The Venture Bros.is one of the best shows to come out of Cartoon Network’s iconiclate-night Adult Swim lineup. After nearly fifteen years in production, its unprecedented cancelation made the end of season seven in 2018 the accidental series finale. Now,hoping to wrap things upon a proper note, the brothers and company are back in 2023’sThe Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, which was released on August 20, 2025, and is currently available to stream.
Update July 14, 2025: This article was updated recently byAmanda Minchinfollowing the release ofThe Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart. Go Team Venture!
Initially a spoof of low-budget Saturday morningHanna-Barbera fare, the show grew into a sprawling examination of failure and growth that has become one of the most brilliant and hilarious shows of its era. In keeping with this growth, the show quickly moved beyond the boy adventurer micro-genre, drawing upon resources from across the spectrum of sci-fi and fantasy, including sources fromthe popular superhero genre. As far as caped crusaders are concerned,The Venture Bros.has gone beyond parody to become one of the best superhero shows of all time.
What Is Venture Bros. A Parody Of?
One of the best aspects of the show early on was how it took existing properties —Johnny Quest, for example — and gave them a whole new spin, taking their original characteristics and giving them anew perspective through parody.The Venture Bros.' take on “Action Johnny,” a legally distinct version of the character Jonny Quest, is a great example. A former drug addict, a fully grown Action Johnny is forced to reckon with the traumatic “adventures” he endured as a child. He is constantly searching for a healthy way to engage with his former arch-nemesis, Dr. Z.
As a child, Doctor Venture was known simply as Rusty, boy genius. He played second fiddle to Dr. Jonas Venture, Sr., his super-scientist father and leader of the original Team Venture. The original Team Venture is its own motley crew, reminiscent of many a heroic team-up, from Col. Horace Gentleman and The Action Man, to boxing legend Swifty, Aquaman knockoff Otto Aquarius, and, of course, Kano. A modern Renaissance figure, his son was little more than a nuisance with a Daphne-like penchant for getting into trouble.
Doctor Venture has since arguably taken up residence as the new leader of the group as the members of his father’s illustrious group disbanded following his death. Now the current Doctor Venture, alongside his two sons, Brock Sampson, Sergeant Hatred, Master Billy Quizboy, H.E.L.P.eR, Jefferson Twilight, and Dr. Orpheus, are what stands between the world and imminent danger. While significantly less imposing and statuesque than their predecessors, they are still a formidable, albeit comical, line of defense.
Venture Bros. Is A Superhero Show About Heroes (and Villains)
If one thing is obvious from the Team Venture roster, it’s thatVenture Bros.has drawn largely from superhero properties. Characters like Phantom Limb, the Blue Morpho, Captain Sunshine, and many, many others carry the show from super-science to superheroes. These characters didn’t just fill out of the cast, though. They mold the show’s storylines and themes.
One recurring theme throughout the series, for example, is that no one is exactly good or evil. Instead, they’re a blend of both, at any given time, on a spectrum of sorts. The most obvious example of this, and the feature that putsVenture Bros.in the upper echelons of superhero media, is the ongoing, ever-changing relationship between the show’s protagonist, Dr. Venture, and his archenemy the Monarch, who was based on the obscure Batman villain Killer Moth.
Like innumerable other hero-villain pairings, the two characters function as warped reflections of one another. Doctor Venture is just as likely to head unethical experiments as the Monarch is to kidnap is the good doctor’s children. In fact, how and when the Monarch does so, in an increasingly elaborate fashion, becomes a running trope throughout the course of the series. Haunted and inextricably linked by their personal and familial histories, Dr. Venture and the Monarch circle one another for years.
Related:Why HBO’s Harley Quinn Is Perfect for Venture Bros. Fans
As the series went on, audiences got a glimpse into the highly bureaucratic systems set in place to match heroes and villains. Arguably one of the more comedic aspects of the series came from the Monarch’s Henchmen, who are known simply by number. Their squabbles over simple working conditions, paired alongside the bureaucratic nonsense of running a superhero facility, made for some seriously funny moments.
The rivalry between the Monarch and Dr. Venture, however, goes beyond this. It’s a deeply personal relationship, both antagonistic and co-dependent, with intergenerational roots. When, late in the series, the show reveals the pair to be brothers, it adds an almost mythic dimension to their mediocre, failure-filled conflict. In the end, these two B-List characters are perfect for each other.
Venture Bros. Reinvents the Heroes of the Past
There was also freedom within the show to“cast” iconic figures, from Henry Kissinger to Allan Quatermain, into roles that call for some characteristic they share. Figures that could be forgettable, one-off characters are instead imbued with traits associated with their celebrity corollary.
Quartermain is a good example of this. The protagonist of H. Rider Haggard’s 1885 novelKing Solomon’s Mines,Quartermain was a famous fictional characterin Victorian times. The character was later taken up by Alan Moore forThe League of Extraordinary Gentlemenand played by Sean Connery in the 2003 film adaptation. He appears inVenture Bros. as Colonel Horace Gentleman. The history of Quartermain in novels and comics, and the reputation of Connery, especially in his later, more cantankerous years, all serves to give a relatively minor character an immediate, rich, and deeply unique texture, one that is equal parts flawed.
Related:Superhero Characters Who Need Their Own Animated TV Shows
Another example of this is the show’s use of David Bowie. Early in the show’s run, a character named the Sovereign was introduced. A high-ranking member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, the Sovereign turned out to be the latest in a long line of shape-shifting villains. Rather than leave it at that, though,Venture Bros.went on to reveal that the Sovereign was, in fact, David Bowie.
Later episodes would cast doubt on whether the Sovereign was, in fact, the real David Bowie. However, the deed had already been done. Furthermore, the Sovereign isn’t just a standard-issue shape-shifting bad guy. He’s a metaphor, a shape-shifter in the way Bowie was, constantly reinventing himself throughout his career. The use of Bowie’s well-known persona provides the character with instant familiarity. The linkage of his creative restlessness with actual supernatural powers provides a new perspective on a common superhero trope.
This freedom to use and reinvent characters with long, well-known histories connectsVenture Bros. to superhero media at a structural level. Infusing its characters and their relationships with strange, unexpected details made for fleshed-out characters that were relatable for a whole new audience. A shared cultural awareness of famous characters, both real and fictional, provided a shorthand that the creators use to infuse their fictional world with tremendous depth and complexity.
The Venture Bros. Updates Its Characters For A Modern Audience
Reissues of comics are meant to introduce a whole new audience to a character or update a character for the modern day. This show uses a unique approach to characterization to reinforce the same point. Just as comic book writers take up a character with years or even decades of past exploits and attempt to make it their own, the show’s writers allowthe failures of the pastto shape the ongoing identity of the series.
One example of this is Dr. Mrs. Monarch. Initially referred to in the first two seasons as Dr. Girlfriend, this character served solely asa femme fatalehenchwoman/side piece to Dr. Monarch. As the series progressed, however, she was not only given a name (albeit her husband’s) but she was invited to join the Council of 13, which was the previously disbanded Guild of Calamitous Intent… Superhero bureaucracy at its finest! She would go on to serve as the sole provider while her husband and his one remaining Henchman are forced to start over. In choosing to revisit the well-established nature of characters and turn preconceptions on their head for a new audience is what makesVenture Bros.the modern animation classic that it is today.
Venture Bros. Have Grown With Superheroes
The Venture Bros.premiered on Adult Swim in 2003 and ran until 2004. This was about the time that superheroes were truly entering the mainstream with the release of films likeX2: X-Men United, Hulk, Spider-Man 2, Punisher, andCatwomanhappening within its original run. The series then became a constant fixture of the Adult Swim line-up and now has been airing alongside the superhero domination of pop culture. It has been there through the Christopher NolanDark Knighttrilogy, the birth, and culmination of the MCU Infinity Saga, and the beginning of superhero television like The Arrowverse embracing the more colorful Silver Age story the Venture Bros. spoofed.
When the series was canceled in 2018, superheroes were more popular than ever before, with films likeAvengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2, Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Venom, andAquamandominating that year’s box office. Yet its return with a feature film to close out arrives in 2023, as there has beenrumbling about the genre’s fatigue. This might have been the perfect time for the series to take a bow. It can be said it benefited from the superhero boom and also helped make the genre more popular, and now it gets to leave just when the genre might be seeing it’s glory days behind it.
