Superhero Media: The Venture Bros. - Season 2

IGNORE ME! The world's greatest animated action/adventure/comedy/coming of age programme, The Venture Bros. explodes into its second season with the startling revelation that Hank and Dean are clones, the originals having died repeatedly through misadventure and, once, a gas leak; the silent killer. With the Monarch in prison and a new set of boys cooking in the vats, things look set to return to normal shortly, which means a great time for us, the audience. The second season of The Venture Bros. is bigger, better and bolder, expanding the setting, dipping into the histories of some of the characters and hinting at bigger conspiracies in the world. Now, The Venture Bros. has that same quality as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in that, in retrospect, it looks like a great deal of the series has been planned ahead of time, but probably wasn't really. 

Throughout the series, several characters that will become major players later on make their first appearance, such as Sergeant Hatred, Action Johnny and Hunter Gathers, as well as getting Doctor Orpheus his own team and bringing in the astoundingly-entertaining Doctor Henry Killinger and his Magic Murder Bag. God, I swear I could just list character names and episode plots to demonstrate how great The Venture Bros. is, even some of the one-liners are classics, like "Brock Sampson, slayer of men, slayer of hench-men" and "I hunt and kill black Draculas, I don't know what the PC term for that is". The pasts of Brock, Doctor Girlfriend and Phantom Limb get visited, though quite a bit still remains a mystery (and will until Season 7 and beyond, for the record), which I like, as James Howlett is way less interesting than Logan, know what I mean? 

Watching back though season 2 of The Venture Bros., I was a little shocked with how brutal the programme can be at times, no I don't mean jokes like cutting open the corpse of Edgar Allan Poe for a Star Wars reference, but some of the violence can be extreme. This is toned down in later seasons, but does serve to remind that The Venture Bros. is the product of a small team; much the same as the animation. For the most part, the animation is greatly improved over the first season, a scene where Brock is throwing knives is brilliant, but there are still glaring mistakes if that kind of thing bothers you. What's crazy is just how much better The Venture Bros. gets, even after this high watermark. By the time you realise how much you care about the characters, you'll be a few seasons in and it's too late, you have to keep watching. Don't wait for my reviews here, go check out more of The Venture Bros. now. IGNORE ME!