The Venture Bros. is an American animated television series which premiered on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim on February 16, 2003. The series chronicles the adventures of two dopey yet well-meaning teenage boys, Hank and Dean Venture; their emotionally insecure, ethically challenged super-scientist father Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture; the family’s bodyguard, secret agent Brock Samson; and the family’s arch-nemesis, The Monarch.

The fourth season began production in April 2008 and began airing on October 18, 2009.

Origins

Show creator Jackson Publick (a pseudonym of Christopher McCulloch) was one of the main writers for the Saturday morning animated series The Tick. Ben Edlund, creator of The Tick, has co-written two episodes of The Venture Bros. and written one full episode, “¡Viva los Muertos!”. Patrick Warburton, who played the Tick in the short-lived Fox Broadcasting Tick live-action TV series, provides the voice of Brock Samson.

McCulloch created The Venture Bros. storyline sometime prior to 2000. After working for the television program Sheep in the Big City and the live-action version of The Tick, McCulloch set to turning The Venture Bros. into an animated series. The Venture Bros. was originally conceived as a comic book story for an issue of Monkeysuit. McCulloch realized that his notes were too extensive for a short comics story and proposed that Comedy Central air The Venture Bros. as an animated series, but the network rejected it. Although the first draft of the pilot script was written in the spring of 2000, the premise was not greenlit until around the summer of 2002 by Adult Swim. McCulloch had not previously considered Cartoon Network because he “didn’t want to tone The Venture Bros. down” and was unaware of the existence of the network’s Adult Swim sub-unit. With the revised pilot, production began in autumn of that year and the pilot was first run on February 16, 2003. The first season of the series was completed in 2004 and it was added to the summer schedule in August.

DVD releases

The first season of The Venture Bros. on DVD was released on May 30, 2006, as officially announced by Warner Home Video.[11] It coincided with the June 25 premiere of the second season. Originally, it was scheduled for March 14, 2006, but was delayed until May 30, 2006. The DVD packaging and interior art was created by comic artist Bill Sienkiewicz. On May 31, 2006, the season one DVD reached #1 on Amazon’s top selling DVDs list.

The “Lost DVD Commentary”

On a June 30, 2006, LiveJournal post, Jackson Publick revealed that he and Doc Hammer had recorded a commentary track for the season one episode “Home Insecurity.” Warner Bros. chose to omit this track from the Season One DVD due to space limitations and some minor sound quality issues. Publick also stated that the commentary can be found and downloaded from Quickstop Entertainment.

Soundtrack CD

For the video release of the Season 3, a soundtrack album was also released, entitled “The Venture Bros.: The Music of JG Thirlwell”. This is the same audio CD included as a bonus with the Blu-ray version of Season 3. While the CD release was orignally made avaible at Adult Swim’s website, it was given a wide release on May 12, 2009; the vinyl LP release came out a month earlier. It can also be downloaded from the major digital retailers. The CD features 20 tracks, while the vinyl LP release is 16 tracks.