The Venture Brothers

Characters: Dr. Venture is a celebrated scientist. His sons are fraternal twins Hank and Dean. They have a bodyguard named Brock Samson. All of them live at the high-tech compound of Doc Venture.

Premise: Dr. Venture's work takes him, his dim-witted sons and his beefed-up bodyguard all over the world. In every locale, Hank and Dean manage to attract trouble very easily.

Villains: The Monarch, The Phantom Limb, Baron Underbheit and the Orange County Liberation Front are all interested in Doc Venture's work.

Creator: Christopher McCulloch (a.k.a. Jackson) who also wrote forThe Tick, animated and live action.

Review: John Crook of Zap2It.com says,"Take the Hardy Boys, subtract several I.Q. points, drop them into Jonny Quest and give the whole thing an ironic, decidedly contemporary slant. That, in a nutshell, is The Venture Brothers, although that brief summary doesn't do justice to this wickedly funny new animated series that joins Cartoon Network's late-night Adult Swim lineup on Saturday."

Show Description: In a secret, high-tech laboratory, a famous man toils over some truly peculiar, and probably completely unnecessary, experiments. Outside, his two dimwitted sons insult each other and ride around on their motorized scooters. And an impossibly muscle bound man dreams of killing people and having sex with women, at the same time, if that’s possible.

This is the world of The Venture Brothers.

Hank and Dean Venture are fraternal twins. Hank, elder son by six minutes, considers himself to be the duo’s “jock.” The truth is, he’s not particularly athletic. Dean, an avid reader, thinks he’s the duo’s “brains.” The truth is, he’s not particularly smart.

Dr. Venture is, frankly, pretty embarrassed by his kids. They’re dull and dim, not the super-geniuses he was when he was a kid. The son of a world-famous super-scientist, the young Rusty Venture traveled the world. But now, he’s literally haunted by the spirit of his dead father, constantly reminded that he has driven the family business, Venture Industries, into the ground.

Luckily, he’s got Brock Samson. Brock is the kind of man Dr. Venture would love to be – strong, violent and catnip to the ladies. An operative of a shadowy government agency, Brock was assigned to protect the Venture family years ago. Then the agency forgot about him. Now he handles all the “man’s work” on behalf of Venture Industries – piloting the Venture Jet, “neutralizing” threats and rescuing the boys.

For a man of very little accomplishment, Dr. Venture has a lot of enemies. First, there’s the Monarch, a megalomaniac with a cumbersome set of wings, a loyal army of soldiers in butterfly costumes and a serious grudge against Dr. Venture.

Dr. Baron Ünderbheit was scarred as a youth but now wears a menacing head-to-toe suit of armor, which sports a pronounced, and deadly, underbite.