The Aquabats! Super Show! is touted by The Hub as "the first show in kids' television history to feature a real-life rock band in totally unreal comedy-action-musical adventures." After watching the second season premiere, titled "The Return of the Aquabats!," I have to agree, especially about the show being unreal, in a buzzy, fun kind of way. I'm not alone because the series just received a 2013 Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Children's series.

The Aquabats! Super Show! is reminiscent of The Monkees, in that the show centers on a rock band who ape for the camera frequently. But The Aquabats! take themselves even less seriously than The Monkees did. The Aquabats! look goofy, wearing bright blue unitard shirts, homemade helmets and goggles, and even a mustache drawn with a marker. They act goofy, too, by making faces, eating sand and shooting electricity from guitars. Basically, the Aquabats! will do anything to make you and your kids laugh. They are real-life cartoons.

Everything about The Aquabats! Super Show! is meant to be silly, from the stories to the monsters to the cartoon bumpers to the set designs to the music itself (which is pretty toe-tapping). But unlike most kids' TV shows, The Aquabats! Super Show! wasn't cooked up in a conference room by a bunch of suits.

Since The Aquabats! debut in 1994, the Orange County, CA-based band has won over legions of music fans with their music and are well known fixtures at music festivals including Coachella and South by Southwest (SXSW).

The band has released five full-length studio albums including their latest, award-nominated "Hi-Five Soup" and has toured internationally.

Christian Jacobs, the show's creator, recently talked to me about the origin of The Aquabats! Super Show!. How did they come up with the name The Aquabats!?

"At the time we were starting the band," says Jacobs, "we had decided to start a band and just be silly and wear costumes. We thought of that stuff before the name and then we were just thinking of names that were kind of like animal names, like Vultures or Manta Rays or Stingrays. Thinking about names that had 'The' at the beginning. I think it was my brother who said, 'What about The Aquabats?'

"It was so stupid, thinking about bats flying under water. We were laughing and thought, well, there it is. The Aquabats."

Most band members want to be rock stars and enjoy the lifestyle that comes with such status. I pictured a group of young men wearing black eyeliner, smoking cigarettes and dreaming about hot women and arena stages. I was surprised when Jacobs shared the band's original ambition. "This is the pie in the sky. When we started the band, we had no clue or direction. There was no plan, it was just on a lark. It was just having a laugh and being silly, wearing costumes that were infuriating other bands we were playing with. We were so silly and everyone was so serious.

"Early on I thought, this would be a really good TV show. Probably about 1996 or 1997. I think the TV show destination is where we've always wanted to be as a band, because we figured out early on, we're never going to be U2. We're never going to be a band that people take very seriously. So let's just go out and do what we do. And that's be a cartoon that literally becomes a TV show. We were doing a television show and cartoon satire on stage, why not take it to the screen?

The Aquabats! Super Show!: Season One was released on DVD on May 21, 2013. Jacobs says its proof that they did it. "This is something we've been ready to do for sixteen years. It couldn't get better. It's very satisfying and incredibly gratifying. We had a goal and we pulled it off."

The Aquabats! Super Show! is Christian Jacobs second TV show for kids. His first was Yo Gabba Gabba!, which combined live-action, music and animation in a completely original formula. Yo Gabba Gabba! caught the attention of Gerard Way, lead singer of My Chemical Romance, animator and comic book artist.

Way says, "I'd always been a fan of Yo Gabba Gabba! and this is completely true. The way I tell the story is that I'd always liked it, but I didn't have an excuse to watch it until I had a kid. We had Bandit, a little girl. And I was like, awesome! Now I can watch Yo Gabba Gabba!. I know people are, whatever, about [kids watching] TV, but I would put her in front of the TV for Yo Gabba Gabba!, and then like, figure out I gotta wait like, a month. And then one day, I was like, awesome, she's into it. We sat down, we started watching it.

"There's a lot of awesome stuff in there to draw in someone my age, like the musical guests. It's a curated show. It's hand-picked. Not just with the music, but also with the design. This is made by someone grew up watching Sid and Marty Krofft (The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, Land of the Lost) and spent a lot of time in Japan. To make Yo Gabba Gabba! you have to have been to the real kind of Japan. That kind of Japan that they don't really show in movies and stuff."

So after becoming a fan of Jacob's TV show, Gerard Way "put it out in the universe. I did an MTV interview at Comic-Con. I know what I'm doing sometimes when I do that. I was being interviewed and they said, 'What do you want to do next?' And I was like, 'I want to be on Yo Gabba Gabba! and I want to write a song about lemonade.' And that was it."

"And I saw that," says Jacobs, "and a year later we were working together. Gerard got the ball rolling. He threw it to the universe and I caught it."

"That's how you do it. That's how you get anything done," says Way. Jacobs agrees, "That's how we got Aquabats! show on the air. We put it out there. We climbed a mountain and we had a campfire and we would yell to the sky, 'We want a TV show!'"

"I've done stuff like that," says Way, "I'm not going to lie."

Not only did the pair work together on Yo Gabba Gabba!, they collaborated again for the June 29 episode of The Aquabats! Super Show!, when two competing bands seeking revenge on The Aquabats! unite with evil Silver Skull and become the Anti-bats!.

Both musicians say their children inspire them. Christian Jacobs says his children are his test audience, producers and designers. "We were trying to get The Aquabats! show on the air and Yo Gabba Gabba! came around. Originally the show was mean to be more snarky, an Adult Swim kind of a thing. Having kids inspired me to re-focus my attention and turn my heart towards my children and do something they wanted.

"They've been so inspirational, not only for Yo Gabba Gabba! but also the Aquabats!. We're at the point where I screen Aquabats! for them and they'll actually throw in ideas. We did an episode called "Mysterious Egg" that had a monster that was a big furry thing with metal arms. My ten year-old son walked into the office and said, 'Dad, I drew this, what do you think?' It was the one!

"Kids come up with things that are so great. They're not trapped. They're so pure. There aren't a whole lot of things weighing down their brains. They're not trying very hard. Everything is just there.

"That's been the big key, the big secret to developing shows that I do is actually utilizing experiences with my children. If I had to go to work, and not be around my children and know what they're thinking, and I'm making kids' shows, it would be super hypocritical."

Gerard Way agrees that kids have their own way of viewing the world. He shares, "I was hanging out with Bandit and she's really interested in Star Wars. I don't have a lot of stuff in the house, but once in a while she'll see something, and she's very interested in it and she likes Princess Leia.

"She keeps asking me to watch it, which is challenging for a four year-old. It doesn't have crazy colors. So Darth Vader shows up in the hallway, and she goes, 'Is that the Queen of Space Evil?' Who would ever think of that? I know people say, 'My kid says the funniest things.' But that was awesome. What is space evil? I thought about that for weeks."

The Aquabats! will have plenty of space evil to fight in the second season, including a monster who drops in during the premiere of the second season, which includes pro skateboarders Tony Hawk and Eric Koston as guest stars.

When Jacobs, bassist Chad Larson (aka Crash McLarson), keyboards and sax player James Briggs, drummer Ricky Falomir and guitarist Ian Fowles aren't defending our planet from space evil, they're busy touring the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States to promote the show and just jam with the audience. "We've been a band for almost twenty years now, and we'd never been to Paris or Italy. I think I would have liked it a lot better when I was 23, but it was still fun."

The second season of The Aquabats! Super Show! premieres on Saturday, June 1, at 1:00 p.m. ET. Gerard Way's episode, "Anti-Bats!" will air on June 29 at 1:00 p.m. ET.