go team venture!

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posted by tom / October 18, 2004 /

Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Saturday night, replayed at various times, etc etc. Superficially, it's a parody of Johnny Quest -- you remember, that crappy old cartoon featuring the adventures of the precocious son of a globe-trotting super-scientist, aided by his bodyguard, dog, and occasionally-mystic Indian friend. Except for the Indian kid and the dog, the template is roughly the same. Also, Johnny has been split into twins: Hank and Dean Venture.

The hyperbolic exaggeration you'd expect is there. The bodyguard is a unstoppable killing/sex machine. Dr. Venture's super-science research tends to be a lot more profit-oriented and ethically dubious than Dr. Quest's ever was. Venture's arch-nemesis is The Monarch, a megalomaniac who presides over a butterfly-themed criminal empire. It's funny stuff, but not something I would recommend to people who aren't enthusiastic about cartoons in the first place (girls). If you care about this stuff, its pedigree is a good one -- it's created by some of the people responsible for The Tick.

But in the last couple of weeks the potential depth of the show has been revealed. The real genius of the series is that Dr. Rusty Venture is himself a grown-up boy wonder -- like a middle-aged Johnny Quest, but without the copyright infringement. He's following in the footsteps of his own super-scientist father, a guy who by all accounts was a broad-chested, brilliant and virtuous demigod. In comparison, scrawny, bald, beady-eyed Rusty spends most of his time selling off his dad's scientific legacy and popping "diet pills".

Grandpa Venture is long dead, but his sidekicks are still around, albeit mostly in retirement communities. Still, when they spring into action it's obvious that the good old days really were pretty damn good -- the villains were more villainous, the earth needed saving on a weekly basis, and things were simple. That's not the case anymore.

This new generation of heroes and villains is casting about for a purpose, battling ennui as much as each other. Why has The Monarch devoted his life to building a butterfly-themed kingdom? Not world domination -- "I'll leave that to the Republicans and the religious nuts," he says. Really, he's just intent on destroying one unsuccessful scientist, and he has no idea why. When he breaks into Dr. Venture's compound the greatest havoc he can think to wreak is using the bathroom without flushing the toilet, crying, "Let them see the wrath of The Monarch!" Dr. Venture, in turn, is haunted by his early peak as a boy wonder, and by the shadow of his father.

Increasingly frequent flashbacks have been developing a complex backstory showing how we got to the present state of affairs. We've seen all of the main characters coming of age together, developing grudges over dormroom games of Dungeons & Dragons that later blossom into conflicts involving femmebots and rocket-propelled robotic coffins. There's enough history thrown into the narrative to make the show character-driven rather than just a shallow parody of a cartoon that nobody liked in the first place.

I didn't see all this coming from the pilot that ran over the summer. At the time, I just thought a show that featured violent fistfights with mummies, ninjas and a crocodile was pretty funny. But this series is coming along nicely, and although it hasn't been on-target all the time, it's becoming clear that there's some serious imagination behind it, working at a couple of levels. If you have a chance, try to catch an episode.