Earlier this year, DC Comics announced that it planned on releasing new comics based on classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons, including Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones and even Wacky Races.
One of the most anticipated of those books, though, is Future Quest, which brings Jonny Quest to a completely new adventure that pairs him up once more with Hadji, but also with other classic Hanna-Barbera characters such as Space Ghost.
We spoke to Future Quest writer Jeff Parker and artist Evan "Doc" Shaner about their new title, as well as what it's like bringing Jonny Quest, Space Ghost and company to modern audiences through comics.
How do you take these classic characters and reimagine them for a new audience, while still keeping them true to their original versions?
PARKER: I feel like the art carries a huge chunk of the load, so I'll get out of this real fast: let Shaner figure out how to answer that. Because it really does. Actually, it's as simple as getting their characters — getting everybody in character — and that kind of vibe they come across with. There's a lot of serious stuff happening, but generally, these characters are very positive. And if you didn't do that, you would be getting on the wrong track. Even with a lot of heavy stuff happening and characters die, there's an optimistic undercurrent going through all of it. And that gets you there.
And the fact that all these characters are very heroic. They just got to dive into that very, very straightforward. But this isn't an anti-hero project. This is a hero project. And once you embrace that, it all kind of comes together.
SHANER: I don't think with the kind of mid-'60s look of — especially Jonny Quest, certainly — I don't know that it's too far a stretch these days. For me, that aesthetic — I think a lot of mid-century modern clean slick look — seems to be popular again these days. So I think even if we made it ultra-'60s, I don't think it would be that different.
But even the way I was thinking about it was like the 2006 Casino Royale, where it's set in modern times, but aesthetically, it has a lot of '60s flavor. That's kind of the way I'm approaching the book is that — there's nothing about it that won't be modern, but it also has a nod to that mid-'60s feel.
PARKER: Yeah, there's a lot of clean design throughout, and we have, like there's this one part where Birdman and one of his fellow agents come through the Doctor Quest compound and they get retina-scanned as they walk in. And there's all kinds of future tech happening that looks very in line with what you would've seen in '60s cartoons.
It just all goes together surprisingly well. I mean, other stuff you would see in the cartoons — characters talking on little gadgets doesn't feel really any different from me on this phone right now. We called up to the cartoons, so it actually all works together kind of seamlessly.
As far as reimagining Jonny Quest goes, what is it about that character that you think will translate well to today's audiences?
PARKER: A lot of my stuff, a lot of the work I've done has been really influenced by that Jonny Quest cartoon, and aesthetically, also Space Ghost. So I kinda feel like we're both so influenced by the people that worked on it, like Alex Toth and Doug Wildey, it will come across as natural.
This whole concept of this put-together family, in the Quest case, traveling the world and dealing with sci-fi threats and just kind of discovering different people and things like that, it's something that movies keep going back to all the time: it just works like a charm. And Jonny Quest is one of the things that really just got it completely right from the beginning. It was a primetime TV show, so they were clearly putting a lot into it and it wasn't Saturday morning fare until much later in reruns.
And also, I've got my little test subject, my 11-year-old son. I can just show him the old cartoon and he gets it right away and is totally into it. Space Ghost, no problem: he walks around and shoots things with energy, battling big monsters. Who can't get behind that?
What other Hanna-Barbera characters can readers expect to turn up?
PARKER: Oh yeah. The Herculoids, which we found out is a favorite, which kind of makes sense, because the show is all about monsters fighting robots, for the most part, which is exactly what a kid drawing in his notebook would come up with. It's like what if you got a master artist to design all this and make it happen?
Speaking of which, we also have Jordie Bellaire coloring this book, and she worked with us on the Convergence Shazam specials, and she is easily one of the greatest color artists in comics right now. You're just going to be amazed. If you didn't even read my stuff, just look at what Doc and she do for an art piece alone. I like to think the story will be engaging, too, but I can attest to how good it looks.
What sort of tone can we expect these comics to take?
SHANER: We're kind of using Jonny Quest as the anchor for this entire universe. It's a lot of the look of the cartoon: it's kind of funneled through that point of view. And the further away the original cartoon got from Jonny Quest, the more it will be brought back into that point of view. So, for example, with The Impossibles' Frankenstein Jr., we're still moving more into a Jonny Quest kind of mold. You know, characters like Space Ghost and Birdman, we didn't have quite as far to go. Aesthetically, what we're going for is the Jonny Quest look or more like a combination of Jonny Quest and Space Ghost.
PARKER: And your art is following those original designs, but there's still a subtle difference. It's more illustrative than what you do for animation. So, it does fit being a comic book, in which case, it would be a little harder to animate. I worked in animation for a little bit and you always have to boil designs down to a few aspects because the storyboarders and animators always have to work with this and try to keep it consistent. And Shaner stuck to the basics of it, but there's just a few nuances that you'll get when you see it that just really makes it come alive.
What has been the initial reaction to Future Quest from fans of the original Jonny Quest?
PARKER: So far, I feel like they're going to have a parade for us. And well, if we have to, that's what we'll do. You never know when you get something like this: it's a rights thing, you never know. The two of us were really into it and we're happy to do it and then it's like, were other people missing it? And it turns out that yeah, they were. I get constant tweets at me just asking me about it. There's been a lot of fan art: people just showing us, 'Look, I drew the Herculoids' or something like that. That's a good sign, I think.
Future Quest hits comic book stores on May 18.
