Jhonen Vasquez

He is a very private person and does not share details of his personal life with media. All that is known to the public about his personal life is that he has an older brother.

Jhonen was born and raised in East San Jose, California.

Jhonen spent his childhood in California where he attended Mt. Pleasant High School. He loved drawing from a young age and spent a lot of his time in school doodling on his sketchbooks.

He designed the preliminary sketch of what would become the character Johnny C while at school. He created a number of comic strips that were published in his high school’s newspaper.

His friends used to ask him to draw comic books for them and he created the Happy Noodle Boy on one such request from a friend. He was an avid reader of his older brother’s superhero comics and was particularly influenced by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series.

He graduated from high school in 1992 and went to study films at De Anza College. He dropped out before completing his degree.

He started working as a professional cartoonist after leaving college. He became acquainted with Roman Dirge, Rosearik Rikki and Tavisha Simons at Alternative Press Expo in 1995. These people would work with Jhonen in some of his projects.

In August 1995, his first comic book series ‘Johnny the Homicidal Maniac’ (JTHM) began appearing. The protagonist was a young man named Johnny C who is possessed by supernatural forces which make him commit a string of murders.

The JTHM ran for seven issues which were collected in the trade paperback ‘Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director’s Cut’ in 1997. The cover of the book had the logo “Z?” which refers to Question Sleep, a reference to insomnia that many of his characters suffer from.

The comic was printed in black and white and had stylized and geometric cartoon characters. One special feature of the comic was that the speech balloons would change according to the tone of the speech. Most of the characters wore T-shirts with messages.

The success of JTHM spawned the spin-off series ‘Squee!’ in 1997 which was published by Slave Labor Graphics. It revolved around an introverted and bullied kid called Squee. Four issues were published which were collected as a trade paperback book called ‘Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors’.

He is the creator, character designer and voice actor for the television animated series, ‘Invader Zim’. The protagonist is an extraterrestrial who comes from a planet called Irk. The series aimed at younger teenagers was a hit during its first season and won several awards.