After six years, Invader Zim is ending its run. The comics continuation of the Invader Zim animated series from Oni-Lion Forge will end this summer with the aid of original creator Jhonen Vasquez.
The Invader Zim comics at Oni-Lion Forge have been winding down for the past year. The last issues of the monthly comic ceased with issue 50 in March 2020. The series tried to carry on as a quarterly despite the difficulties of the pandemic but it appears it has come to naught. Invader Zim: The Dookie Loop Horror oversized one-shot will see the series of original comics end.
Invader Zim: The Dookie Loop Horror will be released August 4, as writers Vasquez and Eric Trueheart, artist Aaron Alexovich, and colorist Fred C. Stresing craft a crazy, chaotic finale fitting twenty years since the debut of the original animated show on Nickelodeon in 2001.
To accompany the finale, the comic will feature variant covers by Vasquez, Cole Ott, J.R. Goldberg, and Alexovich.
Vasquez had this to say about the finale:
“When I heard that we were reaching the final issue of the Invader ZIM comics, I immediately started thinking of ways to end it as stupidly as possible, which is a pretty big challenge considering the levels of stupid the comic had already gone to. My only hope is that when people read it, their brains won’t work anymore. That’s how I’ll know we did our jobs right.”
Jasmine Amiri, Senior Editor at Oni-Lion Forge describes how they got the original creator on board: “We knew we wanted to do something special for the big finale of the Invader Zim comics,” she says, “but when I emailed Jhonen asking if he’d like to illustrate a cover, I wasn’t expecting him to one-up us by signing on to co-write the entire thing.”
For artist Aaron Alexovich, his goals for the final issue are far more, um, ‘lofty’: “I came back one last time to make sure Invader Zim was well and truly DEAD once and for all. If we’ve done our job right, his curse will never infect anyone ever again. The world might finally be free. Also, it was fun to draw a fancy pig.”
And here is a wee synopsis and taster of the level of chaos to ensue:
“In Invader ZIM: Dookie Loop Horror, up in the sky, something…BLUE approaches. And it smells HORRIBLE. It turns out that interdimensional creatures called Chrono-Dumpers eat time and use our dimension as a toilet, creating an infinite time loop. There is no escape from the time poop loop, forcing Dib and ZIM to live the same TERRIBLE day forEVER. They wake, the tuxedoed pig farts, the world ends. And the key to fixing the loop is GIR. We are all DOOMED.”
Invader Zim was an animated series that first aired on Nickelodeon in 2001. The series was abruptly cancelled before the completion of its second series. Building cult status since the cancellation, it landed a comics continuation series at Oni Press in 2015 and a 2019 movie Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus. Creator Jhonen Vasquez came from the comics world, with 1995’s creator-owned Johnny the Homicidal Maniac from Slave Labor Graphix. He went on to do Squee!, I Feel Sick, and Fillerbunny. Off his comics he was invited to pitch series to Nickelodeon for their older demographic, and Invader Zim was what he pitched.