Jonas Venture Junior
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Venture Bros. character | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jonas Venture, Jr. | ||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
Dr. Jonas Venture, Jr. (sometimes called J.J.) is one of the supporting characters on the Adult Swim show The Venture Bros. He is voiced by James Urbaniak.
Contents |
[edit] Background and development
Although Jonas Junior is the fraternal twin brother of Doctor Thaddeus Venture, his existence was unknown to the rest of the world for forty-three years. Somehow, Thaddeus "absorbed" his brother in the womb without killing him. Possibly Fetus-in-fetu. (He may have retained some sort of primal memory of the act, as for most of the first season Thaddeus was haunted by recurring nightmares of a fetus swallowing, strangling, or otherwise harming another near-identical fetus.) Against all odds, Jonas Junior not only survived inside Thaddeus' torso for over four decades, but remained conscious enough to be aware of his brother's thoughts and activities. When he judged the time to be right, he caused Thaddeus great pain from within until doctors removed his underformed body, assuming it was a tumor. Free at last from his organic prison, Jonas quickly returned to the Venture Compound in secret and constructed an enormous robotic body for himself. He easily neutralized Brock and nearly succeeded in killing Thaddeus, but was foiled with the assistance of H.E.L.P.eR. In a rare moment of compassion, Thaddeus prevented Brock from killing Jonas and offered him half of the Venture "empire" in reparation. As the brothers made their peace with each other, Jonas agreed to take, among other assets. the X-2 (Venture Industries' research ship) and a base on Spider-Skull Island.
Jonas' body was unable to fully develop while inside his brother; standing roughly two feet tall, his appearance is similar to that of a dwarf, although his left arm is largely vestigial. After reconciling with Thaddeus, Master Billy Quizboy and Pete White fitted him with a bionic arm. Within the space of a few months (in the hiatus between the show's first and second seasons), Jonas grew his hair out to a ponytail, earned two doctorates, and generally began repairing some of the damage that Thaddeus had inflicted through incompetence upon Venture Industries. Proving himself much more capable than his twin, Jonas completed the majority of Thaddeus' contract work with the government by the time his brother returned. He also built the X-X-1, an improved version of his father's X-1 jet plane with a list of additional amenities including a fully automated autopilot mechanism.
[edit] Contrast with Thaddeus Venture
Jonas Junior seems to be nearly everything that Thaddeus is not: competent, productive, physically fit, self-confident, modest, kind, accepting, suave, and successful with the opposite sex. He is pretty much Jonas Venture in another body. Jonas Junior said that he is the son that Jonas Senior wanted to carry on his legacy, rather than Thaddeus. Despite his diminuitive stature and mechanical arm, he is almost always accompanied by one or more attractive women (of whom only Sally Impossible has appeared more than once as yet). After reconciling with his brother, his personality transformed from that of a fratricidal maniac to that of a jovial genius, while Thaddeus has remained a bitter, cynical, socially awkward recluse.
[edit] Relationships
Thaddeus' attitude towards him has changed radically, perhaps because he senses that in a short period of time, Jonas Junior has made great progress towards fulfilling the world's expectations for the son of Jonas Venture Senior (which Thaddeus had utterly failed to do in his entire adult life). By the beginning of the second season, Thaddeus had begun treating Jonas with the same contempt he displays for nearly everyone else, avoiding him whenever possible and bitterly mocking him when forced to interact with him. Jonas Junior, however, appears to ignore his brother's scorn in a good-natured manner.
Although "J.J.", as he calls himself, is much less oblivious than Thaddeus, he is not completely unflappable. While on a mission to retrieve the hidden components of a mysterious device his father built, he was confronted by a drug-crazed, bedraggled Jonny Quest. J.J. was at a loss until his colleague (an ex-"ghost pirate" captain) soothed the paranoid, ranting man with the prospect of falsified prescriptions. Jonas and the captain were later captured by Richard Impossible under unexplained circumstances; Jonas helped save the day, however, by communicating with H.E.L.P.eR. via a collar-mounted communications device. After assisting Brock in defeating Impossible, J.J. began flirting with Richard's emotionally-starved wife Sally, true to his ladies'-man personality. Eventually, Sally, Ned, and her son are seen living at Spider-Skull Island with him, he and Sally sharing a loving relationship and Ned happily hugging Jonas (hard enough to occasionally cause a 'brain vein').
While Jonas' nephews Hank and Dean seem to be mostly noncommittal towards their newly-discovered uncle so far, they retain a somewhat childish mixture of fascination and revulsion towards him due to his unconventional appearance. There have been slight hints that they share a much warmer relationship than Thaddeus does with either of them: Jonas had trusted them with the X-X-1 to find a missing piece of their father's device (a task they did so successfully), and he seemed happy to see Dean when attempting to break his brother's force-field.
[edit] Association with Team Venture
Perhaps due to Thaddeus' resentment towards him, Jonas Junior has had limited involvement with Team Venture since his emergence. This is ironic, given that he possesses what is easily the most competent scientific (and equally important, well-balanced) mind on the show.
[edit] Trivia
- Although voiced by James Urbaniak throughout the entire run of the series, there is a noticeable shift in J.J.'s voice and mannerisms between the first and second seasons. Urbaniak has stated that second-season J.J. is vocally patterned after Charlton Heston.
| The Venture Bros. | |
|---|---|
| PRESENTED IN GLORIOUS EXTRA COLOR | |
| Characters Main | Secondary |
Hank Venture | Dean Venture | Dr. Thaddeus Venture | Brock Samson | H.E.L.P.eR. | Jonas Venture Junior Dr. Orpheus | Triana Orpheus | Pete White | Master Billy Quizboy | Molotov Cocktease | Myra Brandish The Monarch | Doctor Girlfriend | #21 | #24 | Baron Werner Ünderbheit | Phantom Limb |
| Organizations Prominent | Minor |
Team Venture/Venture Industries | Order of the Triad | Monarch Henchmen | Guild of Calamitous Intent |
| Cast and crew | Lisa Hammer | James Urbaniak | Patrick Warburton | Michael Sinterniklaas | Steven Rattazzi | Paul Boocock Jackson Publick | Doc Hammer | J. G. Thirlwell | World Leaders Entertainment |
| Episodes | Pilot | Season 1 | Season 2 | Specials | Phone Calls |
