Dr. T: I guess you'd have to do it off screen.

JV: Yeah, and you know what we'd get? "Uh? Can we hear the human race say they're OK off screen? Just so we know that they didn't die?"

Dr. T: According to you, when you write your books you give yourself only a general storyline to work with, and the actual details don't come out until you sit down and start to work. Did that make writing for a TV series difficult for you?

JV: It made it, I think, more interesting. I kind of was prepared for it. I still have a little bit of looseness in the way I work, but that's mainly when we get to the recording -- you know, adding bits and pieces here and there -- but the overall structure is definitely much more refined than when I did comics. The comics were more a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing; it's how I felt natural with the characters speaking. I figured I didn't want them to feel like they were being scripted: as soon as I thought of it, they would say it. The show is a little different. It's definitely trying to tell a story in the amount of time you've got. I never really knew how long a comic series of mine was going to last; I would just say, "OK, that story's not done yet, I'll have another issue." But with a cartoon series that's a little tougher, because I have eleven minutes and I have to tell the story right then and there. I think it's fun working in a way that I haven't before, but yeah, I don't go as loosely as I used to do on the comics.

Dr. T: In a past interview you were quoted as saying that you saw all your characters as animated shorts, animated features or live-action feature-length films. Some of the film direction "asides" you put into your panels kind of proves that. Do you think, Jhonen, that you were always moving toward the eventual involvement with an animated series?

The Zim family. © Nickelodeon.

JV: I always thought that I would be doing -- in my dreams -- movies or something like that. I never thought I would be having an animated series, just like I never thought of actually having a comic book. It's just that every time the opportunity has presented itself I can't pass it up, because it's another step closer to constructing a reality out of these ideas in my head. You know, the fun of seeing these things move around and, well, it sounds so cliché, come to life. Ultimately it comes down to how cool that is. I grew up loving stuff like this and now I'm making it. And it's still fun. Well, most of this is rather exhausting and hideous, but when I sit down and watch a finished episode, it's worth it, because I don't watch it as something that I made, I watch it as something that I would have enjoyed whether or not I made it and that's the cool part of it.

Dr. T: Congratulations on a new season of Invader Zim.

JV: Thank you very much. A few more nightmares for the kids!

Dr. T: You're a former film student and a movie buff that enjoys horror films. I was reviewing the first season of Zim and saw things like organs, weird alien skin diseases, mechanical parts springing out of organic bodies and I was wondering if you were a big fan of David Cronenberg.

JV: Oh my God! That man is one of the people I truly thank for existing. His attitude toward organic existence is so disturbing. It's brilliant. The transmogrification of the human body and all those themes, I've always been into that, always been fascinated by it. When I look back at myself growing up as a little kid I see early signs of me being amazed with certain concepts like those, and he just hits them right on the head every time.

Dr. T: It really comes across nicely in Zim.

JV: It's not so conscious. There is a future episode (of Zim) which is inspired by his take on The Fly called Bolognius Maximus where Dib is slowly becoming bologna! It's a stupid-sounding story, but it's fun because it's handled at the same level of that moment when Brundle finds out he's been fused with a fly. It's like, "Oh my God, I'm becoming..." But it's bologna! It's horrifying, and the music in the episode is horrifying, and the angles make it even more horrifying -- and that just makes it funnier! And the fact that David Cronenberg has a hand in that -- in a kids' show! Very few people point out that he's an inspiration to me. Kurt Vonnegut is another one of them but with a different take. They never handle science-fiction like it's "just" a science-fiction story. There's so much respect and intelligence behind it that I think it helps even a cartoon show. Even though it is silly or funny, there's a level of awareness behind who's making the show that I think it's kind of fun when people pick up on it. If they don't, if they just see freakish, weird stuff, well, that's OK, because that's what it is.