I don’t know about you, but I inhaled the entire line of Hardy Boys books back when I was a kid. We’re talking more than a hundred books here, but of course, they were the literary equivalent of popcorn–you could just go through them by the handful. I also grew up watching the adventures of Jonny Quest. This meant that I was especially vulnerable to the fantastic mindgrope that this series provides. The tale of Hank and Dean Venture, their surly science-adventurer of a father, their Zep-loving Swedish murder machine of a bodyguard, and their robot assistance/babysitter, was almost custom made to poke holes in the psyche of people like myself.
However, not content to screw with those adventure archetypes, Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer take stereotypical supervillains, costumed henchmen, a certain sorcerer supreme, a certain armored archenemy, and countless others, and pour them into the demented cuisinart that sponsored the Venture-verse, for lack of a better term. It’s like what you would get if Astro City had been devised while on lots of lithium. In other words, it’s the comic book you wish somebody was publishing. Anybody was publishing.
My favorite Adult Swim show has hit DVD with a healthy array of features destined to pry the coin from you. You get all thirteen episodes plus the pilot episode and the incredibly strange Christmas bit, “A Very Venture Christmas.” Commentary tracks are available on five episodes, including the pilot, plus twenty minutes of behind-the-scenes footage from the supposed live action film, which is actually pretty terrifying.
You’re going to want this if nothing else to refresh your memory before you have to deal with the second season. You know, and this. Even if you’re content to watch reruns on Adult Swim, you’re going to want the bonus bits. Trust us on this. The triptych of the main characters done by Bill Sienkiewicz inside the DVD is worth the price of admission. Shame they don’t have prints of those for sale.
