Toto sang that love isn't always on time, and the same can be said of the animated series "Invader Zim". This bonkers show from the darkly comedic mind of artist Jhonen Vasquez must have boarded the fastest spaceship from the planet Conventia, arriving far too early on our television sets.
It was March 30, 2001 – a Friday – when a quirky programme about a little tyrannical alien named Zim (voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz) dropped on Nickelodeon. The hook is wonderfully chaotic: Zim's people, the Irkens, don't really like him, so they send him to a faraway planet on a fake invasion mission to get rid of him and pretend like he's doing something useful. Grabbing parts out of the trash, the Irkens piece together a companion bot GIR (Rosearik Rikki Simons), which is about as useful as an icemaker in Antarctica – but GIR turns out to be a good pal/pet for Zim, even if the petulant alien doesn't recognise it.
