2 out of 5

I liked Invader Zim, but I sort of fell out of my Jhonen Vasquez phase (yes, the phase past the JTHM one, where you start looking for the the work he’d done since and then – gleefully – discovered Zim) when his humor became a bit too predictable in its beats.  The show became collateral damage of that realization, though it does still have an infectious zeal that’s fun in small doses.

In our everything semi-old-is-new-again culture, it wasn’t much of a surprise Zim eventually resurfaced as a comic, and it was further unsurprising that the initially co-Vasquez authored book knew how to employ the half-dumb giggling-at-its-own-silliness style of visuals and gags Jhonen partially heralded to current teen / youth culture, riding a wave certainly started by others before him, but keeping it going nonetheless.

I’m not sure where K.C. Green fits into this puzzle, but he’s a positive product, prime figure of the we comic generation and employing randomness to great effect in his own Gunshow.

Several words later, I was curious to see what his skills looked like when applied to the Zim comic.  They… Sort of look like K.C. Green.  But the strange thing is, when leashed to another’s creation, because Green just chews through the leash and goes buck wild, it’s sorta underwhelming.  Like a lot of guest comics – a webcomic staple – you chuckle, bit wonder: Why?

Issue 6 is at least all Green, an insanely over-the-top tale of Zim trying to get a bank loan.  It’s wonderfully sloppy and absurd (though Oni’s coloring on this, via Savanna Ganucheau, has a really distracting sheen to it which, frankly, uglies things up undesirably), but again, less Zim and essentially just Green.

Issue 7 takes a hit by going back to more reliably Invader Zim-like writers and artists, with Kyle Starks writing a planet-takeover fail that would’ve easily worked as an episode; it’s boring to me, but maybe this is better for regular readers of the series.  A few pages are left over for Green to fill on his own, which he does.  And he does.  (And that color gloss gets even worse, although it seems like it’s on Green this time.)

Zany Zim seems like a good match for Krazy K.C. (uh huh), but the guy is just too on his own thing to stay within the given lines of the comic, making it more of an oddity than anything.