Why the hell aren’t The Venture Brothers more popular? It’s one of my favorite animated series out there and by far the leader of the Adult Swim line up. One of their anime series may get more viewers but that’s a large niche audience: dudes that want to have a photo-induced seizure while
masturbating.

We could find volumes written on marketing and programming placement and advertising, but you don’t want to read my regurgitated research and I don’t want to read what I‘d have to research. Anecdotal comparison – this is the way of comedic/lazy analysis.

IGN.com rated the top 25 primetime animated series of all time, which sounds grandiose if you forget that most of these shows are younger than the Simpsons – itself old enough to vote and screw on camera but can’t legally enjoy a bottle of Molson XXX, but sneaking Natty Lightcause it‘s cheap. Why IGN? Their geek cred is adamantine – and one of their writers would reference adamantium if they wrote that, elevating the dorkdom to vibraniumic. Many of their list are so ancient as to be culturally ingrained or completely different from the Ventures’ genre of comedy.

Old timers get excluded first, cause they’ve had decades of syndication to be awesome and feed off nostalgia like a 60-something fan boy off Ovaltine. The Jetsons are #25, about where I’d rate it as basically being the groundbreaking Flintstones in technological reverse. Points for vision though as houses for the upper middle and higher classes will likely be built on miles tall platforms to avoid the pollution, flodded landscape and minorities never shown. #3 is the Flintstones, deservedly so for being the pioneer of the cartoons for adults that aren’t pornographic genre. Just because many of its fans are dead or dying now -from their cigarette sponsers or natural causes -doesn’t detract from it’s past popularity.

Then there’s Johnny Quest at #20, one spot beneath its spoofing grandchild The Venture Brothers. I can kind of understand this since it’s so old, but can think of many better animated shows of it’s ilk like Scooby Doo (unmentioned) and it only went for one season.There are other non-comedic action series mentioned, like Samurai Jack, Star Wars Clone Wars (Samurai Jedi), Justice League (when Flash isn’t featured) and Aeon Flux (a sci-fi Euro-themed ninja porn acid trip). Though Venture does include action it’s of a decidedly comical bent (Monarch’s winged henchmen taking out attack jets by clogging the intakes with their corpses) and non-heroic (within the fictional world of the show heroes and villains are termed “protagonists” and “antagonists” for political correctness).

It’s like comparing Maxwell Smart to James Bond or Barney Fife to Vic Mackey or Grey’s Anatomy to any other medical drama in the history of television.

This leaves us with a revamped list of Venture’s direct categorical competitors ordered by IGN:
13. The Venture Bros.
12. Powerpuff Girls
11. Spongebob Squarepants
10. King of the Hill
9. Space Ghost: Coast-to-Coast
8. Home Movies
7. The Critic
6. Ren and Stimpy
5. Family Guy
4. Beavis and Butthead
3. Futurama
2. South Park
1. The Simpsons

Now that we have the enemies of Team Venture lined up, the blood shed can commence with a Patrick Warburton bellowed howl in Part Two.

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