This part of our celebration of Nickelodeon cartoons, Nicktoons Month!
Aliens disguised as humans, spaceships masquerading as suburban homes, an urban legend that’s actually just a man trapped in a mascot suit: If one theme drives Invader Zim’s inventive grotesquery, it’s concealment. Jhonen Vasquez’s cult foray into Nicktoonia is full of children, parents, and other carbon-based lifeforms who go to great lengths to disguise themselves, often in pursuit of unraveling the mysteries of what other characters are up to.
The nesting-doll layers of subterfuge (sometimes featuring literally hidden appendages) are great fodder for the show’s signature humor, but what they really portray is the sheer terror of being a kid in a world where adult life is ruled by facade and persona. We see this idea play out again and again throughout the seasons: In “Bloaty’s Pizza Hog,” a beloved restaurant mascot disrobes and reveals himself as a morbidly obese, barely mobile man. In “Parent Teacher Night,” Zim builds ‘Roboparents’ to keep his cover as a regular school kid.
But most of all, we see it in Zim’s continuing, hopeless aspirations to be seen as something more than a petty alien laborer. He’s ostracized both as an invader on his home planet and as an undercover human on Earth, yet he’s equally oblivious to his pariah status no matter what world he’s in. Ultimately, Invader Zim shows us a nihilistic warscape of childhood where the endgame of growing up is just as cruel, deceitful and absurd as your worst middle school gym class. Is it any wonder then that one of Zim’s greatest antagonists in season one is actually Keef, the one kid at school who genuinely wants to be his friend? In a galaxy where all sentient beings deceive one another, sometimes the scariest aliens can be the ones that don’t wear masks.
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