Remind me again

Possibly, we're not really sure at this point if it's indicative of the show as a whole or is just a single episode's setting or a dream sequence or what, since we don't have any other art at all to go off of.
She does look pretty terrified

Nick was such a hard ass and stopped him from making Invader Zim the way he wanted it to be and just didn't like their standards.

Is that music going to be in the show or is it just music put in for the promo?
I kinda like the music.

Invader Zim's humor was pretty unique at the time, the problem is it got totally played out in the early 2000s with Newgrounds and DeviantArt and shit copying it wholesale without putting actual effort into the setup and delivery.
Most of the "LoL RANDUM SPORK XD" stuff comes from GIR, and he was actually used pretty sparingly (at least compared to his concentration on the merchandise) and the joke is really the contrast between him and the general mood and environment of the show.
The obsession with meat and the screaming and stuff would be fine as running jokes in a cartoon, but it leaves a much worse taste in the mouth when many people brought that stuff into real life without a hint of irony.
The show is very dated, that I will admit, but it was generally well-made and original. I always liked (even as a little kid) and still do like it's unflinching dark humor, since it's a kid's show there's still enough restraint to stop it from being in actual bad taste, but it's enough to still shock and be funny to adults. The fact that people die all the time, Keef's eyes getting ripped out, the entirety of "Dark Harvest", that shit would never get made today and it's still a goldmine of nervous chuckling from me, and I've seen every episode dozens of times
it's Dethklok

>The fact that people die all the time
>No fictional characters were harmed in the making of this cartoon.

I like the show. I am just wondering the logic of the Nick Exec who thought that a guy who wrote a comic called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac would be a great fit for a kids show.

It was a single Nickelodeon executive (a woman who was a fan of his work) who specifically sought Jhonen out and asked him to pitch a show because they wanted something for the "eleven to fifteen year-old" demographic.
I too am not sure what they were thinking, but it's a pretty incredible turn of events that now he's working at Disney.

How is it a turn of events? I imagine it wouldn't be fun to work at Nick since they usually cancel everything that's under a season or so.

it's a turn of events because he wrote a comic called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and has a generally extremely dark style and Disney is synonymous with "family friendly"
Remember that up until the 2010s (and specifically Gravity Falls) their television animation was more sanitized and generic than anyone else's

New issue came out on Wednesday. Surprised it hasn't been storytimed yet.

disney xd pushed it a lore than traditional disney does from what ive seen and heard

>xd

I still hold that Zim defined humor for mid-late Millennials in general (not just scenekids), but not in the way you've described it. Cartoons in the 90s had mostly been intent on either 60s pastiche where the writers were hamming/camping it up and constantly winking at you (see, in particular: R&S and everything Warner Bros did), or Seinfeld but with X (Rugrats, Angry Beavers, etc). Zim was the first high-profile comedy to create a world insulated from pop culture and then to just riff on the things happening in it. It was openly sardonic and sought to flip tonal expectations on their head: so you had a cartoon world that was grimy, dingy, and grey; you had silly action sequences and jokes based on fairly dark material for a kid's cartoon, including body horror. And then you had moments that played the elements straight because the premise was dark and, again, the show was very much concerned with its own world and not our own. All of this was fresh when it premiered, but it took on a new significance after 9/11 when it suddenly dawned on much of the country that lolsorandumb things really could pop off at any moment, except it's real life so those things could kill you. So Zim was useful for setting people's ideas of what was funny at a time when things weren't really funny. It gave young people who hadn't had the necessary experience yet the tools with which to laugh at terrible things that they had no control over and couldn't see coming: with detached irony, and with a sense of the humor in taking things too seriously or not seriously enough.

>Zim was the first high-profile comedy to create a world insulated from pop culture and then to just riff on the things happening in it

what no

there were plenty of shows that did that before zim like south park, and that kind of ideology of deconstruction pop culture/mainstream culture has existed for a very long time in other mediums, look at The Residents or west coast Fallout

The show was more expensive to produce than other Nicktoons at the time, and it wan't doing so hot in the 6-11 demographic. So, when Nickelodeon's stock fell, they cut corners by abruptly ending the show before production on the second season even finished. Technically, that was in violation of contract, but none of the producers gave enough of a shit to file a lawsuit.

The show's darkness/executive interference stuff never had anything to do with it.

Jhonen seems hard to work with and it was probably too dark for Nick's taste.

Sorry, I meant one of. I look at Daria as another, though it had way more of a "point" than Zim did. South Park is kind of the opposite; it's almost completely about letting the real world intrude on it. Not just at superficially, but in the deep core of its nature as a comedy, it couldn't do its thing without pop culture. Venture Bros, on the other hand, is a lot like Zim in that it just runs continuously on its own weird rules, even though it brings the real world in occasionally. It doesn't do it to say something about the real world, though; it's just a narrative shortcut.

Now Nick knows the show has a huge following but they will never, EVER bring it back for a couple reasons.
>reason A
that shit would never fly in this day and age, people (parents and faggots on the internet) would be fucking mad if zim was as dark as it always was in 2016.
>reason B
they can just make a shitzillion dollars every day on mall goth merchandise with zero risk or effort involved

Because there a bunch of over PC pussys and would rather have shit like rocket power and fanboy and chum chum instead

It should be noted Steve Ressel, the director, was indeed a verbally abusive asshole (which is why he's never worked on anything since in spite of having a ton of prior high-profile credits, he ruined his reputation) but he was also a perfectionist who was probably responsible for a lot of the show's more cinematic visuals and impressive animation, the problem was that his vision clashed with everybody else and often was to the detriment to story and dialogue because he was always trying to insert fancy camera movements when they weren't needed and other shit like that.
Jhonen kept it mediated and generally made sure the show adhered to HIS style in the end but the show would've had trouble surviving from the internal tension alone. There was also the occasion where they blew a whole episode's budget on a CGI shot of an acorn or something that was never intended to be CG in the first place due to a miscommunication with the Korean studio...

I'm curious, have you ever played west coast Fallout or listened to The Residents?

youtube.com/watch?v=geLiEiAiQJA

youtube.com/watch?v=EkKkHmFOfKE

youtube.com/watch?v=dDDVXlEG-_I

The style of humor has existed for a while, it isn't really a millenial thing

>they blew a whole episode's budget on a CGI shot of an acorn
You couldn't write a better Invader Zim problem.

Okay, but these aren't cartoons so
I've never heard of The Residents, but looking at that date, it doesn't surprise me that they had their finger on that pulse (20 year cultural cycles and whatnot). And then I think of TMBGs' Fingertips and how it straddled that echo-50s/early 60s and early 2000s style back in the early 90s. So I can see music being on the crest of that wave.

Fallout is right there with TMBG and with 90s stuff in putting a finger up (the ass) at the 50s/60s while using its facade; I see where you're going with the comparison to Zim, but I think the winks are too obvious and the darkness played a bit too straight there.

I think you might be misunderstanding what I was trying to say, but I don't blame you because I'm tired as fuck and couldn't find the write-up I did in an earlier thread on this subject, so I know I'm not being particularly articulate right now. Gomennasai sempai.

same reasons oblongs was canceled?

Because it was good

>There was also the occasion where they blew a whole episode's budget on a CGI shot of an acorn or something that was never intended to be CG in the first place due to a miscommunication with the Korean studio...
What episode was this?

A Room With A Moose, iirc

They were walnuts but yes

>many of the main crew being alt-comics people who had never worked in animation before and never did again

Who?

Johnen Vasquez for one, though he's getting back into it after 15 years
Roman Dirge
Rosearik Rikki Simons
Frank Conniff (not an indie comics guy, but TV's Frank)

I keep forgetting he worked on the show

because it was on Nickelodeon around the time the Sponge was on its peak

Head writer, too
It's so odd that he doesn't seem to bring it up much (if ever), there has to be some interesting stories

you got shit taste

sounds allot like something Johhny K. would approve of

You're right, it does sound like him.
wonder if he grabbed any womanly asses

FOP was destroying it in ratings at the time

>Interesting note though, Very Important House, his next show, is confirmed to be in production at Disney.

Barely though.
questionsleep.com/?p=3100

So I'm not even sure if that clip were early test animations or not Important House at all.

Again, that's an official Disney account, so it's VIH for sure

That was so long ago, and the way it's described it sounds like if the show didn't go into production there shouldn't be any existing animation at all.
We already know Thurop Van Orman is working on something there that he's not allowed to talk about (because he's vented his frustration about not being able to talk about it on social media, and apparently let the name slip at some point and had to delete the post, though I missed it and there's no Cred Forums archive anymore so...), which means that's probably the case for this show too.

>2016
>people in the comments are still making fucking 'doom and piggies' jokes