Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week Bennett looks at the reaction to the announcement of DC’s new Hanna-Barbera line.
Given Marvel and DC’s over-reliance on a steady slate of revamps, relaunches and revivals I don’t often get to say "I didn’t see that one coming" these days. But I must confess that DC’s announcement that they would be doing a line of Hanna-Barbera comics for millennials (see "DC To Launch New Hanna-Barbera Line") actually caught me off guard. And as the comic book guy who is always looking forward to something new, something other, while most of the titles are definitely makeovers of existing characters, the new line definitely gets points for just being entirely unexpected.
And upon reflection, it does make all sorts of sense. The news got the publisher the usual amount of primarily positive publicity (currently there are 78 articles on the subject on Google News) as well as stirring things up online. I know that doesn’t sound that much like a good thing but if nothing else getting people upset just goes to prove that there’s actual interest in your project (i.e. negative interest is still interest). Plus it has the added advantage of giving commentators and bloggers something else to write about other than the current state, and sales, of DC comics.
Two of the titles in the line are of particular interest, the first for entirely personal reasons. Being a comic book guy of a certain age I literally grew up with the classic H-B characters, which makes Future Quest by Jeff Parker and Doc Shaner, where Jonny Quest meets the rest of the studio’s heroes, the comic I’ve been waiting to read since I was 10. It also helps that this one doesn’t go the extreme revamp/revival route, perhaps because Parker and Shaner realize that there’s still plenty of jet-age Camelot Cool left in the characters in their original incarnations. The exception being Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles, both of whom have been upgraded from comic relief superheroes to the "serious" variety.
And then there’s the one that made the internet go all kinds of crazy; Scooby Apocalypse, which places the Scooby Gang into some kind of post-apocalyptic world. In this iteration Freddie has tribal tats, Velma appears to be a little person and Shaggy is sporting unnecessarily complicated facial hair. You can pretty easily predict that people online will spectacularly overreact when classic characters are in any way adjusted. But I literally couldn’t believe just how outraged some people became over Shaggy being drawn like a carnival-faced hipster doofus.
I did say that the story received "primarily positive publicity." A number of pieces expressed shock and concern over the change, but my favorite negative story appeared in The New York Post under the title "Hanna-Barbera just ruined your childhood." In it, while writing about Scooby Apocalypse, the writer hits the nail on the head when he says that Shaggy is "seemingly the object of the most fan derision. Who’s got time to unmask a crooked amusement park owner? This guy’s got artisanal pickles to make."
The amusing thing to me is how unnecessary all this umbrage was. If you spend two minutes of research on any search engine you’ll quickly discover that like a lot of H-B characters Scooby & Co. have undergone a whole lot of different permutations over the years. And they’ve always, always, always snapped back to the way they looked back in 1969 when Scooby-Doo, Where are You! debuted. I can’t imagine that this time will be in any way different.
I’ve got no problems with Scooby Apocalypse, though if I’d had my druthers I’d probably prefer to see Steampunk Scooby. I imagine the Internet wouldn’t have nearly as much trouble seeing Daphne and Velma dressed up like Victorian ringmaster bondage showgirls (which is what steampunk cosplay always looks like to me). Or, even better still, how about Scooby Doo manga, done by an actual manga-ka, which is then translated into English. Now that would be interesting.
And, finally, since Marvel won’t be doing a Fantastic Four comic until Ike Perlmutter retires or Fox gives up the movie rights to the characters, might I suggest the obvious solution. DC should do an adaptation of the 1967 Hanna-Barbera Fantastic Four cartoon. I understand why that’ll never happen, but it would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?
And since this week’s column seems to be all about cartoons, I should at least mention that there’s going to be a new Justice League series on Cartoon Network (see "New Justice League Animated Series Announced"), Justice League Action. Given the fact both Superman and Wonder Woman are looking positively pleasant (as well as quite a bit younger) in the promotional art, and the fact the episodes will only be eleven minutes long makes one afraid we’ve got another goofy suitable-for-only-the-youngest-viewers cartoon comedy (Teen Titans) on our hands. Here’s hoping that's not the case.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Column by Steve Bennett
Posted by Steve Bennett on February 3, 2016 @ 2:11 am CT
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