"What does the 'G' stand for?" "I don't know."

"Invader Zim" told the story of an overachieving alien from the planet Irk who tries to take over Earth, but whose attempts end in failure. So as not to be detected, he disguises himself as a human boy (though his disguise is so flimsy, one can only assume that the people around him suffered from 'Clark Kentitis'). Just as driven in his efforts to expose Zim, though no more successful, is classmate (and conspiracy nut) Dib, the only person who sees Zim for what he really is.

At the outset, the premise seemed pretty hackneyed, but eye-catching designs, fine voice work and some strong bits of dark humor won me over. However, the show wore thin after a while, with the humiliations suffered by Dib particularly insulting. Still, the fact that something like this ended up on Nickelodeon at all deserves respect. (Even with my reservations about the show, it's something of a travesty that "Zim" gets cancelled, while "The Fairly Oddparents", which also premiered nine years ago today, continues to decay with every embarrassing new season.)

All these years later, one of the show's strongest elements is still Kevin Manthei's imaginative and amusing scoring. The best tracks were compiled for a promotional CD which I am all too happy to own. As with a number of animated shows, the music was created with samples and electronics, but instead of some grating, sixth-rate Carl Stalling impression like you hear on so many shows, Manthei's work bursts with invention and more than a little cleverness.

The orchestrations are constantly surprising, shifting from suspenseful strings to cooing babies ("Baby Alien Mission"), weird woodwinds ("Tak's Theme"), pounding tympani ("One Big Video Game"), crazed fiddling ("Chicken Chase") and brooding male choir ("Rankles Wrinkle").

There are some nuggets of thematic identity, such as the psuedo-march of "Combat Montage", reprised in the end credits and the recurring use of harpsichord for Dib's sister, Gaz, in tracks like "Gaz and the Shadowhog", "Angry Gaz" (topped off with angelic voices!) and the John Carpenteresque "Gaz's Mission". What is ostensibly a motif for the Irken Empire is introduced in the low-key "In the Beginning" and reprised in "It’s On!".

Though the show seems serious at the outset, it could get downright wacky at times, as reflected in "Kitty Rally" (synthesized yowls and hopeful choir), "Carne Beat" (a bouncy hip hop beat), the bouncy "Bestest Friend", "Carnival Nightmares" (a demented waltz) "Parents Crack" (frantic strings), "GIR's Circus" (use your imagination), "It's Love" (swing-derived horns), the goofily heroic "Super Waffles" and "Meats of Evil" (whose foreboding chanting of the title seems to accentuate a fondness for pork products; see also the mad chantings of "Membrane Tests" and "Gaz and the Shadowhog").

Of course, when the occasion calls for action, Manthei goes at it in tracks like "Battle of the Planets" (with Beltrami-like horn hits!), "Bank Robber Chase", the aptly named "Drum n Thing", "Sizz Chase" and "Escape on the Pig".

Other tracks of note include the weirdly beautiful "Parents Waltz", the tense "Building Montage" (which is very reminiscent of "Building the Deathcoaster" from Army of Darkness, but it’s good nonetheless), the rousing "Zim Saves Earth" (which adopts an inexplicably Middle Eastern feel towards the end) and the exciting, horror-influenced "Zim’s Escape".

The "Source Music of Doom", taken from various episodes, makes for a nice sampler of Manthei's range and how nuts the show could get, from thrash-metal to elevator music to disco funk.

The CD is now disastrously out of print, but one should not deprive themselves of the opportunity of owning this if it comes along. It's some of the finest animated scoring of recent memory.