It's the show too weird & wild for Nickelodeon - the earth-shattering second volume of Jhonen Vasquez's INVADER ZIM: progressive stupidity. Before we indulge in this latest 2 DVD set, a quick re-cap seems to be in order for those just wandering in and wondering what the hubbub is all about…

The Irken Empire has launched "Operation Impending Doom 2". The leaders, the Almighty Tallest, send the greatest Irken invaders to infiltrate planets, find their weaknesses, and prepare them for conquest by the approaching Irken Armada. Fortunately for Earth, the Almighty Tallest send the bane of their existence to Earth in hopes they'll never see him again, the cosmically inept ZIM. With his moronic robot companion Gir, Zim reaches our planet, disguises himself and his base, and decides to study Earth ways by attending school. There, he confronts paranormal fanatic Dib, the only kid who believes Zim is an actual alien. It's invader vs. human, but nobody else around really seems to care…

INVADER ZIM Volume 2 continues much the same it's predecessor, with Zim and Dib facing off in various situations and Gir causing confusion everywhere. However, this set includes more of the Almighty Tallest and fellow Irkens, more of Dib's sister Gaz and father Professor Membrane, weirder predicaments, utter chaos, new alien races, space battles, several destructions of Earth, and Gir causing confusion everywhere. Whew. There are two special half-hour episodes included in this set:

HALLOWEEN SPECTACULAR OF SPOOKY DOOM - Zim's first Halloween on Earth has him totally freaked by the 'candy-zombies". Dib fools around with his father's experiments; the result is Dib keeps switching between our world and an alternate nightmare reality. In that nightmare world, the monsters want to use Dib's head in order to invade our dimension! Needing Irken technology to stop his jumps, Dib goes to his archenemy Zim for help. Of course, they both wind up in the nightmare world. As the monsters prepare to conquer our reality, they make the mistake of making Zim mad…

BATTLE OF THE PLANETS - The Almighty Tallest thanks Zim when they conquer their first planet - it's because he wasn't there to screw it up. The Tallest contact Zim and ridicule him further in front of the assemble Irkens; Zim, ever clueless, believes they are praising him, of course. Zim takes a scouting trip to Mars, where he finds out it's actually a spaceship! The whole planet! Really! And Zim's gonna roll it around Earth and smoosh everybody! Dib finds out about Zim's discovery and tries to get NASA to stop him. They don't believe him, but the janitor is a fellow paranormal fanatic and rockets Dib to a second 'planet spaceship'. Yes, it's literally a battle of the planets….

Notable regular episodes include:

PLAUGE OF THE BABIES - Zim & Gir are seen 'au natural' by the baby next door, who turns out to be something else entirely!

FBI WARNING OF DOOM (my fav) - Zim must return Gir's overdue video, but doesn't count on "Slab" Rankle, world's foremost mall security guard.

FUTURE DIB - Zim's plan to sabotage Prof. Membrain's latest invention is in jeopardy when Dib teams up with a future version of himself. Or does he?

HOBO 13 - Sent to a planetoid for "further training", Zim proves what kind of leader he is. Lousy. Guest-voice by R. Lee Ermey as (what else) the D.I.

WALK FOR YOUR LIFE - Zim's variable temporal field experiment blows up, ruining his Irken 'Probing Day' review and leaving him to deal with a very slow problem…

LICE - Lice invade the school! The militant Countess needs something to fight the lice queen, and ponders why Zim is strangely unaffected…

BOLOGNIUS MAXIMUS - The absolute weirdest episode. All I'll say is you'll never look at lunch meat the same way again…

Stylistically, INVADER ZIM volume 2 continues the looks of the original: bold dark colors, exaggerated characters, lots of spiffy effects (especially in space), and the requisite gross-outs. The writing continues to be uneven; some episodes are full of new and interesting details, others continue in the established Zim/Dib mode (which is not to say they aren't good, just not really good). There are even two episodes without Zim: one featuring Dib failing miserably to legitimize paranormal investigation and the other about game-crazy Gaz. Again, not bad in and of themselves, but Zim (and Gir - the wife likes Gir) is the reason I watch. The best parts are when Zim goes totally bananas, creates tons of havoc, is just about to succeed, and then does something stupid to defeat himself. The picture quality is very good, the colors fill the screen and the images are very clean, Audio is very good as well, with a great theme and supportive incidental music. If you're a fan of the first volume of INVADER ZIM, then it's more of the same thing, baby. And that's a good thing.

Media Blasters have released INVADER ZIM Volume 2 with the same extras found on the initial set. There's optional Spanish audio, unreadable (for filthy humans anyway) Irken subtitles, animatics (the initial drawings used for the animators), and most episodes commentary available. Bear in mind the cast commentaries are quite chaotic, but there's interesting bits of behind the scenes info if you listen patiently.

INVADER ZIM is one of the most unique, clever cartoons in the history of the genre. There are episodes that will have you howling at the screen, and even the not as strong shows have enough interesting and creative 'stuff' to make them worth your watching. Zim is the man! (err…I mean, Irken…)