Voice actor Rosearik Rikki Simons spoke to a packed house Sunday afternoon on Dec. 11, inside the Scottish Rise Masonic Center at Sac-Con in Sacramento, California.
Sac-Con brought together fans of comic books and animation that day. Simons, who voiced the character GIR on the animated series “Invader Zim,” was one of a few notable guests who attended the convention, including Jhonen Vasquez, the series’ creator, and other voice actors who comprised the cast.
“Invader Zim” originally aired on Nickelodeon from 2001 to 2002 for two seasons. The cartoon told the story of Zim, an alien who comes to earth to conquer it, and he’s aided in his schemes by GIR, his robot servant. Although “Invader Zim” garnered a sizeable audience during its original run, Nickelodeon canceled the series because it cost too much to produce at the time. There have been plans to revive it since then but none have come to fruition.
Simons didn’t feel like giving a long speech, so he opened the panel up to questions right from the start
“Usually when I do panels, I let people ask questions because I’m lazy,” he said.
His answers revealed quite a bit about his career and his work on “Invader Zim.” According to Simons, he painted 700 backgrounds for “Zim,” and did more for “The Jackie Chan Adventures.” His wife Tavisha Wolfgarth-Simons also painted “Zim” sets. He’s a go-to guy for random comics and animation gigs, and he’s been an extra in movies, including the movie “Argo,” directed by Ben Affleck, which comes out in 2012.
“I got beaten up by 50 people,” he said of his “Argo” work. The punishment took 17 takes.
Simons gets called back for voice work for GIR for media tie-ins, but he feels like the network should just revive the show if they want to use the characters so much. He was about to try his hat at being a writer for the show during its original run, but "Zim" was canceled before he could script it.
Ten years later, he’s happy the characters have fans. “It’s an interesting thing to see how the show still finds love here and there.”
He gets a lot of fan art from people, but some “Zim” lovers have showed TOO much adulation, like a girl who bit him at a fan event in Florida while he was signing something.
According to Simons, “Zim” was the first animated Nickelodeon show to use computers and 3D, which was why it was so expensive back then.
GIR had so few lines over the series’ run that it all seemed like one giant episode in Simons’s memory. He shouted a high-pitched line to the audience that stuck out in his mind, “Dance with me into oblivioooon!” to much laughter and applause.
Simons said he has a tiny GIR shrine at home, and the items included a stuffed GIR and some GIR figurines. He also has a GIR on his car dashboard.
“I wish they would make more talking things with GIR… because then I’d make more money,” he said.
Nickelodeon almost brought the show back in 2009, as Simons recalled, and Vasquez was onboard, but then plans were dropped mysteriously. Simons doesn’t know of any efforts to bring “Zim” back today. He figured that the company makes enough money from licensing the characters as it is, so decision makers probably don’t see the need to revive it.
He started his career in the 1990’s as an actor and then got into background painting as well later. He auditioned for GIR because producers thought it would be a minor role, but GIR evolved into a prominent character. Simons was the only guy in the cast with dual roles — as painter and voice actor — except for Vasquez, who was spread all over the place as the show’s creator.
But Simons still gets frequent entertainment work aside from Zim-related projects. He was set to color backgrounds for the Cartoon Network show called “Petzor the Destroyer,” and the show was ready to go to pilot, but then the network changed programming strategies and scrapped it. If it were up to Simons, he’d do something involving puppets or stop motion animation.
Simons keeps busy in his spare time. He’s played MMORPGs with Vasquez, and he had to give them up because he spent too much time on them. He’s watched all of the new “Dr. Who” series, and the Eleventh Doctor is his favorite.
The panel ended after about 45 minutes, and Simons departed to sign autographs.
Fans can learn more about him and his work by visiting www.rikkisimons.com, where Simons sells his own novels and comics, including His Three Legged Cat, Sad Circus, Hitherto a Lion and the six-volume ShutterBox fantasy series he co-created with Tavisha.