Jhonen C. Vasquez (; born September 1, 1974) is an American cartoonist, animator, screenwriter, music video director, and voice actor. He is best known for creating the comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac—along with its spin-off comics Squee!, Fillerbunny, and I Feel Sick—and the Nickelodeon animated series Invader Zim. Early life Vasquez was born on September 1, 1974, in San Jose, California. He grew up in East San Jose and attended Mt. Pleasant High School, where he often spent much of his class time drawing in sketchbooks and took part in a contest to design a new look for his school's mascot. He earned no prizes, but on the back of a preliminary drawing for the contest, he drew his first sketch of the character who would later become Johnny C who would later star in Vasquez's first completed comic book series. While Vasquez read his older brother's superhero comics as a child, but first became interested in exploring the medium through the original independent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman: Vasquez's high school student newspaper published a number of his comic strips featuring Johnny C, titled Johnny the Little Homicidal Maniac. After graduating in 1992, Vasquez became a film student at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. He also created Happy Noodle Boy while attending Mt. Pleasant. Despite having little formal artistic training, he soon dropped out of De Anza to pursue a career as a professional cartoonist. He met Roman Dirge, Rosearik Rikki Simons, and Simons' wife Tavisha at Alternative Press Expo in 1995. Dirge later became a writer on Vasquez's series Invader Zim, while Simons became a member of the show's coloring team and the voice of the title character's crazed robot sidekick, GIR. Simons also worked with Vasquez on the coloring seen in his two-issue comic I Feel Sick. By September 1996, Vasquez announced in his introductory text to the sixth issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac that he had reached sufficient success to be able to quit his day job and focus on his art. Vasquez is Mexican-American. Career Comics Carpe Noctem magazine published early one-page strips featuring Johnny in the early 1990s. In 1995, Slave Labor Graphics began publishing a series of Johnny comics after Vasquez submitted samples of his artwork to them. Vasquez's first comic, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, ran for seven issues and was collected as a