The Mantis-Eye Experiment

VENTURE BROTHERS HALLOWEEN SPECIAL -- This October on Adult Swim, the Venture Family fills your Halloween goody bag with fun-sized Truth. Created and directed by Jackson Publick and written by Publick and Doc Hammer, both of whom also provide voices for the special, the Venture Brothers Halloween Special is being animated by Titmouse, Inc.

After yesterday's speculation on season 5, Jackson was nice enough to give me some more specifics on what exactly is going on. On how the episode production pipeline is going he had this to say (emphasis mine):

Things are moving briskly over here at Venture Central/AstroBase/Titmouse. The first episode just shipped to Korea. But you're wrong about one thing--it doesn't take nine months to animate overseas. Nine months is more like the time it takes to complete an episode from initial design to final edit, so it includes pre-production. Actually, it's more like ten months, since we began design on the first episode the first week of the new year, and we'll be delivering it to the network in early October. According to our schedule--and assuming we keep to it--all ten episodes will be completed and delivered by the end of January. Which is roughly when we're supposed to premiere the fifth season.

So, new Venture Bros. to kick off the new year? Sounds like a plan! Jackson also noted that he and Doc likely will be attending all three conventions this summer (SDCC, Dragon*Con and NYCC) and they promise to show off whatever they have ready at the time. SDCC comes a little too early in production so they might not have any stuff to show off just yet, but Dragon*Con and NYCC will "maybe kinda" have some sort of trailer.

And finally, he promises that he still loves you all and will start posting art and whatever else on his LiveJournal fairly soon. Thanks, Jackson!

Astute reader '420guy' has noted in a comment thread here that Jackson left some juicy tidbits in the comments of his LiveJournal. Specifically a status report of sorts on the much anticipated (but always elusive) season 5 of Venture Bros. When asked by a loyal reader for a morsel from the season:

Sorry, man... nothing to show until the summer. We're just about to ship the first episode to Korea to be animated.

Which, to me anyway, implies you guys will get to see some stuff during convention season. The big three conventions, as always, are San Diego Comic-Con, Dragon*Con and New York Comic Con. Jackson and/or Doc are likely to make appearances at all three of them, possibly with clips and trailers.

Perhaps even more telling is the fact that the first episode was just shipped off to Korea (his comment was written on April 8th), meaning there are still a good seven or eight months before that episode is completed, which already puts us into early next year. Coupled with Jackson's other comment (in response to asking for the title of the season 5 premiere):

Sorry, but we haven't actually written the premiere episode yet. And since Doc wrote the "first" episode in the production order, I can't tell you the title. Because he totally hates when the titles get leaked.

Obviously the season can't begin until the intended premiere is completed, and even if Jackson and Doc suddenly wrote a script for it today there would still be around a month of pre-production, plus another 7 - 8 to get the animation finalized. So, my own (hopefully) educated guess is that season 5 will start sometime early next year, somewhere around March. The best I can do is speculate, though, so take that with some grains of salt.

The eBay auctions came about by accident. I kept the artwork because it represented a breakthrough for me as an artist, and because no one else on the production team wanted it. It migrated to milk crates in storage where it would have rotted away had I not noticed that fellow Venture vet Stephen DeStefano sold some of his paper Venture Bros. art on eBay. So I thought I'd have a go. Got Jackson's okay. The Venture fans are so happy to get this artwork that I feel the obligation to keep going until it's all gone.

The fate of the remaining characters depends on strong pre-orders. We will make announcements when each new character is about to go into production, whenever that may be. So in theory you may see more delays on certain characters, but eventually we hope to release them.

Okay, that's enough of that. Obviously Mantis Eye: The Original Mantis Supply Store was this year's April Fools' gag. Hopefully it was one of the less lame ones you witnessed today, on a day when the internet is traditionally completely untrustworthy. I assure you there are no legal battles going on for the name of this site.

In case you didn't know (and I doubt you do), the joke site was also based on Mantis Place, which is a real (though non-crazy) seller of real, live mantises. They also probably have more trustworthy information, mostly because I didn't make that site up. You can still check out the gag site if you like, though the Mantis Buyer achievement is no longer gettable. Thanks for visiting!