Co-creator of The Venture Bros. Jackson Publick was kind enough to update everyone on the status of the upcoming fifth season of the show. And while we'll be waiting a little longer than expected for the premiere -- March or May, due to the production of the first hour-long episode last -- we were treated to some preview screen shots and a list of special guest stars!

Publick posted the images on his Tumblr and LiveJournal, where he provides his semi-regular updates on all things Venture, as well as some things non-Venture. And as we get a little bit closer to the fifth season finally hitting the airwaves, he has more to tell us, including an array of new and returning guest stars: "J.K. Simmons, Larry Murphy, Paget Brewster, John Hodgman, Wyatt Cenac, Tim Meadows, Gillian Jacobs, Bill Hader, and the kicking-ass-on-SNL-this-season Kate McKinnon!" Hodgman, Hader, and McKinnon have all appeared before, but J.K. Simmons, Tim Meadows, and Gillian Jacobs doing voice work should be something to really, really look forward to this season. I don't even want to know what kind of parts they'll be playing. I want to be delightfully surprised.

But that's not even all Jackson (aka Christopher McCulloch) had to share with us. In addition to revealing that he's seen every episode of the fifth season (and that it all looks "great"), he also mentioned a long-form episode tying not just the fifth and sixth seasons together, but any loose ends from the previous four seasons, "and start a few new ones in the process." He also said they're hoping to have less of a waiting period between seasons (like the two-year wait we're currently enduring, excluding the two stand-alone specials), but I'll believe that when I see it. (Personally, I'm happy to wait for an amazing season for a long time than settle for a mediocre season that was rushed.)

Here are a couple of the new screen shots, which feature many appearances by dinosaurs!

For more screen shots, visit Jackson's Tumblr page or his LiveJournal, Publick Nuisance.

(via Venture Bros. Blog

All images via Jackson Publick

Ask any fan of Adult Swim's The Venture Bros. and they will tell you this: it has been a long time since we saw a new season of The Venture Bros. Yes, we were treated to the one-shot mockumentary episode "From the Ladle to the Grave: The Story of Shallow Gravy" and its music video climax "Jacket" last August. But some of us were hoping for a little more following their amazing fourth season finale in November 2010. Well, boy and girl adventurers, we are in luck -- ahead of the fifth season's arrival in early 2013, we will be getting A Very Venture Halloween on Sunday, October 28 at 11:30 PM!

After a smashing panel, which featured vocal wonders Michael Sinterniklaas (and all of his hair), Paul Boocock, and a kickass sizzle reel, I caught up with show creators Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick to see if I could dig some more information out of them after asking them politely to stay a scoach later than they were planning.

So, thanks so much for hanging out! We know that you’re working on fifth and sixth seasons. Has there ever been any talk of anything full-length for theaters?

Doc Hammer: Once in awhile, yes. Nothing too serious. We play "Dream World" with it, but someone will try to talk us out of it.

Jackson Publick: At one point, I think around when the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie was coming out, there was maybe the most serious talk anybody had because they went, “Yeah. We probably only have the cred and the money to make one more, and it really should be you guys. Your show is the most suited to a feature length and that kind of visual experience." That was right about when we had been greenlit for seasons three and four. We were making season three and I said, “Well, let us make it between seasons three and four because that’ll be the best time. And season three will make people go see that, and that will make people go see season four." They said, “Nah, nah, you should make the shows we ordered first, and then we’ll talk." And then of course, it took us, like, three years to make those seasons, and it was never really spoken of again. But we keep getting to do longer episodes.

Doc: [Execs] will happily talk about it, but [they paint] this very grim picture of putting out a movie.

Jackson: [They're] not wrong.

Doc: [They're] not wrong at all. You put all this work into it and it’s all based on opening night. It’s just a movie. If it rains that night, you’re out a million dollars.

Jackson: All this stupid stuff [could happen] that makes a million dollars go down.

Doc: The reality of it is not as much fun as the idea of having a movie out there. With the straight-to-DVD thing, who knows?

You have video-on-demand, it’s accessible.

Doc: Exactly. Something for Netflix or whatever the fuck is there whenever we get around to it. Whatever that crap is.

The kids love it. Have you ever considered crossing over with another show?

Doc: I thought you asked me if me if I ever dipped in cross dressing. [Laughs] And the answer is no, I love men’s clothing. This season, we are kind of getting a little hand from the Robot Chicken people, but in a way that you’re not expecting, but you’ll really love it.

Jackson: We’ve talked with them before about actually officially doing a special together where they stop-motion-animate our characters.

Doc: I still want to. I love those guys.

Jackson: We write for their show. We all are crazy making our shows, and we never quite think of a place to do it or a great idea.

Doc: It might happen some time. It’s four very busy people.

Jackson: Yeah.

Cool! So, did everything go according to plan when you were writing? Or did something happen to the story?

Doc: Oh, it did not go according to plan! It never goes according to plan! We had all these ideas that we wanted to get into the season, and then the season just happened.

Jackson: And then production starts and we haven’t actually finished enough scripts, so then you’re really writing under the gun. Yeah, I think we gave short shrift to some things that we really meant to care more about.

Doc: It’s only so many episodes and so many minutes.

Jackson: What actually would have been our finale is now going to be its own special. There was a story too big, we ran out of episodes. We literally ran out of episodes. So we were like, oh well, shoot, that’s the ninth script. But we want to make this one a big, long one, and we couldn’t actually get the money to do extra episodes, but we already had a slot open for a special next year or something.

Is there anything in particular that got cut that really devastated you, that you thought, "I can’t believe we can’t do this"?

Doc: Sure those happen, like with the Revenge Society... We had all these ideas, we still have them and we’ll move forward with them, but you can’t just drop it in the middle of the scenes and not follow through, so we just kept leaving it out until we could do with it what we wanted, and it never occurs.

Jackson: Sometimes we do, and we’re always dropping hints about things that we may or may not pick up later. We’re always building scaffolding around things, and then sometimes not doing the work.

Doc: Yeah, sometimes when the blankets come down, the scaffolding... it's nothing.

Jackson: Sometimes it will take two seasons before some character comes back. And it’s not because we wrote him out for two seasons, it's because we forgot to write for him for two seasons.

Doc: And couldn’t fit him in the other stories that we had going.

Jackson: And odds are, he was in two or three other episodes that he got cut from, or whatever. I cut one joke this year that I still hate myself for, the one you love.

Doc: I love that joke! That was why I love this script! I laughed out loud for that joke. And I also knew that you and I would be the only people thinking that was the funniest thing on the planet.

Jackson: My favorite joke in a script I wrote, I really liked writing. There was just no room for the scene that it was in anymore.

Doc: And it wasn't really a part of the scene.

Jackson: And I couldn’t put it in any other character’s mouth. It had to be a Hank line. I was so bummed about it. [Ed. note: I am bummed that I have no idea what this inside joke is.]

Doc: Maybe you would have shanked it, just think of it that way. In the booth? Yeah, you would have shanked it.

Jackson: Oh, stop it! [Laughs]

Doc: That would have been funny.

I’ll go through these last questions really quick. Will Dean ever have sex?

Doc: Watch the show!

Got it! Has Brock ever got anyone pregnant?

Jackson: Oh, totally. [Laughs]

Doc: We’ve expressed that on the show before, and we’ll keep expressing it. Brock uses protection when he remembers.

Oh good. Good for him!

Doc: And usually if she’s totally filthy.

And this is the absolute last question: Twins seem to run in the Venture family. There’s Hank and Dean, there’s Rusty and Jonas. Is there any chance that we could ever meet Jonas Sr.’s twin, if there is one?

Doc: We do work with twins, we work with teams, and we work with murdering one of them. So will more twins happen? Of course. Will we see old Jonas Sr.? Sure. Or does he have a twin? Not yet.

Jackson: [Laughs]

Doc: You know. It’s such an assumption that you’re making that we can’t even say no! Who knows?

Jackson: We haven’t written that yet, but we haven’t not written that yet either.

Doc: Yeah.

Jackson: If you actually look into the box, it affects the experiment, so...

Doc: Yeah.

I want to thank Doc and Jackson for granting me a few extra moments this weekend and for ending on a Schrödinger's cat reference! Make sure to catch A Very Venture Halloween on Sunday, October 28 at 11:30 PM EST on Adult Swim, and watch this space for news on the new season!

“Something happens with S.P.H.I.N.X. [Ed. note: S.P.H.I.N.X.!] Something happens. You like that? And I’m not holding back. That’s all I know. I know something happens. I’m not sure what it is.”

There you have it, folks! Warburton isn't talking. At least he's not talking details. At least not any details that he knows about. But we'll know a teensy bit more next month when the Halloween special airs, and in the meantime, co-creator Jackson Publick released some stills from that special that we can all gaze upon. And honestly, who isn't happy to hear any kind of news from Venture-town, even if it contains exactly zero new information?

Patrick Warburton Teases Brock’s Storyline in Venture Bros. Season 5 [Spinoff Online]

Screenshots from season 5 in glorious extra-color [The Mantis-Eye Experiment]

Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure there is zero chance of these actually happening.

The Venture Bros. and Metalocalypse

Rather than go into the merits of how perfect this would be, I'll just go ahead and write a pitch: Brock Samson is a huge fan of Dethklok, but when he finally has the chance to go to one of their epic concerts, he has to bring the boys -- and Dermott -- with him. And, as it turns out, The Monarch is trying to bribe Charles Foster Ofdensen to divulge information about Dr. Girlfriend's past dalliances with one (or more) of the band members. If he doesn't get the truth, The Monarch will blow the concert venue to kingdom come, so Brock has to stop it while the boys get to hang out with Dethklok. In the end, everyone at the concert dies because of some mechanical malfunction caused by H.E.L.P.E.R. Boom -- YUMMY.

Adventure Time and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Both of these shows are clever and trippy enough for us "big kids," and if they joined forces, it would be the animated equivalent of dissolving Pop Rocks in Mountain Dew. Which sounds gross, and I wouldn't touch the stuff, but I would look at it! I'm probably not the only one who would stop everything to watch the Ponies infiltrate the Land of Ooo while Princess Celestia did science experiments with Princess Bubblegum in the Candy Kingdom. But the biggest selling point for an Adventure Time-MLP mashup would be how the fantastical tones of both could allow for either show to take on either animation style. Even in the same episode. If that isn't a recipe for delightful, colorful, and whimsical fun, then I don't know what is.

American Dad and The Boondocks

File this one under "Won't Happen," but I'd so much rather watch this than The Cleveland Show. Especially if it's a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? parody with Hayley Smith bringing home Thugnificent while Huey hacks into the CIA and prevents World War III. What could be so fun about these two shows meeting each other is that if one show took on the style of the other, it would make for such starkly different shows -- The Boondocks as a Seth MacFarlane show would be goofy and irreverent. American Dad as an Aaron McGruder show would be fierce. Visually, turning the Boondocks characters into cuddly-looking MacFarlane characters would be a really insane contrast to the badass anime-style characters on McGruder's show.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force (or Whatever) and Squidbillies

Here is a crossover that I think is totally possible. Not only do they often air right next to each other on Adult Swim, but similarly to how H. Jon Benjamin ties Archer and Bob's Burgers together, they share a voiceover actor: Dana Snyder, who voices Master Shake and Granny Cuyler. Frylock would shoot the shit with Dan Halen. Meatwad and Rusty would get into mischief and learn important life lessons from each other while burning something to the ground. But mostly, the culture clash between suburban New Jersey and the Deepest Appalachian South would be a goldmine of material. And I'd really like to see Carl have a near-death experience and meet Squid Jesus.

Black Dynamite and The Clone Wars

This will never happen. The only thing holding this one together is that they both appear on Cartoon Network, but it will still never happen -- as much as it kind of has to. I defy you to find me one person who wouldn't like to see Black Dynamite battle Darth Maul and receive wise soundbites from Yoda in CG animation. Plus, Star Wars is originally from the 1970s, which is Black Dynamite's universe, so they're practically begging for a crossover. (Just hear me out!) Okay, so The Clone Wars is a kids' show, and Black Dynamite is profoundly not. But how could this be anything less than amazing? Something has to make this happen, somehow!

According to MTV Geek, the story will focus on how Orel Puppington became such a devout little gent as well as the circumstances of the birth of his brother, Shapey. Why is Shapey something of a mystery? Because he's Orel's half-brother. And since we know that Orel's parents, Clay and Bloberta, have a rather tenuous relationship, this probably means that we'll get a better look at the unholy goings-on outside the Puppington household.

But mostly, it's going to be a ton of fun to see exactly what made Orel become the most dangerously optimistic person ever.

'Before Orel' the 'Moral Orel' prequel dated for November [MTV Geek]