It's been a long time since Adult Swim viewers heard the cry "Go, Team Venture!" The Venture Bros. wrapped up the second half of Season 4 way back in 2010. Aside from the odd special episode like "From the Ladle to the Grave: The Story of Shallow Gravy" and "A Very Venture Halloween," all has been quiet on the Venture front since then. But that doesn't mean creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer haven't been hard at work this whole time.

Venture Bros. Season 5 finally kicks off this Sunday with the premiere episode "What Color is Your Cleansuit?". We had the opportunity to chat with Publick and Hammer to find out what this season has in store for the Venture family, how the Halloween special fits into the equation, and whether fans will have to wait another three years for Season 6.

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[laughs] It was like a week.Yeah, this week feels like the first downtime. It's not, really, because we're making T-shirts and doing interviews. [note - check out Jackson's blog for more information on the return of the Venture Bros. Shirt of the Week Club.]And tonight we have to go to a screening. Well, “have to” isn't the right word, because we really enjoy it. We're looking forward to a screening.Yeah, like two months ago.We're just waiting for it to be on TV.This is the beginning of the Season 6 stuff now.That's actually no longer true. We decided to move straight into Season 6 so that people wouldn't have to wait another two-and-a-half years.That's a mistake. So we took all the ideas and we're rolling it into the season.Yeah, we have our production stuff that's making more sense to us. There are a lot of factors that'll make the next season come out a little quicker than they usually do.[laughs] Not really. I mean, we were sitting on half the ideas all season long. We knew there were certain things we had to accomplish in it. It was actually finding the time with each other, because once we got into production we were trading off scripts. And we'd rarely be done with a script at the same time so that we could jump on one together. I guess it was a little tricky, because it was the one episode where you have a laundry list of things to do in, because of what we did later on in the season – the seeds we had to plant and the things we had to answer for from the prom episode.And also, you get a different premiere when you write it last. When you write it right out of the gate there are so many things you want to do. When you write it last, you've already done a lot of that, so you don't have to answer a lot of questions. You can make a breezier, more thematic, ancillary episode that we don't usually get to make. The premiere is its own thing.It took us a little while to find the story, too.We were talking about how to make the story work.Yeah, yeah. You don't want to start writing an episode with a to-do list, you know? Whereas we had ideas for half a dozen other different episodes. The story was all set and we were excited to tell this particular story. With the premiere, it took a little while to find the episode-specific, inspiring story we wanted to tell.The Halloween episode takes place during the act break of the premiere. After the first half hour, the Halloween special should be viewed, and then go back...Actually, it's the first commercial break, so after the first eleven minutes... [laughs] watch the Halloween special and then go back to the premiere. Because the premiere takes place over the course of several months. We didn't set out to confuse people, but we were aware that's what would happen if aired the Halloween episode in time for Halloween before any of the other episodes. We had started writing it as part of the season, and then we decided to give it special holiday status. But I thought it was kind of fun to just drop you in the middle of an ongoing story and go "What the hell is going on?" And to have people wonder "Are they wearing costumes because it's Halloween? What's the deal?"