If one of your primary criteria when judging an artist is originality, you gotta love Johnen Vasquez. He began with cult comics for Slave Labor Graphics but his work is now extremely popular and well known, his unique style of black humor and macabre irony has established him as one of the most important young creators in the field.
Johny the Homicidal Maniac, his first and maybe most famous comic, started as a series of short strips for a Goth magazine, Carpe Noctem, until it was collected in seven issues and published by SLG, followed by the Director’s Cut trade paperback. The story was mostly about Nny, a serial killer with unusual thinking processes killing anyone he believes unworthy of living and hating the rest, haunted by Nailbunny (his consciousness, sort of) and two Styrofoam Pillsbury doughboys representing his mania and depression. The book also contained other short stories and characters like Anne Gwish (a parody for the Goth culture), Happy Noodle Boy and of course Squee, the kid living next door to Nny frightened of virtually anything (and with good reasons that is) who got his own spin off series after JTHM. His bibliography also includes The Bad Art Collection, Filer Bunny, Everything Can Be Beaten, I Feel Sick and others.
His début in television after Squee’s success was instant, Nickelodeon offered him the opportunity to create an animated series, and Invader Zim was born. Invader Zim was a short, cute looking alien fighting to prove to his race that he can be a fearsome invader. Totally evil, extremely stupid and with no self-knowledge at all Zim and his retarded robot consistently tried to take over, or at least destroy, Earth. The series was canceled after a year but it was released again in several DVD volumes and still has a pretty big fan group.
So at this point, waiting for Johnen Vasquez’s next creation there’s not much to be done other than reading again and again the rest of his work, enjoying his sick humor and agreeing with most of his thoughts. Enjoy!
