A meeting of the evil minds in Venture Bros. All images © Adult Swim/Cartoon Network.

Adult Swim's half-hour comedy/action series The Venture Bros. has come a long way since its Flash-animated pilot first aired in February 2003. The story of Dr. Thaddeus Venture, a self-centered super-scientist, his two sheltered teen-detective sons Hank and Dean, and their hyper-violent bodyguard Brock, the pilot saw Dr. Venture presenting his latest invention to the U.S. while Brock deals with his archenemy, a butterfly-themed villain called the Monarch. The show started out as a goof on'60s adventure cartoon Jonny Quest, but when it came time to expand on the pilot, co-writers Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer wisely elected to move beyond that.

"We fell in love with different dynamics of the characters," said Hammer, who edits the show and does special visual effects in addition to the writing and voice acting duties he shares with Publick. "I mean, you can only do a parody of Jonny Quest once and then you take all those characters in that Quest-ian world and let it become its own world with its own laws."

Along with its ever-expanding world, the show has also made great strides creatively with each new season, starting with the move to hand-drawn animation for season one and then incorporating more detailed backgrounds and improved character designs for season two.

"Every season has been about getting it closer to what I imagined originally and stripping away some of the limitations over the years," said Publick, who also serves as the show's director. "Even in the pilot, the backgrounds had a painted look to them and we had to ditch that for the first season because it was deemed too labor-intensive to pull off for 13 episodes. And then we got better painters after that and they went, 'Oh, sure, we can paint all these.' So we were actually putting it back to what it was supposed to be."

The most dramatic change came with season three, though, which was produced and aired in high-definition and consequently is the first Adult Swim DVD to also come out on Blu-ray (which comes with a CD soundtrack featuring music from all three seasons). Both are set for release on Tuesday.

The show started as a spoof of Jonny Quest, but the creators had to go beyond that to extend the life of the story.

It's also the show's first release that will be totally uncensored and it's the first to feature commentary on every single episode. (According to Publick: "There are people who love them and there are people who rightfully think that they're pretty terrible.")

"I was really surprised, actually, that they would spring for a Blu-ray release," Hammer said. "We just knew that we wanted it to be on HD someday and that we would like it to be broadcast on TV that way someday, but I didn't expect a disc."

Taking their cue from the first two seasons' pre-credit sequences, which used a faux-letterboxed scene to set each episode in motion, Hammer and Publick produced the third season entirely in widescreen format, which worked out well when the network chose to air it that way.

"Stylistically, I think we've always tried to be as cinematic as possible," Publick added. "I'm influenced more by movies than cartoons. That's kind of what I tell every storyboard artist who works for us: 'I know that it's just two idiots talking in a room, but go watch a movie and you'll see that it's so different from the way it's shot for animation.' You know, more interesting compositions, tighter close-ups."

That cinematic feel will be carrying over to the show's fourth season, which Adult Swim recently announced would begin airing in November. In addition to the regular voice cast, the season will feature such returning guest voices as Brendon Small (Home Movies, Metalocalypse) and H. Jon Benjamin (Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, Home Movies, Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil) and one-off appearances by Kevin Conroy (who didn't need to be encouraged to sound more like Batman, according to Hammer), Seth Green, John Hodgman and Patton Oswalt.

"Seth's another Adult Swim guy and he's a fan of the show," Publick continued. "Hodgman's a friend of ours. Patton Oswalt's a friend of a friend and a big fan, so I think we can get those guys again. I don't know if we'll have them again; we'll see. We'll have to see how their characters work out."