Dynamite Entertainment is having way too much fun with the Disney and Hanna-Barbera (HB) characters! Now it is team-up time!
The HB hero meeting I never knew I wanted is coming in early 2025! I know that Jonny Quest is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoy his adventures! This time he’s meeting the outer space cop I’ve also been a fan of, and that is Space Ghost! It will be called Spacequest, appropriately enough!
Here’s the book’s description:
“Critically acclaimed author Joe Casey (Adventures of Superman, WildCATs) and electrifying artist Sebastián Píriz first had their own team-up for the well-received Jonny Quest series. Casey’s inventive take on the characters and stories was lauded as a perfect blend of timeless respect for the classic animated masterpiece, and with his own stylistic twists that have made him one of the most celebrated comic writers of the modern age. Píriz’s kinetic artwork was a seamless match, channeling the clean, deliberate aesthetics of original designer and comics mastermind Alex Toth and the animation that followed. Now the two are continuing that momentum and leveling up by bringing in another juggernaut of the Hanna-Barbera legacy in Space Ghost. For the Quest family, their legend is built on how far they’ll go in the spirit of adventuring, exploration, and discovery. Their latest mission is their biggest and farthest yet — literally out of this world!”
The mini-series will begin in March of next year, and it will be the first time these two franchises will have their own team-up without other HB characters.
“It was easy to look at the two concepts and see how they could fit together, how they could bounce off each other, and what kind of story would serve to honor both of them,” said writer Joe Casey. “Everyone will be there. It’s a crossover of concepts as much as it is of the characters. And the basic hook of the story is something that I can’t believe has never been done before. Once you see it, it’s so gloriously obvious that it just feels right.”
Personally, I’m seriously looking forward to this comic!
I mentioned that this was the first time these two franchises have starred in their own mini-series without other HB characters. That’s because they have interacted previously in DC’s recent Future Quest grouping. It had a large group of HB heroes and others in a mini-series that I truly loved. I would have loved it if this had gone on longer!
Around that time, DC had Space Ghost team up with Green Lantern, their own space cop. That one-timer was a fun story for me because I like intergalactic stories! I wouldn’t mind it if they would cross paths again sometime, frankly!
It’s seriously worth including that David Pepose is doing quite the great job with Space Ghost in what apparently is his own ongoing comic for Dynamite. I’ve enjoyed David’s scripting in several books prior to Space Ghost, and he’s exploring some of the earlier adventures of Space Ghost with Jan, Jace, and Blip the monkey. (I thought David did an exceptional job on an issue dealing largely with Blip!) He’s taking a somewhat more realistic approach to the grouping, which is fun to see just how they would later arrive as the team they would become in the Saturday morning cartoon.
Interestingly enough, Space Ghost’s second season actually had him meeting up with other heroes that appeared on Hanna-Barbera cartoons on CBS at the time. That included The Mighty Mightor, Moby Dick and his friends, Shazzan and his buddies, and the Herculoids. This all took place before Space Stars appeared a few years later on NBC. We saw several stories in which the Herculoids and Space Ghost would work together, probably the best of times for that show.
Speaking of team-ups, Thundercats have recently been working with The PowerPuff Girls, which has been another intriguing meeting.
I always just wonder what else Dynamite just might have coming our way soon!
What all this proves to me is that there is still an audience and fan-base support for these heroes that graced our TV screens several decades back.
But could it lead to new cartoons with these characters? After all, Space Ghost did appear on Batman: The Brave and The Bold during an episode, which was one of my favorites on that show. Could we see an anthology cartoon on Cartoon Network or on the MAX streaming service?
Stranger things have happened!
With so many channels actually needing new content to fill their 24/7 schedules, I hope someone at Warner Bros. is paying attention. I wouldn’t mind if they would convert these comics into animated episodes!
If you enjoy these characters as much as I do, I hope you will let your local comics shop know you want to support their adventures when they hit the stands in the months ahead! I sure am!
What do you think? Are there team-ups of HB heroes you would like to see happen? What overlooked characters deserve some time back in the spotlight? What creators do you think would do a great job with these HB superheroes? Feel free to share your opinions below! I hope you are having a happy holiday season!
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Wayne Hall creates the Wayne's Comics Podcast. He’s interviewed Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, John Layman, Kyle Higgins, Phil Hester, Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray, David Petersen, Christos Gage, Mike Grell, and Matt Kindt. On this site each week, he writes his "Comics Portal" column (general comics comments and previews) and reviews comics.