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Terry Hooper-Scharf

Monday 4 April 2016

DC’s ‘Hanna-Barbera Beyond’

My first reaction is that I'd caught an April Fool's joke too late. Sadly, it isn't.

Scooby Doo...how can I explain how I feel without bursting into typed obscenities that go on for pages? Just WTF are these asses thinking?

Oh, and what a totally unoriginal concept.  Anyone other than me NOT done that story?

Future Quest is weird.  Why? Because it seems to have better art than regular DC animated series.  But as Tim Coombs has pointed out, these are comics BASED on the classic cartoons!

Looks interesting but like I'm going to watch it.

Wacky Race Land and The Flintstones.  Go chew on my big, fat hairy log.

DC has a huge back catalogue of characters that could easily fill these ideas. 

But, then, like a lot of US entertainment today, DC is trying to latch on to old classics because of the nostalgia they carry with them. Why use some of your own characters when you can take the fun memories of a generation put them into comics and screw them up?

Destroy your comics company and characters then move on to...to.....this!


You see DC has Angel and the Ape, Anthro, Scooter and his gang and so many more characters but they do not have that "pull" of the old animated characters -anyone else remember Scooter or Angel and the Ape?

Or even The Inferior Five??


Ahhhh. My poor fevered brow...

DC’s ‘Hanna-Barbera Beyond’ Will Remix and Reimagine Classic Characters

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/comics/dcs-hanna-barbera-beyond-will-remix-reimagine-classic-characters-138479.html

Hanna-Barbera classic TV characters are getting a new injection of life this year, but not in the animation sphere.

DC Comics, whose parent company Warner Bros. also owns the Hanna-Barbera library, is launching a new comic book line of called “Hanna-Barbera Beyond” with “reimagined” concepts that keep “the heart and soul of the classic animation.”

The initial four titles arriving in May are Scooby Apocalypse, Future Quest, Wacky Raceland, and The Flintstones.


At a Wondercon panel last week, the creators of the comics explained how they’re re-imagining the concepts; for example, the Scooby gang first meets at Burning Man, and Fred and Daphne are Youtube stars.

DC editors haven’t ruled out the possibility that all the books will connect to create a larger story for the Hanna-Barbera universe. In the immediate future, the most likely new addition to the series will be a Jetsons comic.

Here’s more details from DC on the line-up:
Hanna-Barbera Beyond
  • Scooby Apocalypse – Featuring character designs by veteran artist Jim Lee and an origin story by Jim Lee and Keith Giffen (Justice League 3001), artist Howard Porter (Superman) will provide his own unique take on Freddie, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo. “Those meddling kids” and their Mystery Machine are at the center of a well-meaning experiment gone wrong and they’ll need to bring all of their mystery solving skills to bear (along with plenty of Scooby Snacks), to find a cure for a world full of mutated creatures infected by a nanite virus that enhances their fears, terrors and baser instincts. This time, the horrors are real in this apocalyptic near-future badland!

    Hanna-Barbera Beyond
  • Future Quest – Writer Jeff Parker (Aquaman, Justice League United, Batman ’66) and artist Evan “Doc” Shaner (Justice League Darkseid War: Green Lantern) join forces to bring fans new tales of adventure’s most iconic teenager, Jonny Quest, along with his sidekick Hadji. This series combines Team QUEST (Hadji, Race Bannon, Dr. Benton Quest and Jezebel Jade) with some of the most well-known action and adventure heroes ever created by Hanna-Barbera, including Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Birdman, Mightor, and Frankenstein Jr., among others.

  •  
  • Hanna-Barbera Beyond
  • Wacky Raceland – Take The Ant Hill Mob, Penelope Pitstop and Dick Dastardly, mix in a healthy dose of “Mad Max” and you get this dark and gritty take on Hanna-Barbera’s “Wacky Races,” courtesy of writer Ken Pontac (Reboot, Happy Tree Friends) and artist Leonardo Manco (Hellblazer), with vehicle designs by Mark Sexton (Mad Max: Fury Road). A time of hope and innocence with Utopia at the finish line has given way to planetary Armageddon and a desert wasteland full of radioactive lakes, nanotech dust storms, and cannibalistic mutants. Against this backdrop, the Wacky Racers and their sentient vehicles continue their contest, but now the competition is for survival, and there can only be one winner when the checkered flag falls.

    Hanna-Barbera Beyond
  • The Flintstones – Based on character designs by Amanda Conner (Harley Quinn Starfire, writer Mark Russell (Prez, God is Disappointed in You) provides his own unique perspective on everyone’s “modern stone age family.” Russell will use Bedrock’s most popular family to shine a light on humanity’s ancient customs and institutions in a funny origin story of human civilization. Fred is still the simple man, striving to be the king of his castle, Wilma is still the tolerant but not-indulging wife and Barney (with his wife Betty and infant son Bamm-Bamm) is still the original wingman, whose loyalty to Fred often outweighs his common sense.

7 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure this will stoke the fires of indignation further if I point out that these are upcoming comic series (probably after the success of the current Archie revamp) rather than cartoons. You won't have to worry about them polluting the airwaves of television land.

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  2. Uh, THANKS, Tim...just finished lettering 12 comic pages today and cleaning them up and read your comment and thought "What's he talking about?" WTF I wrote animated series I have no idea. Better edit that..I'm getting old!!!

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  4. I was thinking the same as Tim re the “Archie” comics revamps. It seems these (especially the horror versions) met with both critical and commercial success. I have to say that I like the idea of the new "Scooby Doo" and "Quest" versions here (although “Flintstones” looks pretty awful) . I think they have already updated /revamped “Sugar and Spike” in a DC special recently (not seen it) where they are teenagers / early 20s so maybe they will do that for some others original DC characters as well like “Angel and the Ape” (again) Inferior 5 etc. I just hope they keep the original “funny” comic versions of these as well for the younger kids .

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  5. Well, Inferior Five worked at the time because humour comics were all over the place -Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and so on from DC. But as far as I recall the Inferior 5 died during the Crisis on Infinite Earths so they are dead (can anyone tell when I'm being sarcastic?). But the idea that kids cannot relate to the originals because there was no internet, ipads or cell phones has been mooted by a couple morons. Hey, four nuts wandering the world in a weird van solving mysteries does NOT need modern technology....unless cartoons lied to me??????

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  6. Love the Inferior Five and the whole time period.

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