozen tundra of Massachusetts, Tim Midura has long possessed a love for comic books and records. After stealing the beard of Zeus and inventing the pizza bagel, a much more heavily tattooed and bearded Tim Midura has finally settled in San Diego. He\'s the world\'s first comics journalist who doesn\'t want to become a comics writer. Find him on twitter, facebook or by email.

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