‘being able to flip through the pages and see all the madness’

the drawing   PART 2

When I was eleven years old, my in­ter­est in draw­ing and cre­at­ing char­ac­ters spiked and I watched the pre­miere episode of In­vad­er Zim.

I ac­tu­al­ly thought it looked kind of stu­pid when I saw the com­mer­cial for it, but for some rea­son, I re­mem­bered that I thought the same thing about Drag­onball Z at first. It was ac­tu­al­ly my broth­er who con­vinced me to watch just a few episodes with him, and by then I was hooked.

So I fig­ured I’d give In­vad­er Zim a chance, and I am in­cred­i­bly glad that I did. Not only was it an amaz­ing show, but it was just some­thing that was not like any­thing else on TV. 

It was so ran­dom and weird, even dis­gust­ing at times, but it made me laugh! Hon­est­ly, I think I liked it be­cause of the fact that it was so un­usu­al, be­cause that’s how I felt grow­ing up. An un­usu­al lit­tle spec­i­men thrown into this chaot­ic world with no idea how to fit in and be “nor­mal.” It made me feel bet­ter about be­ing dif­fer­ent or strange. It gave me a sense of con­fi­dence be­cause I knew that there were oth­er peo­ple out there that were just as weird as me. It also in­spired me to draw even more!

Sad­ly, the show had a short time­line, and was can­celled less than two years af­ter it was made.

But this only made me yearn for it even more, and so I looked up who the cre­ator was. And since then, he’s be­come one of my most fa­vorite artists of all time! Jho­nen Vasquez. I Googled the name and to my de­light I found that he had writ­ten sev­er­al com­ic book se­ries that weren’t Zim, but it was in that same kind of art style that I loved. I was twelve years old and I was read­ing SQUEE! and John­ny the Homi­ci­dal Ma­ni­ac. Most­ly from what­ev­er con­tent I could find on­line, which wasn’t that much.

BUT! I squealed (or should we say squee’d?) with joy when I found out that they sold some of the is­sues at Hot Top­ic. So on our next trip to the mall, I bought them with­out my par­ents knowing.

It was in­cred­i­ble, to have the very art­work that you ad­mired so dear­ly in your hands! Be­ing able to flip through the pages and see all the mad­ness that en­sued with­in it! I was over­joyed! So much so that I showed it to my old­er broth­er. And I guess he didn’t find them as amaz­ing as I did be­cause my par­ents soon found out, and made me re­turn them to the mall. You might think that’s a bit harsh, but af­ter read­ing an is­sue or two, you’ll prob­a­bly un­der­stand why it wasn’t the best kind of sto­ries to be giv­en to chil­dren. But I end­ed up find­ing most of the pages on­line and print­ing them out any­way so … sor­ry mom and dad!

Any­way, I loved Jhonen’s style, for what­ev­er rea­son. And as a twelve year old, I was con­stant­ly draw­ing his char­ac­ters and even try­ing to make up some of my own in that par­tic­u­lar style.

It was just so FUN draw­ing them, es­pe­cial­ly their ex­ag­ger­at­ed ex­pres­sions. I loved it! I even had one of my mid­dle school teach­ers have me paint a mur­al of In­vad­er Zim on one of the cab­i­nets near his desk, in­stead of do­ing the reg­u­lar class work! It was awe­some. He even let me bring in some of my VHS tapes that I’d record­ed the show on to play on a tiny lit­tle TV that was set up on the ceil­ing. I loved that class, and that teacher was one of my fa­vorites that I’ve ever had!

But then, dur­ing high school, I grew out of most of that stuff. I bare­ly even drew much at all, as far as I can re­mem­ber. Ex­cept for the projects in Art class, be­cause I al­ways picked that elec­tive, even when it was a be­gin­ners course.

I just loved to draw.

 

to be concluded —

 

—kait­lyn­jane

Flom­mist KAiT­LYN­jane has been draw­ing and writ­ing sto­ries ever since she knew how to scrib­ble on a piece of pa­per, or her sister’s fore­head when she was just two weeks old. Copy­right © 2020 KAiTLYNjane.

 

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