Myra Brandish

VBCharacter


caption = Myra Brandish with her (possible) sons Hank (left) and Dean.
character_name = Myra Brandish
debut_ep = "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills"
voiced_by = Joanna Adler
real_name = Myra Brandish
char_alias = Powerkat
profession = None (clinically insane), formerly O.S.I Agent and/or American Gladiator
characteristics = Athletic, skilled combatant, clinically insane
alliances =
prev_alliances = Team Venture, Office of Secret Intelligence
relatives = Hank Venture (son, allegedly)
Dean Venture (son, allegedly)
Numerous Cats ("children")

Myra Brandish is a supporting character on the Adult Swim show "The Venture Bros." First appearing in the late season 2 episode "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills", she is revealed as Dr. Venture's former bodyguard and the possible mother of the titular Venture brothers, Hank and Dean.

Myra has a pathological obsession with Rusty Venture, as well as her "children" Hank and Dean Venture. She is willing to kill anyone who might get in her way, particularly Brock Samson and Doctor Byron Orpheus, of reuniting her "family". Because of this obsession, Myra is clinically insane.

Character description

Myra is a leather-clad, buxom, physically fit woman in her 40s or 50s, though years of longing after her Doctor Venture and the stress of being forcibly separated from her alleged children have left her with a haggard look. She is prone to muttering insanely to herself, and dotes/obsesses on the Venture brothers when they're in her possession to the point of trying to breast feed her teenage sons.

According to her retelling of her past to Dean and Hank, Myra was once an agent of the Office of Secret Intelligence (OSI). Her first assignment straight out of the academy was to serve as Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture's bodyguard, to protect him from his various enemies and those who would seek to steal his inventions. During this time, Myra fought the Monarch and Middle Eastern terrorists in her job as bodyguard. As time passed, Myra found herself falling in love with Rusty, culminating in a "night of passion" as Myra had sex with Rusty, taking his virginity in the process. According to Myra's version of events, the sexual encounter left Myra pregnant and that nine months later she gave birth to twin boys, Hank and Dean. Though Brock and Doc tell the boys that this story is a lie, several flashbacks early in season three corroborate large portions of her story, in particular, the fact that she was employed by OSI as Rusty's bodyguard.

After giving birth, Rusty and Myra's relationship went downhill as Myra's obsession with her lover caused Rusty to leave his family compound to get away from Myra. The situation between the two would ultimately collapse, with Myra ultimately being tasered unconscious by an OSI agent after beating up a security detail of fellow OSI agents at Rusty's compound. Myra would later claim that Rusty used his political contacts to terminate Myra's parental rights to the twins and had her institutionalized, as Rusty "wanted the boys all to himself". The shock of Rusty's ultimate rejection of her and the separation of Myra from her children caused her to have a complete and utter nervous breakdown and become clinically insane.

What followed next is unknown; in the version of Myra's backstory that Rusty and Brock Samson tell Hank and Dean, in order to try and discredit Myra's version of events, Myra is recast as a mentally unstable American Gladiator, known on the show as "PowerKat".Season 2 DVD commentary for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills"] Episode "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills"] . According to Venture and Samson, when the show was canceled, Myra drifted in and out of insane asylums as she began stalking Doctor Venture, with her "modus operandi" varying depending on her medication.

However, in an aside to his children when an Oni lured Rusty to the same motel where Hank and Dean were being held prisoner, Rusty sarcastically asked Myra if she told the boys about how she burnt down the Venture Compound several years earlier (an event Brock refers to when he's telling the boys the fictionalized version of Myra's backstory).

Regardless of this, Myra was shown running a motel outside of town in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills" where she lived with many cats, which she refers to as her children—Hank and Dean's "brothers and sisters".

Myra acts like something of a cross between Annie Wilkes, the deranged middle-aged serial killer in the Stephen King novel, "Misery" and Catwoman from "Batman Returns". Like Annie Wilkes, she is clinically insane, has a penchant for kidnapping people, and doesn't use normal curse words but instead often segues into childish babble-words like "oogey" instead of "disgusting". Her costume resembles the 1970s black vinyl costume worn by the Marvel Comics super-heroine Black Widow.

Hank and Dean's real mother?

It is not confirmed if Myra is the "real" mother of Hank and Dean, or just an insane woman who convinced herself she is. In the DVD commentary for her debut episode, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills", the writers state that in early drafts of the episode the "boys' mother" subplot hadn't been developed yet and they "didn't know who Myra was", and that even after the episode was finished, they still weren't sure. At the end of season 2, when the writers were recording the DVD commentary, they stated that they still weren't sure if Myra would turn out to indeed be the boys' real mother, or if they would develop a convoluted explanation for how she really isn't, and that at the moment there was an equal chance of each. However, there are several hints and clues that indicate that she might be.

Dr. Venture admitted that he once had sex with Myra, but did not confirm if this resulted in Hank and Dean's conception. Also, it is possible that Dr. Venture was just lying (or volunteering a half-truth) to get Hank and Dean to stop asking questions after Brock almost told them they are clones. It is possible that she could have been Dr. Venture's bodyguard, had the boys, then broke up with Dr. Venture and either previously or subsequently was an American Gladiator, before finally going insane. The episode "" confirms that Myra was Venture's bodyguard, with The Monarch having memory of her beating him up during an "assault" on the Venture Compounds.

Myra is also aware that Hank and Dean are supposed to be 19 years old. However, because so much time has been spent cloning them back to life time and again, they are biologically only 16 years old and the twins believe that to be their real age (although Hank notices in "Hate Floats" that there is a discrepancy between the birthdate on his ID card and his stated age). Thus only a handful of people would know that the boys were "born" 19 years ago, a further clue that Myra may be their mother. Hank and Dean have no memory of Myra: presumably Dr. Venture removed whatever memories of her they might have had when re-cloning them.

Other evidence which would seem to suggest that Myra really is Hank and Dean's mother is that she actually looks and acts like them to a degree: Dean has brown hair, but Hank has blonde hair, like Myra. Hank and Dean also have slightly upturned noses, like Myra (which neither Dr. Venture nor the boys' grandfather had). As Dean seems to take after his father Dr. Venture (dark hair, greater aptitude for science than any sports, more "sane"), it would seem that Hank takes after Myra's attributes of blonde hair and a greater physical aptitude as well as being less grounded in reality. Also, when Dean drives a car, he chants, "10 and 2, 10 and 2," nervously to himself; Myra does the same thing when she drives, as does Hank when he is made to drive by Dr. Girlfriend. There is also the fact that the car seen in the flashback between Myra and Dr. Venture was the same vehicle Hank and Dean were learning to drive in, this is also accented by the fact that the Oni sent by Dr. Killinger to "reunite them" lured Dr. Venture and Orpheus to the same car and then later to the motel where Myra was keeping the boys. However, while he spoke of reuniting "them," Hank and Dean were referred to as "his boys," not "theirs" as would be fitting if she was their mother.

As stated in "Past Tense" and "Powerless in the Face of Death" Dr. Venture lost his virginity when he was 24Episode "Past Tense"] and he takes a dismal view of the affair. Given Myra's claims that the boys are actually 19 and that Venture was 44 in "Twenty Years to Midnight",Episode "Twenty Years to Midnight"] the timing may fit. "The Invisible Hand of Fate" strongly implies (yet still never definitively reveals) that Myra is Hank and Dean's mother since she goes crazy trying to apparently take the infant Hank and Dean from Dr. Venture.

Notes

*Dr. Venture has vaguely referred to the boys having an actual mother on a few occasions:
**In "Careers in Science", Dr. Venture says that he created the boys in a moment of passion.Episode "Careers in Science"]
**In "Mid-Life Chrysalis", the boys directly asked Dr. Venture about their mother. He realizes that he's never really told them about their mother, and begins to tell them about her, but is cut off before he could go into more detail.Episode "Mid-Life Chrysalis"]
**Also, in "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!", the image of Dr. Venture makes a reference to their mother while Hank is in the fantasy world of Dr. Venture's "joy can", with Hank hearing her voice off screen. However, this was the idealized fantasy world of Hank's in which he had a mother (with Dean's absence implied), and likely had no basis in real events at all.Episode "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!"]
**In "Powerless in the Face of Death", Dr. Venture implies that the boys' mother was ugly. When he mentions losing his virginity at 24, Dr. Orpheus says "That is awful!" (Referring to his continued cloning of the boys). Dr. Venture scoffs, and replies "You didn't even see her, it was horrific."Episode "Powerless in the Face of Death"] Despite this, Dr. Venture appeared sad when he was getting ready to describe the boys' mother in "Mid-Life Chrysalis". But this could be referring to her insanity, as he was obviously afraid of her in The Invisible Hand of Fate

References