Jhonen Vasquez was basically born to be a comic book artist—he started drawing as a child and hasn’t stopped since. In fact, his first published comic book, the darkly humorous Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, was based on a character he drew in high school. In the ten years since Johnny debuted, Vasquez has drawn other comics like Squee! and Fillerbunny, and launched himself into animation with Invader ZIM on Nickelodeon. In this interview, Jhonen explains how his childhood inspirations still inform his work, and why he keeps saying no to big mainstream projects.
When did you first start drawing and what inspired you?
As a child, I just didn’t stop. I just kept with it. In pre-school, I was drawing dinosaurs—I was huge into dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist, not a cartoonist or a filmmaker or anything like that—just a paleontologist. So I would draw dinosaurs. And as the paleontology thing kind of waned—well, never completely waned; I’m still huge into dinosaurs and drawing monsters in general—I just kept with it until I got to combining storytelling. I still do now essentially what I did as a kid: I draw and tell stories. Now it’s just a little bigger and there’s an audience for it. It’s what I’ve always done; I don’t know why I started or how I started.
When did it occur to you that drawing could actually be more than just for fun, but a livelihood?
I still don’t think that it’s hit me, because it’s always been fun. It’s never gone from fun to work. I mean, I’ve gotten busy, I’ve gotten incredibly active with this stuff, and it’s gotten stressful. But I’ve always been under the assumption that people are going to wise up and I won’t have the option to make money off of it, so I just focus on making it enjoyable for me. It’s cool that people like what I do, but I don’t work for the audience. I have to be really into what I’m doing, as far as enjoying it goes. I’m aware of the fact that I’m able to make a living off of it and that I’m very lucky to be able to, because there are countless other people out there a thousand times more talented who just don’t get the recognition.
Through chance or circumstance, I have done okay. I am able to just keep doing what I do, which is most artists’ dream.
How did you get into the comics business with Johnny the Homicidal Maniac?
I was drawing Johnny before I submitted him to Slave Labor, my publisher. I was basically drawing just for me, just for the hell of it, starting in high school. I used to do Johnny comics in the school paper, if you can imagine such a time. I mean, he was killing kids in the classroom and just going on rampages, blood everywhere—in the school paper. No one would do that now. The FBI would come haul you away; they haul off kids just for doing violent-looking drawings at their desks.
After high school, I kept drawing him and it got a little more sophisticated, still along the same lines of “killing people sure is funny.” Some of those strips were part of this package I dropped off at Slave Labor. I was living in San Jose at the time, and they were basically near downtown San Jose. A local show by the name of Fishmasters—cable-access, practically—had a comic they would advertise at the end of their shows—it was on after Saturday Night Live, one in the morning kind of stuff. So I saw the commercials and the address for Slave Labor and thought it’d be interesting to drop some stuff off and say “Hey, can I do a comic?” And it worked. Johnny was the character that got their attention, and they asked if I wanted to do a series with him as the main character. And I was like, “Yeah!” I didn’t have plans to do a comic, but the opportunity came up and it’s like one of those life-long dream things. Same with Invader ZIM—a chance to have my own television show, and I can do anything I want: aliens and robots and stuff. That’s what I’m into, so I said “Sure.”
Once you became a published comic book artist, what kinds of reactions did you get from readers?
To this day, it’s still mostly positive. I don’t really get hate mail, which surprises me, but people have better things to do than to write hate mail to somebody who writes a book about hating everything, I guess. It’s odd. It’s very strange to go from being completely secluded and doing your own work for yourself, to having an audience—and having an audience that’s aware of what you do and expects you to do things that they like. It can make things difficult. I don’t think it’s too healthy to focus on how you’re being perceived, but you can’t help but wonder, “Who are these people who are reading my stuff?” But that’s for someone else to look into—that’s not for me. I’d be afraid to find out who they are, exactly.
