The head of the Venture clan is Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture; a former boy adventurer in the mold of Johnny Quest grown older. In spite of his name, Dr. Venture didn’t actually finish school. Nor is he much of a scientist or inventor. He has some inventions, but they’re mostly based off his father’s old ideas or somehow unsuccessful, thanks in no small part to his addiction to prescription pills and general insecurity. Apparently, a life of being kidnapped by snake men and ninjas doesn’t exactly leave one well-rounded and confident.
None of the characters so far have been the real key to the show’s success. The reason I started watching the show, and continue to watch the show, is for one guy: Brock Sampson, Venture family body guard and special agent with the Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI). His blend of nurturing caregiver mixed with psychopathic murderer, his curly blond mullet, his obsession with Led Zeppelin, and his pitch-perfect characterization by Patrick Warburton is what absolutely drives the show.Any time there’s a scene with Brock and the boys, or Brock and Dr. Venture, you’re probably in for a treat. Brock is a mash-up of James Bond, Race Bannon, and Marv from Sin City in that he always gets the girl, raises the Venture children, and is also an indestructible killing machine of the finest order. His connection with OSI is also one of the ways the show works in other interesting characters, from the actual Race Bannon to Col. Hunter Gathers (a Hunter Thompson look/soundalike turned transsexual) and Molotov Cocktease, Russian spy and Brock’s “second base only” love interest (though in true James Bond fashion, he plows his way through most of the secondary female characters mentioned on the show).
Any good collection of heroes needs a foil or two, and Dr. Venture’s main nemesis is a man known only as The Monarch. In true supervillain fashion he has an army of disposable henchmen (two of them, 21 and 24, serve as the voice of the dorky comic book fans in the audience) and a daft gimmick. In this case, The Monarch has fashioned himself after nature’s most feared predator, the monarch butterfly. That’s right, he’s got wings, an orange and black costume, and his base is a flying cocoon.
The show is nothing but references. The Venture family is a reference to the Quests. 21 and 24 make as many pop culture, 80’s music, and comic book references as any two Kevin Smith movies combined. The show’s many and numerous side characters: Jonas Venture, Jr., Rusty’s conjoined twin brother who escaped and carries on the original Dr. Venture’e legacy by being a legitimate scientist/adventurer; Dr. Orpheus, divorced father of a teenage girl and necromancer who rents a wing of the venture compound; the various villains of the Guild of Calamitous Intent (the evil counterpart to the OSI), and all the rest of the characters in the Venture world are what make the show worth watching every week. Blink and you’ll miss something.
The references can be blatant and hilarious. Take, for example, The Impossibles, a family of scientists exposed to radiation that give them powers like the Fantastic Four, but not as good. Prof. Richard Impossible is all the worst aspects of Reed Richards down to his stretchiness and his constant neglect of his wife Sue. Sue Impossible is kind of a stalker and alcoholic who can turn her skin invisible (but nothing else, so her face randomly turns into gross-looking exposed tissue. Ned is indestructible and strong but mentally handicapped; the fake Human Torch has to be kept sedated and sealed in a hyperbaric chamber because when his powers are activated, he actually screams and suffers like someone on fire would.
Ron Hogan keeps a summer home at the Venture Compound on Spider Skull Island. In spite of the name, Spider Skull Island is actually a peninsula. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi
