The Journal of Venture Studies

If you're like me, you've been eagerly awaiting the return of the Venture Bros. animated series, which has been off the air for WAY, way too long.  There were the Shallow Gravy and Halloween specials to tide us over in the last few years, but I've been longing for my Venture fix for quite some time.  Luckily, that wait is over as new episodes of the show began airing last Sunday with an extra long helping.  I'm already looking forward to next week's offering!

In anticipation of the new season, Adult Swim sponsored a publication of the Journal of Venture Studies, a semi-academic and semi-self aware electronic journal all about the inner workings of the Venture Bros.  With hours left to spare, I submitted to the journal and had one of only five articles to be accepted!  A few weeks ago, the journal went live and the network promoted it, including on their official Facebook page:

I...have no idea who that "Dan McClelland" is who commented on the post.  Anyway.

My entry to the journal is titled "'Brock...GOOD!': the Edlund Contributions to the Venture-Verse", and it's about how Edlund and the Tick influenced the Venture Bros. program.  It may seem like a cop-out, writing about the Tick when I could have delved into other areas of analysis, but hey, I guess you write what you know.

Accompanying me on this article is FUBAR co-conspirator Jeff McComsey, who added a few spot illustrations to the article and broke up some of those long blocks of text.  Jeff did a great job at capturing the animation style of the show.  The "Venturestein" head study that you see above is a thing of beauty.

By virtue of having my article accepted, I received this incredible, original animated production art cel, which is pretty much cooler than anything I could have expected.  Venture Bros. art is not an easy thing to come by, and to just have this fall into my lap was quite the serendipitous occurrence.  This particular piece features Captain Sunshine (voiced by Batman's Kevin Conroy) and Hank Venture as the erstwhile (in a few ways) sidekick Wonder Boy.  "WONDER BOOOYYY!"  How neat!  This is definitely a keeper.

If you'd like to read my article, or download the full volume, you just have to click on the following link: http://venturestudies.com/volume2.html

This was a great project to be a part of.  Hey, for the heck of it, let's see a picture of myself and Larry as Jet Boy and Jet Girl from last year's Comic-Con:

All right!