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Jonny Quest: Hanna-Barbara's Tragedy
I mentioned in my last installment - the one about Scooby-Doo - that Hanna and Barbara made a fatal mistake with one of their early shows. Here's a brief recap. Their early funny cartoons all had the same look, told the same jokes, and were emotionally pretty much the same. Not until Scooby-Doo was there a H-B funny character with personality.
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The original Jonny. © Hanna-Barbara. Courtesy of The Classic Jonny Quest web site. |
But before the Original Scooby Gang appeared, there was a gang of people who had personalities. They had to. They weren't funny animals, and jokes alone wouldn't carry them. They were the characters in Jonny Quest, H-B's first serious attempt at getting a mature audience.
Nobody's recorded the facts, but right after The Flintstones made ABC pay attention to them, Hanna and Barbara proposed a serious animated action series with an irresistable pitch. Sure, an animated series done in serious illustrator style would be expensive. But they could draw anything and it would cost the same. They could draw ancient temples, gigantic science fiction machines and huge explosions and it wouldn't cost much more than drawing characters sitting around and talking. With live-action shows, you have to build or find all that stuff.
In his book A Cast of Friends, Bill Hanna remembered the inspiration for Jonny Quest as the Batman and Green Hornet TV shows. Wrong. Those shows came along after Jonny Quest premiered in 1964. There were multiple sources of inspiration for the series, untouched since the famous Fleischer Superman cartoons of the 1940's.
Jonny's Secret Origin
Superhero comics had revived from the tired 1950's. DC Comics had started the "Silver Age,"with The Flash, Green Lantern and new heroes. (Marvel's comics, led by Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, came later.) Newspaper strips had carried Steve Canyon and Terry and the Pirates with atmospheric locales, incredible women and amazing feats. (Hanna and Barbara might have remembered Will Eisner's The Spirit as well.) And President Kennedy had mentioned his love of Ian Fleming's James Bond, whose first film, Dr. No, was the biggest British film yet introduced in America.
I don't think either Hanna or Barbara were Catholic, but in my Catholic grade school there was a comic book, Treasure Chest, published to educate and enlighten Catholic kids. Its main strip, Chuck White and His Friends, was an adventuring hero who flew planes, knew ham radio and got involved in troublebusting. Of course, he'd say a Hail Mary before something really dangerous, to keep that religious angle.
One of the sources for this article was the excellent Classic Jonny Quest site at http://www.classicjq.com. According to the FAQ page, there's a secret hint to Jonny Quest's origin. In the end credit sequence, there's a dark-haired boy who runs from African natives, who jumps into what looks like the Quest jet. That dark haired boy was never seen before or again.
That animation was animation used to pitch an idea that was never made. It was intended to be a series based on the old radio show, Jack Armstrong: The All-American Boy. That old radio show had Armstrong, in his radio incarnation a college-age young man, travelling throughout the world with two younger kids. Hanna-Barbara could never reach an agreement with the owners of the Armstrong character, and the animation was re-used for the end title sequence.
Why was there such a problem? Like many early radio shows, the Jack Armstrong character was owned by its sponsor. It is apparently still owned by General Mills, as Armstrong was the pitchman for their Wheaties cereal. Oddly enough, Jack Armstrong got to television much later, but in a much stranger form; he was parodied on a weekly basis by Jonathan Winters on his TV variety show in the mid-70's. Frankly, General Mills would have done better by going with H-B; Jonny Winters was lame satire, but Jonny Quest was deadly serious.
"Never Before Seen"
Jonny Quest was promoted on the ABC Network with enticing views of the characters in action, and the phrase "With special effects never before seen!" That was a fact, and it was the show's greatest accomplishment. It was simple to animate a jet cockpit bobbing up and down over a moving background of clouds. But it was inspired to add some rapidly-moving, transparent clouds moving very fast - almost strobing - on top ot the plane. The design seemed to be supplied by Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates and its brushed-looking lines.
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The Creator. Courtesy The Classic Jonny Quest web site. |
In fact, Jonny Quest was designed by long-time comic book artist Doug Wildey, whose name and signature appeared prominently in the credits for the original H-B show. Wildey later worked for much less acclaim on DC's horror western series Jonah Hex, and before his death he drew a few episodes of a Jonny Quest comic book for the small comics publisher Comico.
Serious art and stories meant more attention to character than H-B ever mentioned. Jonny himself was a smart, adventurous kid - not a bumbler who would get into trouble, like Dennis the Menace or other TV kids. He was a kid who, given enough experience and enough luck not to get killed, would become a great action hero himself. Surprising for the early 60's, Jonny had a nonwhite friend; although Hadji was Indian, he was the first person of color in action cartoons who wasn't a sidekick or the brunt of jokes. (Of course, there were natives with spears - the "great white hunter" syndrome was still in effect - but Hadji was a big change.)
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Dr. Benton Quest, Jonny, Race, Hadji and Bandit.© Hanna-Barbara. |
Jonny's father, Dr. Benton Quest, was an early indication that the American family was no longer in the 1950's. On TV most fathers always had time to give his son a "heart-to-heart talk," as Ward Cleaver did to his son Beaver. But Dr. Quest was truer to life, a workaholic whose career quite often came first, far closer to the true lives of American fathers. Instead, the CIA agent assigned as their bodyguard, Race Bannon, did most of the real raising of Jonny and Hadji.
And in two episodes, Race had his own version of Caniff's Dragon Lady. Jezebel Jade was a remarkable shady lady; sexy, coolly mercantile, tougher than most men and razor-sharp. There were no women like her in live-action television until Mrs. Emma Peel of The Avengers.
And after the only season of the cartoon, the shows were rerun on Saturday morning. And rerun. And rerun. And that's the biggest error of Hanna-Barbara.
Never Seen Again
I will never understand why the series was treated this badly. The cancellation on ABC primetime was obvious; it wasn't bringing in the ratings they wanted. But when the series was rerun multiple times on Saturday morning, why didn't H-B create new episodes in the same mode? They could have sold the shows as superhero material, or to reduce the gunfire when anti-violence became a big deal.
In the late 60's, as part of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, two of the show elements were about as serious as Jonny Quest. The Three Musketeers had glorious backgrounds, swordfighting, good characters and reasonable historical accuracy. Closer to the Quest mythos was their live-action segment, Danger Island, a riff on Robinson Crusoe with a black native as part of the team.
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In their fallow period, Doug Wildey did this beautiful comic for Comico. (The original series had no problems with guns.) See the original at The Classic Jonny Quest Web Site. |
They did bring something back in 1982, a brief, disregarded Jonny Quest series which added a defrosted caveman named Hardrock to the team. And in the early days of Cartoon Network, there was a few movies involving the Quest team. The first was Jonny's Golden Quest, which sounds like the kid wanted to find a urinal. If that was the topic of the movie, it would have been more interesting. The Quest team apparently ran huge research facilities with hundreds of scientists, and the "quest" involved some ecological accident. The undertext of the film was "Jonny is no longer a kid, he's becoming a young man," which wasn't supported by the story.
The second, Jonny Quest and the Cyber Insects, was closer to a return to glory. The story specifically showed Jonny growing into his early teens. Race Bannon discovered, to his great surprise, that he had a daughter - Jessie Bannon - born without his knowledge by his old girlfriend Jezebel Jade. (I think it's the first time an H-B character was conceived out of wedlock.) Adding her to the Quest team was a great innovation, letting Jonny deal with the opposite sex for the first time. And it was appropriate to bring back the only villain who repeated in the original series, Dr. Zin. (But changing him from a Fu Manchu mad scientist into a cloned alien with yellow-green skin was a cheat.)
The Quests and their Changes
That movie convinced H-B's new owners, Turner (before Time Warner bought them out) to finance a new series. But some executive apparently felt that the series had to appear every place Turner owned. Jonny Quest: The New Adventures ran on TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network simultaneously. The entire run of the series could be seen in three months if you were a dedicated channel-switcher.
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Morality in action: Jessie is now legit, and Race is no longer CIA. © Hanna-Barbara. |
Recovering from their daring dalliance with illegitimacy, Jessie Bannon became Race's fully-legit daughter, born of Race's ex-wife, an Aztec archeologist. (As a nod to her original origin, one episode featured Jezebel Jade, who told the disdainful Jessie that with a twist of fate, Jade might have been her mother.) Race himself had a darker past; he quit the CIA because he couldn't stomach the agency's dirty business, and his old buddies in "the company" occasionally came back to haunt him, and sometimes hunt him.
To integrate motion-captured CGI into the show, the new updated series introduced Questworld, a cyber-universe similar to The Matrix; characters in it looked like videogame characters in black rubber body suits. But Questworld could affect the real world as well, and one of Quest's new enemies, a crippled terrorist named Jeremiah Surd, often kidnapped Questworld for his own purposes. In Questworld, the wheelchair-bound Surd took on the form of a muscled wrestling villain. In one case, he managed to download his personality into Race Bannon's real-world body. Surd was so obscessed with revenge in that episode, he didn't take advantage of a body that could move and sense - not even to kiss his pretty assistant.
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Even these modest, girlish breasts made Jessie too hot for regular visits in Questworld.© Hanna-Barbara. |
Jonny wasn't ready to deal with the opposite sex either, even with Jessie in most episodes. Her Questworld persona looked remarkable, with the body suit showing off her figure. H-B has always had problems with sexy women, more problems than TV censors ever did, and that's why she rarely showed up in Questworld. Only rarely in the episodes did she have a relationship beyond "buddy"with Jonny. One memorable show had her possessed by a ghost, and under her influence she kissed Jonny. (Something botk kids immediately regretted once the spirit left her body - Jonny was as backward with girls as Jeremiah Surd.)
JQ:TRA was a fairly good series. It would have been better if released about ten years earlier. It would have lasted longer, and gone into extra seasons, if the show had been run cautiously and not in a saturation pattern. But by that time, H-B was pretty much finished. Shortly after the series was released, it was absorbed into AOL Time Warner, and became little more than a brand name for some Cartoon Network shows.
Let Them Quest In Peace
It's now an old story; now that megacorporations own everything, it's less and less likely that innovative ideas can be made into entertainment. If Jonny Quest was proposed today, it would never be made. And under the current mindset of the suits, the only form a new Jonny Quest series would take would be a bitter parody of itself.
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Surd was crippled when one of his own terrorist schemes blew up in his face, but he danced all over the Quest team's schemes. © Hanna-Barbara. |
It was amusing when a small unit of Cartoon Network created Space Ghost: Coast to Coast from cels of the old cartoons. Although the characters were far different and sillier than their original incarnations, the characters were consistent and solid. It got less amusing when Sealab 2020 was turned into the nasty Sealab 2021, with the humor quotient dropping in favor of sexual innuendo and twisted psychology. In a desperate attempt for laughs, the satire of Sealab had characters become megalomaniac, suicidal, horny and just plain stupid for no reason. It would be a disaster if the same crew was handed Jonny Quest and told to trash it.
Jonny Quest, if properly managed and produced the first time, could have revolutionized American animation. It could have established serious action cartoons in America, long before anime reached this shore. But why Hanna and Barbara didn't pursue and build Jonny Quest is still uncertain. Their nostalgic biographies (undoubtedly affected by their advanced age) never discussed this matter.
The answer to that question matters, because we now have venues where mature cartoons can appear. Todd McFarlane's Spawn, Samurai Jack and Justice League attract adult attention. Invasion America failed, but sometime soon another dramatic animated show will succeed in prime time. When it does, avoiding the mistakes made with Jonny Quest will be critical.
Yes, it is...sort of.
Ain't It Cool?: Hollywood's Red-Headed Stepchild Speaks Out
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The only picture in the book is on the cover, more's the pity. |
By Harry Knowles, with Paul Cullum and Mark Ebner
Warner Books, Inc., March 2002
ISBN 0-446-52597-9
It was only a few years ago that I discovered Harry Knowles's web site. It wasn't until I actually met him at San Diego's ComicCon 2000 that I gained an inkling of who he was. But it wasn't surprising that such a person would come from the world of science fiction and fantasy conventions.
His family history, involving that mutant subspecies of humanity known as Texans, is as full of treachery, backstabbing and heartbreak as Aaron Spelling's Dynasty. Shunning his rich but corrupt relatives, he and his father eked out a living selling collectibles and comic books. While loading up to leave a convention, a huge dolly full of merchandise tipped over onto Knowles, crippling him. He didn't have the money for doctors, so he laid in bed on his side, hoping for natural healing. While doing this, his only contact with the outside world was the Internet, and he started his own web site.
Knowles gathered a family of spies and informers - although he was the greatest and first spy he ever had - and uncovered information on movies and TV shows that the studios didn't want known. It isn't the sort of gossip that will thrill your mom or wind up in a tabloid. It's the gossip of the film industry, the gossip that affects the final product, the films and TV shows you see. As he says, "At a time when the bastions of the fourth estate are sliding down the naked and muddy slopes of the gutter press, I could genuinely care less. For me, it's all about the work"
And now it's time for full disclosure - as Knowles has done in this book. I have problems with the way Knowles inserts himself in his writing. It's even worse with his partner Drew McWeeny, who writes under the pretentious pseudonym "Moriarty" and pretends to be an evil mastermind. I've always felt that the critic must place the work first, himself last if at all, and should stay the hell out of the way. On one occasion, I was banned from posting on the site because I cursed out Moriarty. Look, you can only take so much stupidity without reacting to it, right?
Suffering a pang of conscience, in San Diego I gave Knowles a $10 bill to buy McWeeny a drink as a form of apology. I never got confirmation that he got the money, or rescinded the ban on me. So I now post under another name (guess which one?), and try to restrain myself from attacking McWeeny, even if he does violate my deeply held beliefs about critical comportment. (And if McWeeny is reading this, make sure you get that money from Knowles.)
Despite that, neither I or anyone else can deny that Knowles loves movies almost more than life itself. He has many serious beliefs about what's wrong with movies and how to fix them. It goes beyond the fanboy silliness of asking Tim Burton to make another Batman movie. He devotes a chapter to NRG, a company almost unknown outside Hollywood, that rates audience reactions to sneak previews. That company decides what you will and won't see on the screen, and Knowles calls them the worst influence on film in our time. Knowles openly talks about the times he's blown it, including one case he was thoroughly conned for a long time. He feels that he has nothing to be ashamed of, and full disclosure from him is better than Enquirer nonsense.
Rather than his flaws, it's better to talk about the legions of hate-filled idiots he graciously allows to post on his site. His weight, his opinions, and everything else about him is insulted in terms that would make a prostitute blush. But Knowles remains a gentleman and allows these remarks to stand. He sees geekdom as a big party and he even invites the party poopers and the obnoxious drunks. He is the Dolly Levi of film fandom.
His book is far better written than his web site. Part of it is the time one takes when writing a book, rather than dashing out a last-minute web page. Another is undoubtedly his co-authors, who undoubtedly cleaned up a lot of his grammar and solidified his thoughts. (This is no blow to Knowles, since lots of famous people had co-authors or "told-to" people involved in their books.) He justifies his opinions with a broad knowledge of movies and the movie business. And this was Knowles, not his co-authors. I watched him in San Diego discussing foreign and obscure movies, saw the passion in his eyes, the firm set on his jaw as he spoke.
If there's one down side to the book, it's that there's nothing but text. Clearly, he couldn't get permission to reprint photos from famous movies in his book - he's that far on the outs with the studio suits. Even his own publisher, AOL Time Warner, didn't throw any pictures his way. But he could have included some of the beautiful cartoons from his site, of himself and his co-conspirators. At one time he was going to do a TV review show, using animated versions of his web cartoons; perhaps he was afraid of someone stealing the concept if he showed the pictures in his book.
The book won't tell you about movies. For that, you should turn to Michael Weldon's two Psychotronic volumes or other film reference books. This book is Harry Knowles expressing his love for movies. It is a romance in an age where romance is rare. It's a love story from a guy who many might believe would never know love. Which is a kind of Hollywood fairy-tale ending.