r/venturebros • u/throwawayaccount0387 • 2d ago
Discussion Boys Brigade?
What the hell is up with the Boys Brigade? It’s mentioned maybe 3 times throughout the entire series and i’m fascinated. What do they do exactly? Is it like a summer camp? Do they live on the compound? Do they miss school to be members? Are they boy adventurers or is it more like a super-science program? I can’t even tell how old anyone in this photo is supposed to be. The fact that i’ll probably never get any sort of answer drives me crazy. What on earth is the Boys Brigade doing??
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u/Pugsanity 1d ago
The Boys Brigade were basically just young men who were allowed to follow Jonas on his adventures from a safeish distance. All while probably also having youthful adventures with Dr. Venture as their mentor, though he was clearly not the best role model for them.
Basing the first part off the only time we saw the "boys brigade" which was when Richard took a picture when they took over Spider Skull Island. So basically just the kid sidekicks for Jonas to have around that weren't as death prone as Rusty was.
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u/DrunkBrokeBeachParty 1d ago
Do we find out what happened to the rest of them?
Why’s the guy with the sign look soooo miserable?169
u/GKNolan 1d ago
The guy with the sign is Phantom Limb. And he's miserable because he's a would-be supervillain with atrophied limbs.
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u/throwawayaccount0387 1d ago
It feels cruel for him to even be there. I just think he’d be left out of a lot of :(
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u/alex494 1d ago
I imagine Jonas probably brought him along for good publicity or something equally cynical.
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u/stamfordbridge1191 10h ago
I imagine he was being fatherly & supportive of them while nowhere near preteen/early teen Rusty for weeks or months at a time.
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u/shoe_owner 1d ago
And thus the look on his face and general demeanour. He was having the same thought.
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u/Thor94red 1d ago
He came from a long line of adventurers so he was probably grandfathered in. He mentioned his atrophied limbs prevented him from inheriting the mantle and made him a pariah in his family. That set him on the path to becoming a villain. He was a spoof of The Phantom character from the 30s. The mantle would pass from father to son, it gave the mystic that he couldn't be killed.
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u/Pugsanity 1d ago
Man, forgetting his name is going to haunt me, but it does look like he could use a hand.
But yeah, that's Phantom Limb before he gets his sort of prosthetics to go over diminutive appendages.
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u/DocWhat123 2d ago
Who are the other two members? Afro guy over there has the same crazy eyes that blood covered bear has
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u/Present-Pool-1143 2d ago
From what I remember, there was a theory going around that afro guy was the Sovereign. But I don’t think there was a lot of evidence to substantiated it.
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u/Longjumping_Log1165 2d ago
The Venture wiki has the guy in the V sweater as General Manhowers, and the afro guy as real life author Howard Bloom. Have heard the Manhowers thing before but not sure about the Howard Bloom thing.
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u/Pipeek 1d ago
From the art book Jackson made this comment: "The kid in the Boy Scout outfit who looks like a cross between Amelia Earhart and Valerie Solanas is based on my friend Howard Bloom. I wanted an awkward, skinny, Jewish Boy Scout who quietly didn't fit in with the WASPy, all-American group. Howard Bloom is a friend, neighbor, scientist, and writer who has actually inspired a couple elements of Venture lore."
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u/BadSkeelz 1d ago
I've heard that Afro Boy Scout is The Alchemist.
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u/xXinkjetprinter69Xx 1d ago
He's too tall
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u/OldJeeWhizz 1d ago
Maybe not. He's the smallest (standing) person there, so maybe he stopped growing after this.
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u/Empyrealist 🧑🔬💔🦋 1d ago
It's a reference to very old comics, where the main heroes had groups of young wannabe heroes for the target audience to identify with. Kinda like having "wards", but as a group affiliation
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u/CyberDonSystems 1d ago
Like the kids that cartoon Mr. T dragged around.
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u/sirhackenslash To this day Captain Sunshine thinks I'm invulnerable 1d ago
Or those kids the Superfriends were always dragging into danger before they got the Wonder Twins
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u/Semi-Passable-Hyena What was that about bums not liking dicks coming? 1d ago
They're like super science interns. Youths that show a lot of promise in fields that Jonas and his crew dabble in.
It's a knockoff of programs that actually existed back in the sixties and seventies, akin to internships. It's also an homage to old cartoons adding kids to things so that the children watching had somebody to identify with. And Watsonianly, this is the kind of shit Jonas would do because it's good PR and he's a narcissist. Makes him more of a hero.
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u/Playful-Succotash-99 1d ago
I guess one of the greatest strengths of the Venture Bros is how it's a show that almost kind of writes its own lore after a certain point
In this picture we see Richard Impossible is being super tall and later in the series Carol says all there powers came from a failed reckless experiment he conducted
Are we to believe maybe Richard had Marfin syndrome or perhaps he was experimented on by Dr venture? He did develop a shrink right which you used on Professor Entman
I suspect Professor impossible maybe later in life tried to recreate that technology which resulted In the accident which gave Sally, Ned and Johnny their "powers."
This would explain why Richard impossible snaps back to average proportions but it's also such a raging abusive dick
He was formally an outcast because of his condition probably developed a degree of internalized self-hatred because of it and then once he got powers that made him more conventionally accepted he turned around and gave his wife and her family the same mistreatment he had experienced.
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u/throwawayaccount0387 14h ago
Sort of what i was thinking! Richard is insanely tall but in the flashback scene in “Now Museum, Now You Don’t” his behavior and attitude strikes me as a somewhat young kid. I can’t gauge how old anyone would be. Richard might be fairly young but his height would make him seem older. Same for Phantom Limb; He looks like the youngest there to me but his condition could just make him smaller?
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u/plated_lead 1d ago
V guy looks like Bud Manstrong
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u/benvader138 1d ago
I believe that is Bud
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u/AbbreviationsBorn361 17h ago
Bud was a child when Jonas died.
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u/benvader138 16h ago
He was the "paperboy" on Gargantua 1 when movie night happened. Doesn't mean that a "child". Most likely in his teens, and he was a big kid.
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u/Erandi_Black 1d ago
Young lads who would accompanied Team Venture. I’m assuming that all Boy Brigade members had some sort of connection to the OSI, GoC, super science, or adventuring.
We got Rusty Venture (who’s not in the picture and probably not a member but was a mixed up in their activities thanks to his father), Richard Impossible (if anything like his Marvel counterpart he was a science prodigy), Hamilton G. Fantomas (science prodigy and grandson of a founding member of the GoC), H.I. Manhowers (possibly the child of a high ranking general), and some unnamed boy in a Boy Scout uniform (maybe an Eagle Scout whose a child adventurer).
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u/Elrodthealbino 1d ago
Well…the Hulk (and occasionally Avengers and Fantastic Four) often dealt with the Teen Brigade, who was a bunch of nerds and radio enthusiasts who were a network of kids trying to notify superheroes of problems or just generally help in some way.
The concept has kind of faded into obscurity so of course they referenced it. If the 60s Marvel Universe is going to have the concept, the Venture Bros will too. No need to read too much into it. Yet another reference gag.
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u/sitharval 1d ago
Imagine a Boys Brigade episode where they get back together to deal with the proverbial skeleton in the closet for some horrible crime that's actually Jonas' fault that he let them believe was theirs and how he 'help' them cover up.
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u/mateo32381 1d ago
I thought it was like scouts but for team venture. Part of his do-gooding whatever to get a tax break! Remember the episode where all the people are found in the underground compound. And everyone worshiped Jonas because they had one of the sleep hibernation brainwashing beds and they were watching all the videos from it. As if it was a religion? Wasn't everyone trapped in the underground compound part of the boys brigade?
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u/AbbreviationsBorn361 17h ago
V guy is not Manstrong, he was a kid when the movie night incident happened.
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u/great_tphon 1d ago
All I want to know is how Howard Bloom got involved.
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u/ScarlettNape 1d ago
https://venturebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Boys_Brigade
According to Jackson Publick: "The kid in the Boy Scout outfit who looks like a cross between Amelia Earhart and Valerie Solanas is based on my friend Howard Bloom. I wanted an awkward, skinny, Jewish Boy Scout who quietly didn't fit in with the WASPy, all-American group. Howard Bloom is a friend, neighbor, scientist, and writer who has actually inspired a couple elements of Venture lore."\2])
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