The Mantis-Eye Experiment

Introducing the latest entry in my ever growing series of interviews with Venture Bros. co-creator Jackson Publick. Jackson was nice enough to let me ask all the tough questions nobody asked at Comic-Con including a bunch of stuff on season 5 and some convention-specific stuff.

In the biggest news, however is on the season 5 premiere, which Jackson revealed, in a Mantis-Eye World Exclusive, will be a full hour-long episode. He also cleared up any remaining confusion over the Halloween special's format (it's 22 minutes and part of the 10-episode season) and answered many more questions that I should probably know better than to ask at this point. Read the SDCC Wrap-Up Interview with Jackson Publick to find out all the details!

• Sirk TV On-The-Scene Interview - Has a lot of clips from the show interspersed with Jackson and Doc talking about their writing process which involves gold tablets and a big board and a wax imprint of Doc that looks like he's kissing Jackson (but isn't!). Yup.
  
  
• Comics Online Interview - Comics Online's Kroze has his yearly interview/hugging session with Doc Hammer. There's a lengthy embrace and some rubbing, as you might expect. I'm sure there's an interview and some questions in there too somewhere. Maybe even some answers!
  
  
• Girl Gamer TV has a short interview that is much calmer than the others and with less meandering insanity, which may be good or bad, depending on your viewpoint.
  
  

Adult Swim was extra quick and extra generous in getting their SDCC panel videos up this year, putting up a full 38 minutes of the Venture Bros. panel. Click the link to watch or check out the embedinated version below!

Jackson Publick: We expand the background stories of the characters from the OSI. The hardest thing about making up a name for a [fake] G.I. Joe guy is that all of the stupid names are actually taken by G.I. Joes.

Doc Hammer: Every time I come up with one, I think "Oh, this is so ridiculous!" Then I go on Wikipedia to check and they've done that one already. Who knew? The names we came up with are good because the dumb ones are actually G.I. Joe characters. Like "Headshot." That's a hot one!

• Spinoff Online has a nice write-up that gets into many of the details of the panel. Until an official video comes out this is a pretty good one to read to get all of the Jackson and Doc banter we all know and love. Just read it in their voices in your head.
  
  
• Geeks of Doom has a short write-up with listings of the special guests and a couple of photos from the panel as well.
  
  

For those of you, like me, who didn't attend SDCC this year but what to know what the heck is going on with Venture Bros., here's a rundown of all the goings ons.

The biggest news is that the previously announced long-form episode will be a one-hour special that airs between seasons five and six. Season five will end likely in March or April (depending on when it starts) but no news on how soon season six will begin after that.

Geeks of Doom has also reported on (among other things) some of the special guest voices for season five:

Several guest stars were announced for the upcoming season. J.K. Simmons will guest star in the Halloween special. Other guest voices for the season include Aziz Ansari, John Hodgman, Tim Meadows, Gillian Jacobs, and Paget Brewster.

Finally some more into about the Halloween special: it will actually take place after the season five premiere, so there will be a lot of confusing moments in it. This misordered timeline doesn't seem to be entirely intentional on Jackson and Doc's part, but they also seem to be pretty okay with it at this point. Jackson described it as a "happy accident" in at least one interview.

And, as always, keep checking back for any new info, interviews and that sort of thing.

Since there are usually a ton of these I'll just create this article and add to it over the next couple of days. If you want to see reporters ask Jackson & Doc questions for two or three minutes in front of a huge Comic-Con backdrop in a crowded press/interview area, this is the place to be!

• Grace Randolph of Bleeding Cool has the first interview with Jackson & Doc, questioning them about the Halloween special and Henchman 21, among other things. Thanks to Robert in the comments for pointing this one out!
  
  
• MTV Geek interviewed Jackson and Doc on their livestream. You'll need to skip to precisely 54:58 on the video to see it. It's a fairly meandering interview and the interviewer is slightly obnoxious but Doc at least threatens to Indian leg wrestle him, which pretty much saves it. Thanks (again) to Robert for sending this one in.