Comics Review: Future Quest

I had heard about this book before it came out and was interested in it.  Just attaching Steve Rude’s name was enough to get my attention, as he’s one of my favorites.  Years ago, he’d did a great comic book adaption of Space Ghost.  If nothing else, this was an ambitious project, as it combined many of the completely unrelated adventure, fantasy, and superhero characters from Hanna-Barbera’s cartoons.   (No Blue Falcon though.  His partner, Dyno-Mutt, must have been deemed too silly for this concept.)

I was familiar with Space Ghost, The Herculoids, and Jonny Quest from watching Saturday morning cartoons in my youth.  Jonny Quest was actually originally broadcast as a prime time TV show.  It was really well-produced adventure show and had a tremendous theme song.  The Herculoids was not one of my favorites.  Conceptually, it was a family living in a primitive style with a some large funky monsters, who were defending their planet from invaders.  It was kind of strange.  This volume at least explains their origin. 

Space Ghost is a superhero in space.  He is so cool, Marvel and DC must be killing themselves that didn’t invent the character.  Above mentioned Steve Rude loved the character so much, he created Nexus with Mike Baron as something of an homage for an independent comic company.  Unfortunately, Space Ghost may be better known by later audiences as a gag character on a comedy show.  Birdman, a prominent character in this story, is a character I had never even heard of before his more recent remaking into a comedy character.

There’s also a bunch of other character groups that I’d never heard of at all.  I can’t even name them.  Some of these groups got a short shrift.  Others got a good introduction, but weren’t well-integrated into the main story.  If this volume has an easily-definable fault, it’s an overabundance of characters.  Some had to be introduced in side stories to give them some context, but some weren’t even given that. 

For the story itself, it was epic and dramatic, if not frantic.  It’s a fun read and there’s a definite “squee” factor seeing all these characters together.  The artwork is great throughout, even working in several different artists.  The concept is kind of brilliant in combining all these characters.  The giant, master evil thing is a bit clichéd, but actually ties into Space Ghost’s heretofore unknown origin.  He’s like a combination of Green Lantern and The Lone Ranger. 

“Frantic” also describes the rate of character introductions.  It was a bit like the creators were trying to roll out the whole concept as quickly as possible, instead of just focusing on the star characters and saving the others for possible followup series.  According to Wikipedia, this series only ran for 12 issues, which probably covered this initial story in a breathless fashion.  This trade only covers six issues and I don’t think there was a volume 2.  It seems unlikely I’ll be able to get the rest of the story. 

This concept deserved to be a continuing series, but it was only going to be a limited one in this publishing environment.  It was also only ever going to be a limited success since me and people like me were the only ones who were going to be interested in this comic.  There really isn’t much of a “kids” market for comics, especially not $4.00 issues only sold in boutiques and not on a newsstand at a better price.  Space Ghost at least deserves another chance, perhaps even integration into the proper DC universe.  Jonny Quest, maybe with a little “reimaging,” could also work (though the “Real Adventures” animated series already tried that without success).  

Birdman

Herculoids cover

Dr. Zin and Jezebel Jade 

Like something out of Doug Wildey's sketchbook

Awesome Bill Siekiewicz cover

Speaking of “reimaging,” when I bought this volume, I also picked up an issue of an edgy, sci-fi remake of The Jetsons.  Everyone was living in the sky because the earth was flooded and Rosie was actually George’s mother’s soul uploaded into a robot.  Too advanced, bro.  Too much.  I don’t actually still own the issue, so I used this fake movie poster image here.  I wouldn’t mind seeing that get made.  At least they didn’t try doing a “realistic” version of The Flintstones (or I didn’t notice it on the stands at the time).