DC Comics made a lot of noise a few months back when they announced re-imaginings for the Hanna-Barbera stable of characters. The company has been quietly publishing comics featuring Scooby Doo for almost twenty years, with sporadic titles featuring other H-B characters like Space Ghost, the Flintstones, and the Jetsons during that time. But they’ve never given the characters this much attention before.
And I’m pretty sure we have Archie to thank for it.
The relaunch of the core Archie title and it’s companion, Jughead, have been met with near-universal acclaim, and arguably put Archie on the minds of readers who would otherwise not have picked up an Archie comic.
What draws people to things like this? Part of it has to be nostalgia. We have fond memories for characters that we grew up with, so revisiting those characters can bring back those warm and fuzzy feelings of youth. Another part is sheer novelty. Archie in a zombie apocalypse? I know the novelty factor is a main reason I picked that book up.
Yet another important factor is creative teams. Novelty may have been a big part of my reading Afterlife with Archie, but it sure didn’t hurt that Francesco Francavilla drew the hell out of it. And I would have been mildly curious about a reboot of Archie or Jughead, but I was all-in when I found out Mark Waid and Fiona Staples were on the former title, and that Chip Zdarsky and Erica Henderson were on the latter.
So if you’re looking for a formula, that’s probably it: established characters who elicit nostalgia, the novelty of new settings, and top-notch creative teams. And that basically looks like what DC has done, even if some of it – like Jim Lee’s redesigns of the Scooby Doo characters – has drawn less than universally favorable response. At least they got people talking.
Of the four titles announced back in January, the one that legitimately excited me was Future Quest, a title that combines all of Hanna-Barbera’s adventure properties. This is a book that hits that formula perfectly for me. I used to love watching Cartoon Network on Saturday afternoons when they would do several hour blocks of Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Birdman, the Herculoids, the Galaxy Trio, and the other weird H-B series from the ‘60s. And all of them in the same book, interacting with each other? That sounds awesome to me. Plus, Jonny Quest has THE best cartoon theme of all time. Try getting this out of your head after you hear it:
On top of that, the book has an amazing pair of creators in Jeff Parker (he of the late, great Batman ‘66 series) and Evan “Doc” Shaner (Buddy Cops! Go find a copy of Buddy Cops. It’s super-fun.) working on the book. Those two have already done some great work together – their Flash Gordon series was fantastic, and Convergence: Shazam! was so good that it practically justified the existence of the entire event. I was basically sold immediately on this book.
The first piece of promo art that I saw for Future Quest was the piece of Darwyn Cooke art in the header of this article. It’s even better without the words and my dumb face in front of it:
Knowing all of what I mentioned before I still would’ve been into this book, but before I knew any of that I saw Cooke’s art, and damn did it feel right. Those characters, in that style, with those colors and those smiles. That’s everything I love about Darwyn Cooke’s work in a nutshell, and I was into it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that as I read the first issue. The news of Cooke’s death, and the Grand Canyon-sized chasm that it leaves in the world of comics, was less than 24 hours old at the time, and even now it still makes my heart hurt. I didn’t know him personally – I did have the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times at cons, but that’s it – but he consistently made comics that I wanted to read, with a style and a tone and an overall feeling that I can’t get enough of. I was and still am incredibly sad at his passing.
Future Quest #1 feels like a Darwyn Cooke comic. There’s weight to the story, and dire circumstances for the characters, without it being grim. There’s fun, and there are consequences to that fun. The characters are at once back to basics and presented in a new light. It’s like Hanna-Barbera meets The New Frontier. Doc Shaner is on-record (or, at least, on-Twitter) about the role that Cooke played in getting this book off the ground, and it was hard for me not to feel his presence on every page.
In a way, the nostalgia that I felt while reading the first issue of Future Quest was as much for the cartoons that I loved as a kid as it was for the artist who I loved as an adult. It was wholly unexpected, and more than a little cathartic.
The fourth, and most important, part of that ‘formula’ I talked about earlier for a successful revival – established properties, new settings, top-notch creators – is that the book actually has to be good. Fulfilling the first three pieces doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good finished product (I would direct you to any number of Fantastic Four movies for examples). Future Quest, thankfully, doesn’t have that problem. The entire creative team on this book has brought their ‘A’ game, and the result is a damn good comic. I can’t wait to read more of it.
So thanks, Archie, for paving the way for DC’s Hanna-Barbera revival. And thanks, Darwyn, for…
And so much more.
