Invader Zim!
 

Does anyone know if the show was cancelled...cuz it randomly disapeared...

:sweatdrop

Yeahhh...

It was cancelled a few years ago. It took you this long to notice?
You can buy the whole run of it on DVD though.

By my understanding it was cancelled quite a while ago 'cause nickelodeon didn't allow Jhonen Vasquez the creative wiggle room he desired. As time wore on it became more and more of a chore and thus not as fun.

Frankly I'm glad he decided to call it quits instead of letting it go on and on and eventually get to be more annoying than funny.

It is still on the air, but only for us crazy cable people with 5 different Nickelodeon channels. I forget which one, but for me (Time Warner Cable) its something like 243... I can't remember the name.

But it's just re-runs.

Yeah.... it sure was a good show. And actually, it wasn't Jhonen that decided to call it quits. Nick was iffy about the show once it got put into production, and the wiggle-room issue was a problem, but it wasn't until after 9/11 (three days after 9/11, in fact) that Nick actively started trying to kill the show. This meant pulling episodes at the last minute and replacing them with "Fairly Oddparents" or "Butt Ugly Martians", rerunning the same episode ("Planet Jackers" and "Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain") every week for a month, and randomly alternating its timeslot every week in order to make sure no one was watching it, leading to Nick cancelling the show for "low ratings".

Sadly, the whole experience embittered Jhonen toward TV and movie animation entirely, being forced to stop working on a project into which he had invested so much blood, sweat, and tears. On top of that, Nick owns the rights to the show, characters, and premise, so Jhonen can't even take it with him to work on in another format (comics).

So, yeah, I don't have much love for Nickelodeon at this point, and haven't for quite a few years.

I love how 9-11 became every stupid prick's excuse for being a stupid prick.

"That's my favorite TV show!"

I think my avatar sums up how I feel about the show. (It's Gir, if I ever decide to change it. Ya know, cause it retroactively changes. Yeah. Gotta explain something that will likely never be an issue.)

Nickolodeon does indeed suck for that.

***SHOW SPOILERS***

The end of the show at least was a good one. And it infers that Zim never actually won, but left a lasting impression. And it had the most awesome Christmas carol EVER. I dare you to find one better.

***End spoilers****

So, yeah, much love for Invader Zim.

The Wandering God

I was under the impression that all working on the show just got sick of it; it was too much work, and, yes, the wiggle-room could have definitely been an issue. But I think it's really just that they got tired of it. After the Christmas episode, they were all slightly insane from the experience, and stopped. Jhonen has specifically stated that he does not want to continue with Zim, and doesn't want to hear about it anymore.

...Damn good show. *moment of silence*

Bow down.
Zim was my obsession for awhile, and I've got the first and third packaged DVD's, but never saw or picked up the second. It was pretty dark/awesome for a Nick show, even up until the end. I seem to remember writing a fanfiction for it, even. Shut up. I was twelve. I remember Butt-Ugly martians too, because they kept goddamn advertising it while my show was on. I think it was about the turtles or something, right?

Nope. They got fired. A skeleton crew was left to work on the remaining unfinished episodes as well as make the Christmas ep. At least that's what Jhonen told me. If you're referring to the jokes on the DVD commentary about "how we just couldn't handle the success anymore", that was the pinnacle of sarcasm, and all they could say since they were contractually bound not to discuss the back-stage drama on the DVDs, since the episodes and DVD rights are still owned by Nick. In fact, it shuold be noted that they never referred to Nickelodeon by name and simply referred to them as "the network".

On a similar note, the "Clerks" animated series DVD commentary has the same issue, and one of the writers is actually bleeped when he slips and says "ABC".

Networks don't exactly like to be badmouthed on their own product, after all.