Hanna-Barbera Finds Rebirth at DC Comics
Yes, the title of the topic is poking fun at Bleeding Cool’s DC Comics reboot, but could this actually be the Rebirth Jim Lee and Dan DiDio alluded to?
But what am I actually talking about? DC Comics is bringing back the classic Hanna-Barbera characters with titles like Scooby Apocalypse, Future Quest, Wacky Raceland, The Flintstones, with the possibility of more. The first titles will hit comic book shelves this May.
Some of the creators working on the titles include Amanda Conner (The Flintstones), Mad Max: Fury Road designer Mark Sexton (Wacky Raceland), Jeff Parker, Jim Lee, Evan “Doc” Shaner, and Howard Porter.
DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio spoke with Entertainment Weekly:
From a personal standpoint, I was always a fan of the old Hanna-Barbera characters, having grown up on them. I think what you find right now is there’s so much material on pop culture, and these characters resonate with so much of our fanbase. It was so fun to go out and look at them, but not just bring back versions that existed 40, 50 years ago and really look at it the way of saying, if these characters were created and interpreted today, how would they exist? So we handed off our materials to a number of top creators, and what came back was an exciting look that felt very true to the existence of the characters.
Didio emphasized the amount of input the creative teams behind these new books have, “What you’ll see is that Amanda Connor really looked at the Flintstones and found a way to move them forward, even though they’re set in the past.” He continued, “And then we have a great other creators (sic): Doc [Evan “Doc” Shaner, Justice League Darkseid War: Green Lantern] is having a great time with the characters, and we brought in Mark Sexton, one of the designers from Mad Max: Fury Road to take a pass on the Rocky Races.”
While DiDio and his Co-Publisher Jim Lee were excited about Rocky Races and Flintstones, they were gushing about Scooby Doo Lee admits:
I’m a huge Scooby Doo fan, as I think most people are. I mean, look at these iconic series and they were cultural touchstones for everyone. All my kids know of Scooby Doo from the various cartoons and live action movies, and we’re in a period where you have people my age that are spending their days thinking about cartoon and sci-fi action movies. It’s a multigenerational obsession at this point, and we just thought it would just be really interesting to take the cartoon version of these characters and see where they would be if we took what existed in the very first iteration of the cartoon and moved it into this day and age.
DiDio did note they don’t want to just repeat past stories, but also be able to have the characters resonate with people who are just being introduced to them for the first time. “From our standpoint, our goal is to make this exciting and accessible to all generations, whether they’re fans of the material and the characters or not.”
DiDio described the new series, “You’re gonna have an epic adventure in the future stories with Johnny Quest and Space Ghost. You’re going to have a scary, dangerous world in Wacky Raceland that is just as strange and dynamic as you hope it would be. I think Scooby Doo is going to excite people and challenge people, and I think that we’re going to use Flintstones to really bring out that voice and social commentary that they might’ve brought out in the ’60s and raise it back for today.”
DiDio also hinted at future Hanna-Barbera books, “There’s a deep, deep bench of wonderful characters in the Hanna-Barbera library we’d love to get involved in, so this is just the first step into a very steep pool.”
I know I am super excited about Future Quest which looks to incorporate one of my favorite Hanna-Barbera series, The Herculoids.
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