The Venture Bros.: Go Team Venture!

One of the best things about The Venture Bros. is the impressive cast of characters. Creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer increase the world of the Ventures every season, and yet they are still able to, for the most part, keep the main characters in focus (in the third season, the focus shifted somewhat from the Venture family to the world itself, but more on that in a later post), and although not every minor character is fully developed, most of the principals are developed well beyond the initial jokes that introduced them.

In the first season, most of the characters were defined by comic book and/or Saturday morning serial stereotypes. Hank and Dean Venture, the titular brothers, are extremely naive and innocent, and they speak with a 1950s sitcom vocabulary (gee whiz). Their father, Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture (though he doesn't actually have a doctorate degree) is a "super-scientist" who is following in the footsteps of his great father, Dr. Jonas Venture. The Drs. Venture invent things like robots, death rays, hover bikes, shrink rays, and experimental supersonic jets. Or at least, Jonas invented them and Rusty sells them to stave off bankruptcy. Rusty tries to pass himself off as a great scientist and humanitarian, but he is really a heartless bastard who will do pretty much anything to make a buck. He once held a yard sale for supervillains where he sold a lot of his dad's old inventions. Their bodyguard Brock Samsom is an invincible muscleman who always finds a way to save his "family" from impossible odds. Brock can singlehandedly take down an entire room of people trying to kill him without getting a scratch. He cares for the Venture boys, but when enraged, he can't control who gets the brunt of his anger, and his friends know to steer clear. On the other side of the law, The Monarch, the archnemesis (in his eyes) of Dr. Venture, has a rather silly origin story that is (somewhat) familiar to comic book readers. As a child, his parents were killed in a horrible accident, and he was subsequently raised by monarch butterflies. He honors his adoptive family by dressing as a giant butterfly. He hates Dr. Venture with a passion, but can't really explain why. His parents were rich, and he inherited a huge trust fund, so he doesn't have to work, so half the reason he acts as a villain (I will get into the show's hilarious construction of villains in the post about organizations) is because he has nothing else to do. He is dating a (very deep-voiced) woman known as Dr. Girlfriend, and has an inexhaustible supply of incompetent henchmen.

There are numerous supporting characters on both sides of the "fight" (though very few are exactly good or evil). Dr. Orpheus is a necromancer who lives with the Ventures, and he has a penchant for being overly dramatic. In the second season, he forms a group called the Order of the Triad with a Blade-like character who refers to himself as a blacula hunter and an alchemist (known as The Alchemist) who is researching an AIDS cure. Peter White and Billy Quizboy are old friend of Rusty who tried to start a technology business, but ended up living together in a trailer in the desert. White is an albino who is obsessed with the 80s, and Billy is a man who never hit a growth spurt and has a giant head. The two of them often show up to try and make some money off of the Ventures' predicaments. Two of the Monarch's henchmen form a bit of a comedy team; they tend to comment on stuff going on around them (and they become self-aware of their near-invincibility in the third season) and engage in nonsensical debates (such as arguing over whether Lizzie Borden or Anne Frank would win in a fight, or whether smurfs are mammals or egg-laying creatures). Molotov Cocktease combines elements of Marvel's Black Widow and inappropriately named Bond villains. She and Brock have an intense love-hate relationship that involves them trying to simultaneously fuck and kill each other.

This will be extended upon in the themes post, but while the various characters have their different motives, they are all united by one thing: failure.

Up next: The bureaucracy of good and evil...