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Nick Cancelling Invader Zim
orn writes "Lots of my slashdotting friends turned me on to Invader Zim not so long ago. Well, aintitcool.com is reporting that the show is being cancelled." Now that really sucks. Zim was absolute genius in terms of art, use of CG, and just flat out hilarious writing. I'll miss this one a lot.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the show, but I always felt uncomfortable about its placement on Nickelodeon, a kid's network if there ever was one. The show's content, much like the class "Ren and Stimpy" episodes back from when Jim K. still had control of the show, is just too subversive for little kids. The show is more akin to things like "Family Guy" and "South Park" than it is to "Wild Thornberries" or whatever inane kiddie trash Klasky-Csupo is barfing over Nickelodeon these days. Hopefully the show will find a new, better home on Comedy Central or another such station where it would be a much better fit.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
* - dismal
** - extremely shitty
*** - drawn-out, redundant, no good, very bad
Nickelodeon is quickly becoming a channel that shows exactly four different shows: Rugrats, SpongeBob, that one show that had Burger King toys a while back, and another new show that takes everything TO THE EXTREME!! I'd rather they showed stuff like Zim, but then I remembered - that's what Cartoon Network is for! Fuck Nick. Show Zim on the channel that actually has quality TV like Cowboy Bebop!
It also seems that Nick is cancelling other shows as well, such as Spongebob Squarepants and Hey Arnold. At that site you can petition for the show not to be canceled. There are 1797 Signatures right now. Help out now!
The http://slashdot.org/aintitcool.com link in the article is wrong. Use this instead.
--Metrollica
According to the article, it isn't being axed immediately--next season there will be only six episodes instead of 20, which means there will still be 16 more new episodes to wait for.
However, it is still disappointing. I've only seen Invader Zim a couple times (my cable company doesn't carry that channel) but it was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time. Unfortunately, I believe Nickelodeon marketed it to the wrong audience: it should have been aimed at teenagers and adults. Most young children don't appreciate it enough.
Perhaps if Invader Zim had been on another network, one that doesn't focus on children's entertainment, it would have fared better.
NoItAint.com!
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Time to write Nick and your cable company- remember, if you want them to give a damn, send a paper letter, not just a quick email. Companies that totally ignore email will usually at least read a nicely typed non-form-letter via US Mail. If you're lucky, you'll get a form letter in reply...
I'd go so far as to say that Invader Zim is one of the best new shows in years, and by far the most original animated show on the air (only because Simpsons and Futurama have been pretty sucky lately).
No Zim, no more reason for me to watch any of the rest Nicks' sanitized freak show of a network.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
disclaimer: I work at nickelodeon, but not in programming.
disclaimer2: Zim is my favorite animated show.
I can't say much for our programming department, I don't even really know who they are being as I don't work with them, but I sure would love to give them a swift kick in the ass.
Firstly Zim premiered and showe Friday nights at 9:30.. no wonder the ratings weren't that high, they barely gave it a chance in that slot. Reruns during the week were scarse and oddly timeslotted as well.
Secondly, its too good for Nick. Its quite simple, as Ren and Stimpy was too good. Its offbeat, its different, its interesting.. that means its scary to network executives who would rather contract another cookie-cutter piece of crap show from Klasky Csupo than take a risk on something exciting such as Zim.
Thirdly, they did very little in the way of promotion. I can't tell you how many people tell me that they've never heard of Zim, despite either watching Nick themselves, or having children that do. What do you do with the bastard child? Ignore it and hope he goes away.. good job.
Fourthly, Zim appeals to a very odd demographic which makes it hard to target. Its too dark for kids, its too weird for older parents, its almost right for the teenage crowd, but they're usually doing something else friday nights. It REALLY appeals to most 18-27 year old I've talked to, which unfortunately is not Nick's market. We've become the MTV of the pre-teeners, since MTV is now filled with teenagers.
Fifthly.. wait is that a word? Ok nevermind, I've gone on too long. I'm just quite upset at the news and I hang onto hope that someone here will get their head straight and give Zim another chance, its one of the most original, refreshing, and fun cartoons to come out of any network in a long time. No more rugrats, no more Arnold, Spongebob can stay, but he must OBEY THE FIST.
-ride the pig, -nA
^nA! Creatures in my Head
The article suggests that Nick is pulling Zim due to poor ratings- yet how can they expect good ratings when they randomly move the show to a new time slot every week? When they randomly show 'Wild Thornberries' in the slot Invader Zim was scheduled for, causing my Tivo to waste valuable recoding time? When they fail to supply episode descriptions 90% of the time?
In my opinion, the worst sin of Nicktoons is the 'splitting' of episodes, where they take the individual segments that make up a 30-minute episode of Zim, CatDog, etc and package it with some live action slime game or other filler into a fifteen minute slot.
Worse than that, they tend to start shows early and end them late, especially with these 15-minute half-episodes, so TiVo misses large portions of the cartoon.
With the cancellation of Zim, I have one less reason to bother turning on the TV anymore.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Most die-hard Zim fans probably know this, but if you're a fan of a show but not familiar with Jhonen Vasque's other work, you owe it to yourself to get ahold of a copy of Squee and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. The first is the more accessable and Zim-like; the second is Jhonen's quintisential work, but it is much darker and more philosophical. All his work is available from Slave Labor Graphics. (Avoid Fillerbunny and especially the Bad Art Collection; these are for die-hard fans only.)
More info:
Link
Link
Link
Link
The reason Invader Zim, Spongebob, and 2 other shows are being dropped has everything to do with 16 out of 19 writers signing union cards.
There is no unionization in the animation industry, and Nickelodeon means to keep it that way.
Nick staffers demand union representation
There was a story on yahoo! news last week that made the link clearer, but I can no longer find it.
--
Industrial Workers of the World
So. Who buys the ratings bullshit?
Honestly. There's a lot more shows that pull in worse ratings than Invader Zim and that don't have the same cult following that Zim has behind it.
I think Nickelodeon didn't think when they gave a man who happened to author a comic called "Johnny The Homicidal Maniac" a Children's TV Show.
Go watch Dark Harvest. What kind of Kid wouldn't get nightmares from watching that episode? Honestly... just whenever he opens his mouth and you see all the guts inside.
Not to mention the unaired FBI Warning episode, which is as such simply because it was apparently too controversial (Anybody care to shed some light behind why? I think it had something to do with Sept11...).
This is a Viacom move, I'm guessing... and thusly political. Nickelodeon is Viacom's Kids Network, and being that Zim, much like Undergrads, The Oblongs, The Simpsons (so far the only one out of that list that was actually promoted _right_) and a pantheon of other cartoons aren't geared towards kids, were promoted as kids' shows, of course it's going to get pulled...
The problem is the only more recent controversial cartoon that actually managed to survive through all of it got worn out in the first year (*coughSouthParkcough*) and after that it wasn't really funny anymore...
So it's not a kids show. I honestly think Viacom should look around at its other channels (MTV?) for support of Zim.
And while they're at it, they should push someone in Canada to pick it up. I hate having to watch all the episodes on my computer.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Apparently, Invader ZIM won an Emmy for animation work. (Specifically, Kyle Menke got the Emmy for his storyboarding work.) Too bad it's being cancelled--it really is a quality show.
First the tick...then the x-files...then invader zim! What do these shows have in common? Several slashdotters enjoyed them, but they were cancelled. Instead of insulting the networks, perhaps there was a reason why?
These shows had low ratings! That's right! TV is not an area for art to shine through! It is a commercialized and mechanized zoo that automatically produces animals that the public in general will want to see for entertainment. Without people seeing them, they are not as valued, and who are we to say that our shows are better than anyone else's?
If you want to see some maverick but potentially good art, go watch independent films, or better yet, make your own! But don't look to TV for an art form, all it is is an area where they can broadcast 30 second advertisements to drones watching them, in hope that they can coerce them into buying something!
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
For those of you to lazy to write a real letter try this:http://www.nick.com/blab/write_nick/index.jht ml. It is a web-based comment submission form from nick.com. If possible, however, write with real paper, neatly typed and signed. (Primary tablet and crayon would also be good, but make sure, if you do sign it "love" instead of sincerly hehe)
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In a perfect world, Zim would be picked up and added to Cartoon Network, who would then play an Adult Swim block every night.
In an even more perfect world they would also pick up and renew The Critic, then steal Family Guy and Futurama from Fox and give them slots where they have a chance at getting eyeballs and ratings.
In a perfect world...
------
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so the Cartoon Network can keep buying them and playing them during the stoner^H^H^Hdaytime hours.
Goat sex free since 2001
How is ZIM any worse than, say, MAD Magazine?
Having ZIM around would have made my school years far more endurable. "My GOD! It's not just me! Somebody else out there also sees that nearly all the people populating this school are dangerous, immature, socially retarded, materialist, petty morons! Whew! I was beginning to think there really WAS something wrong with me like everybody keeps saying!"
I guess the only thing that bothers me about ZIM is that it utterly condemns humanity; while ZIM does actively attempt to expose the everyday bullshit we must live with in this world, watching would lead one to think that there isn't anything good or worthwhile out there at all, which is completely false.
Rather than cancel ZIM, I'd prefer to see it stay on while infusing Nick's programming with shows which carry underlying messages which promote honor and noble living. I seem to recall things like, "G-Force" having a positive effect on me as a kid. I'd suggest the promotion of stuff like "Sailor Moon" if it wasn't for the weird sexuality of it, and the whole bit about girls being tough and capable, but only so long as the strong male lead can rescue them on a regular basis. What shit.
And "Pokemon" is basically just, "Cock-Fighting for Kids."
Now THAT'S creepy.
-Fantastic Lad
First of all I have seen a small number of Zim episodes and was not impressed. While it does have it's moments (I enjoy GIR), most of the material in it was loud-obnoxious-gross-out stuff, kinda like Ren and Stimpy in their bad episodes. I just don't know how people call this inspired. Again, I could be missing something. Please enlighten me.
Secondly, all the posts about Zim being the best cartoon in years must not realize that Adult Swim exits and in particular the hour from 11-12p.m EST that they show "Williams Street" productions.
I highly recommend checkin it out Sunday and Thursday nights on the Cartoon Network. That's not to mention that they play Cowboy Bepop for you anime fans.
just my opinion, ignore it or mod it down at will
impto
-------------
If they'd mete out the series at a sane pace, leaving people looking forward to each new episode and hanging about to see what's on afterward, they'd get a lot more bang for their animation dollar.
A few other networks have taken to doing this same thing. Somebody needs to up and shoot whoever the program managers are that covered Invader Zim, and The Tick, which enjoyed the very same problem.
It's too bad so many good shows are being and have been cancelled over the past several years.
Like hm, Friday nights are a good time for it? Like hm, two scheduled Invader Zim marathons (which can help to BUILD fanbase) were cancelled with no notice? Like hm, moving the show half an hour without any real prior notice (oh say, like announcing it on the previous week's show)? Like hm, merchandice promised to be for sale from Hot Topic by Christmas STILL isn't available (where's my damn Gir Plushie?!?!)? (And BTW, while I don't have great respect for Hot Topic, as it's Goth Lite in most cases, who the HELL thought it would be a good idea to sell SPONGEBOB DORKPANTS there? Tell me how SBSP meets the Hot Topic demographic....).
Rest assured, Nick has done everything they can to destroy the show.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I personally think since the "MTV-ising" of Nickelodean started they sorta went downhill (then again, I AM an adult -- perhaps I should stop watching cartoons as well?) The only cartoon I truely care about nowadays is Dexter's Laboratory, because even though I've seen some episodes a number of times they continue to surprise me. Plus, a great majority of episodes were funny. If either it or SpongeBob were to leave the airwaves permenantly I would probably be a little upset.
I throw Invader Zim into the same pool I throw Rocko's Modern Life, Ren & Stimpy, Sheep in the Big City and the Grim and Evil show in -- supposedly "adult" cartoons that just come off like college students' art projects.
CmdrTaco, have you ever notice how often shows are taken off the air when *you* like them? Once a month we are treated on Slashdot with "Gee, I liked this show and now they are taking it off the air!!!". I don't think the shows are the problem, its you. Do us all a favor and stop watching television! That way these cool shows will stay on the air. You are a TV Show Jinx.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
It's no wonder that businesses are run the way they are, people like you push and shove your way to the top instead of working and earning their way to the top.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Probably because Comic book artists also "Eat Food".
Seriously. You got to make a crust somehow, and comic books are not really ultimate bucks world.
Still if he returns full time to comic books , fine, as his comics are among the best.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Maybe it's nothing, and the show was cancelled simply because they didn't know how to handle it, just like the John K. days of Ren & Stimpy. Funny how whenever I would tell someone about Zim, I would always say, "...and for some reason Nicklodeon is airing it." Zim is so subversive and dark-I think all of us knew this day would come, at least those of us who remember what happened to Ren & Stimpy...at least they didn't fire Vasquez and re-edit the show in horrible horrible ways. Well, at least HOPEFULLY they won't...
***
- DBZ - Bottom of the barrel diarhhea of anime
- Zoids - Gundam knockoff, please shoot me now
- Gundam * - It's a huge story arc, and if you miss an episode, you'll have the gun in your mouth because the rest won't make sens
- Sailor Moon - OMG IT'S CRAZY COOL ON HAPPY CRACK FUN MEGA!
- Cowboy Bebop - Quality.
I don't know of any more - I get my Zim fix from 1337 filesharing.What makes this really frustrating is that there's more real creativity in the TV industry than there's ever been. I still don't care for most of the result, but there's no denying that most of the real writers and actors and other creative people are really trying hard.
What the heck. TV networks are an obsolete concept anyway. Eventually we'll all have fat pipes into hour homes, and we'll just download what we want to watch. We'll probably have to pay for almost everything, but at least we'll never see that stupid EverReady Bunny again!
As for "socially retarded": let me guess, you were the outsider who couldn't get along with others, whereas all these people had huge social networks of friends, right? You make me laugh, dweeb.
Ooh. Touched a nerve there, did we?
"You make me laugh, dweeb"? Goodness! That even sounds like a line from one of the pig-children in ZIM. Ahh. Snif. That takes me back!
Though, I'm sorry. In highschool I was actually one of the popular kids. (Shiver. That word.) Though, I made efforts to distance myself from the Cordellia/Heathers and their fashion-clone ilk. With marginal success. -Gad. I'm actually serious. Highschool was bloody strange! Back then I really was an arrogant dick; I wasn't just blowing steam on Slashdot! Why are teenagers drawn to smarmy jerks? I mean, you learn posture, strength of mind, amicability, how to kick the shit out of a bully, how to listen to and sort of care about the pathetic nonsense which passes for the average teenager's life, --and people won't leave you the fuck alone. Everybody wants to be your best friend or your girlfriend or whatever, when it takes every atom of patience you have just to stay in the same room with them!
And yeah, I'm sorry, but most kids I went to school with were fucked up losers with a host of personality problems of one kind or another. Cruel, Boring, Shallow and Spineless seemed to be the factory setting. It was exhausting!
I especially hated the dorks who enjoyed bullying other kids. Especially dorks who bullied the geeks. --The geeks, despite their problems, were the only truly interesting people in the whole freeking school! They liked to think! (Well, the organized crime kids were also pretty interesting; the ones who would cut class and spend the day ripping off anime and expensive art supplies from the shops downtown. . . One guy even lifted an airbrush compressor! What balls! Guerilla artists who refused to work with anything but stolen supplies. How out-there is that?)
In any case, I guess this is why I spend so much time scratching my head here at Slashdot. The people I knew who were into tech knowledge and anime and all things geek were also incredibly smart in dozens of other areas; they were open-minded to levels that Timothy Leary would appreciate, without the chemicals!
They didn't suck up propaganda. They didn't champion Western science as the be-all end-all.
I guess I just assume too much. . . Based on my highschool experience, I naturally assume that if you have a knack for maths and physics, you must also be enlightened.
Of course, I've run into a few individuals like that around here, but holy shit! I must have lucked out while growing up, cuz the bell curves from then and now do not match.
My periodic outbursts around here only reflect my continued disappointment. . , and my bafflement at the high number of guys who use the word 'dweeb' and actually mean it.
-Fantastic Lad
The first time I saw Invader Zim I instantly recognized it as Vasquezian artwork and humor. I loved JTHM way back when and liked every episode of Zim I managed to catch. I think to really like Zim you need to have liked JTHM as well. Both have a crazy protagonist at odds with absolutely everything around them. The fact Nick feels the need to cancel it goes to show how inept their fucking program managers are. They're trying to grab the 12-16 audience between the hours of 8-10pm. The problem is their shows appeal to the 18-24 audience who have other things to do besides sit at home watching TV reverently on a Friday night. Then to make it worse they don't reair it on Sundays with any sort of consistancy so you can only possibly catch a couple episodes if you have ANYTHING in life you life to do besides wait for the damn show to air.
I watch cartoons more now than I did when I was 10 but I don't have the luxery to sit around with one thumb up my ass and the other on a remote control flipping back and forth between Nickeodeon and the TV Guide channel hoping to maybe catch an episode of Invader Zim. If Nickelodeon wanted an audience for their shows they wouldn't have a website which insulted the intelligence of people over the age of 10 using it trying to find when a fucking cartoon aired. Nick's website is worse than a majority of the tripe they air. If the website says the show is on on Sunday I shouldn't need to drop candle wax into a bucket of water to predict whether or not it actually WILL be on on Sunday or not. I really liked Zim and it blows that I thought it already had been canceled because I couldn't find out when the hell it was airing on a-day-other-then-Friday to catch what I missed. Fuck them, fuck them up their stupid asses. Oh yeah, Scifi.com had a little piece about Invader Zim and how nobody would miss it when it's gone. I always missed it when it was airing, I'm going to miss it alot more once it isn't aired. Guess I need to download Real Player now.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
It's too bad Hollywood's trying to prevent these shows from living forever by existing on the internet. Yep... all that talent wasted. I hope that when Eisner dies, the DMCA prevents anybody from visiting his grave.
"Derp de derp."
> How is ZIM any worse than, say, MAD Magazine?
I haven't seen ZIM, but Mad, in its original form, was a Harvey Kurtzman showcase. The content back then was largely too complex for kids.
The Kurtzman/Elder/Krigstein parody of George McManus' Bringing Up Father in Mad #17 is a good example -- it's a dark take on McManus' use of domesic violence as comedy.
Kurtzman was pushed out of Mad after a couple of years, and his later magazine Help! was also Not For Kids; R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat pseudo-rape comic was published there, some of the first non-greeting-card stuff Crumb published. (Terry Gilliam also worked for Help.)
And EC in general was really an adult comics line back then (Tales from the Crypt, etc.); the Comics Code Authority killed off all EC comics but Mad (which was billed as a magazine, and thus not for kids, because only kids read comics, right?), and Mad was steadily dumbed-down over the years to increase sales to kids. But back before the CCA dark times, EC almost a low-brow Fantagraphics, a tiny niche for grown-ups' comics.
[sigh...]
> The whole point of subversiveness is to open
> eyes.
Yeah, but it still needs to be aimed at kids to be really subversive. Otherwise it will just be disturbing; they won't understand what's being subverted. Crumb's How Snoids are Born (Snoid Comics, Kitchen Sink Press) is a glorious treatise on how dysfunction is passed down through generations, but I sure wouldn't give that comic to a kid (in the comic, the Snoid masturbates to thoughts of dismembered women; the droplets of jizz turn into little Snoids; the Snoid then shoos the offspring out the door with a broom, saying "Scoot! 'An don't let me see yer ugly faces around this neighborhood!"). A kid wouldn't get that comic; hell, I'm expecting some AC flames from folks who don't get it. The target audience matters.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
The thing about Cartoon Network is that their budget is too low to actually make any sort of complicated animated show (at the moment anyway). The only moderate exception to this is Justice League. For blocks like Adult Swim the budget is even tighter. But their budget is not so small that they can't pick up canceled/finished series from other networks/countries and reshow them. Baby Blues, for instance, is clearly too expensive per episode for them to make the show, but they can still show the existing ones however long they want to. And in the case of anime, virtually all of the shows out there are self-contained series of 26 episodes or less. We don't expect season after season of these, we expect new material - which is the better policy, IMHO. All that matters is that it's new to you.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Above kids heads? Not the kids I know.
Really think back to when you were nine or ten. You'd have loved Zim.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
However, in your sentence I'd replace "subversive" with "scary". My four year old got nightmares after watching IZ. He didn't have a problem with any other cartoon on Nick.
Zim may be a cartoon, but it really isn't for the daytime/early-evening crowd.
I would sign it if it didn't mention Zim in the same petition as ZIM, seeing how Zim is in no way geared toward Nicks demographic.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Zim, I just don't think a show that is that hostile towards children is appropriet for children under 12.
I mean come on, he rips some childs eyes out in one episode.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on