Jhonen Vasquez
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.(March 2008) |
| Jhonen Vasquez | |
|---|---|
 Jhonen Vasquez |
|
| Born | September 1, 1974 San Jose, California, United States |
| Pen name | Mr. Scolex, Chancre Scolex |
| Occupation | Cartoonist, comic book artist, writer |
| Nationality | Mexican American |
| Writing period | 1993-present |
| Genres | Comic books, animation, music video |
| Literary movement | Alternative comics |
|
Influences
|
|
Jhonen Vasquez (born September 1, 1974), also known by his pseudonyms Mr. Scolex and Chancre Scolex, is a cartoonist living in Los Angeles, California, United States. He is the creator of a number of alternative comics published by Slave Labor Graphics including Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, I Feel Sick, Fillerbunny, Bad Art Collection, and Squee!, as well as the creator and writer of the short-lived cult animated television series Invader Zim. Many of his works have developed cult followings.[citation needed]
Contents |
[edit] Early life
Jhonen Vasquez was born to Mexican parents 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.
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. He 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. Rikki Simons also worked with Jhonen on the coloring seen in his two-issue comic "I Feel Sick".
By September of 1996, Vasquez announced in his introductory text to the sixth issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, he had reached sufficient success in his artistic career to be able to quit his day-job and devote himself full-time to his art.
[edit] Comics
Many of the characters in Vasquez's cartoons are highly geometric and nearly thin to the point of being stick figures. The protagonists in his comics are typically insane characters who live in dysfunctional societies, and whose manias are able to speak through other objects (as with Johnny and the Doughboys, or Devi and Sickness.) His storylines tend to follow the basic black comedy formula.
His comic works often feature an outside narrative in the form of notes and comments left in the corners of his strips. This can be found in the vast majority of Vasquez's comics, such as in issue #5 of JTHM: A large monster is shown bursting through a wall, arms and hands flailing, tentacles sweeping through the air. It is a scene that surely conveys a sense of violence and danger, yet in the corner of the panel, a small box contains the text "Kids - Don't be scared! He don't bite!" These small touches help with emotional connection to Vasquez's work, and are likely one of the factors in his cult following.
Carpe Noctem magazine published early one-page strips featuring Johnny in the early 1990s. In 1995, Slave Labor Graphics began publishing a series of Johnny comics 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 and a trade paperback book, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut. The cover features the logo "Z?", meaning "question sleep," which appears frequently throughout Vasquez's work and relates to his characters' insomnia and his own hypnophobia. 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 as well as, briefly, his own. 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, as well as the notorious "Meanwhile" filler piece in the second issue of JTHM.
Vasquez's next project was The Bad Art Collection, a 16-page one-shot comic. Vasquez stated that he did the book's art while he was in high school to discourage classmates from asking him to draw for them.
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 Vasquez's "real life" and Wobbly Headed Bob.
Vasquez's next project was I Feel Sick, colored 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 an 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. Vasquez said at the 2007 New York ComicCon that the original Fillerbunny comics would be done in a single night and he would rush through and do 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 he feels it is of much higher quality than the first two.
At Comic-Con 2005, Vasquez mentioned that his next comic was a love story. Since this, however, he attended an event in early 2007 and stated he was not working on his 'own' comics - he was collaborating on two comics in the style of Everything Can Be Beaten, acting only as author. The first, titled Jellyfist was intended for release on July 25, 2007. However, the initial print run of Jellyfist was incredibly poor, and so it was re-released in October 2007. It is unknown what has happened with the love story comic since 2005.
[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, and many episodes unfinished. Episodes in the second season aired first internationally and later aired on Nicktoons Network in 2006. The show was cancelled (despite its good ratings [2] ) due to its dark tone, and the violence in the show. Although in the dvd commentary Jhonen had said it was because he had quit the show. 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 as the original uncut version of the Christmas special.
Invader Zim has also run on the cable channels Nicktoons Network, YTV (a Canadian youth network) and MTV2 (in the "'Sic'Emation" block of the latter) and is available on iTunes in the States.
Vasquez also directed the music video for "Shut Me Up" by the band Mindless Self Indulgence[3] which centers around a store clerk having a "meltdown." However, no members of the band are actually in the video.
[edit] Other works
Vasquez collaborated with 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."
At the New York Comic Con and more recently on his LiveJournal, he has stated that he is currently working on a movie. [4] It is still in the early scripting stages at the moment but if it moves past that he has stated that he will be directing it.
Vasquez did the entire artwork for the deluxe edition of the new Mindless Self Indulgence album If as well as the digital single, Mastermind
He has also indicated that he that he shows his artwork in galleries from time to time. [5]
[edit] Style
Vasquez's writing often conveys misanthropic and pessimistic themes, though these darker elements are often used for the purposes of parody, satire, and scenes meant to shock the viewer. 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", cheese, morbid obesity, and "dookie". 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. Franz Kafka, H. R. Giger, and H. P. Lovecraft are other influences. When asked what his influences are during the New York Comic Con, he responded by saying that he is a fan of David Lynch.
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 him "a goth king," saying disdainfully: "King, yeah, but not goth. I mean, that's arrogant."
[edit] Awards and nominations
- Squee! was nominated for 1998 Eisner Awards for Best New Series and Best Humor Publication.[6]
- I Feel Sick won an International Horror Guild Award in 2000 for Best Illustrated Narrative.[citation needed]
- Invader Zim won an Emmy, an Annie, and the award for Best Title Sequence at the 2001 World Animation Celebration awards. It also garnered seven other nominations.[7]
- Vasquez and his work were honored in the National Design Triennial: Inside Design Now, a 2003 exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.[citation needed]
[edit] Selected bibliography
- Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
- Squee!
- The Bad Art Collection
- Fillerbunny
- Everything Can Be Beaten
- I Feel Sick
- Jellyfist
[edit] Filmography
| Title | Position | Airdates |
|---|---|---|
| Invader Zim | Creator, Head Writer, Original Character Designer, Voice Actor | March 30, 2001-December 10, 2002 June 10, 2006-August 19, 2006 |
| Mindless Self Indulgence's "Shut Me Up" music video | Director | ??? |
[edit] References
- ^ Johnny The Homicidal Maniac: Directors Cut trade paperback (SLG Publishing, 1997) ISBN 0943151163
- ^ http://www.tv.com/invader-zim/show/3270/summary.html?q=invader%20zim&tag=search_results;title;1
- ^ QuickTime video clip, "Shut Me Up"
- ^ chancrescolex: Chumming the waters...with chum
- ^ Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Issue #6
- ^ 1998 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Nominees
- ^ "Invader ZIM" (2001) Awards
[edit] External links
- Jhonen Vasquez at the Internet Movie Database
- Official Vasquez website
- Jhonen's LiveJournal
- Jhonen's Twitter page
- An Interview on SuicideGirls.com
[edit] External links
- Revolution Science Fiction (Oct. 26, 2001): "Death and Morons: The Jhonen Vasquez Story" (online-chat transcript)
- Jhonen Vasquez Spotlight (2007 New York Comic Con speech Podcast. 54:12m) Downloadable mp3
- Interrogation Special with Zoetica Ebb (Aug. 22, 2007)
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vasquez, Jhonen |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mr. Scolex, Chancre Scolex |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Jhonen is a cartoonist and the the creator of a number of comics published by Slave Labor Graphics including: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, I Feel Sick and Fillerbunny, as well as the creator and writer of the short-lived cult animated series Invader Zim. |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 1, 1974 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | San Jose, California, United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
|
|||||||||||
