Johnny Quest #2 // Review
Johnny asks Johnny what year it is. Johnny tells Johnny that it’s never a a good sign when one has to ask THAT question. Johnny tells Johnny that it’s 2024. Johnny’s got a lot of explaining to do. And Johnny’s all ears in Johnny Quest #2. Writer Joe Casey has a fun time with tropes from the old cartoon show while expanding on them quite beautifully in another issue brought to page and panel by Sebastián Piriz. Color comes to the page courtesy of Lorenzo Scaramell. Though it IS something that will be enjoyed by fans of the series, Casey and company continue to deliver a story that would be entertaining even to those unfamiliar with the property.
Clearly Johny, Race, Hadji, Bandit and Dr. Quest have all gone forward decades into the future. There isn’t much that can be done about that. Things are amiss and the world isn’t quite the way they remember it being. Johnny and company are going to be able to get back to their native time, they’re going to have to adapt to a world that is distinctly unfamiliar...populated by future shadows of their present. Things are going to get complicated for everyone involved.
To a certain extent, Casey is doing a “Days of Future Past” thing with Johnny Quest. There’s more to it than merely a somewhat dark future, though. Casey has taken a look at an age-old property and seen where the beloved characters might have ended up if things were allowed to progress in the decades since the TV series had debuted back in 1964. It’s a fun look at a beloved property that continues to feel true to the original while moving things in a direction that’s a bit darker than Saturday morning TV would have allowed back in the 1960s.
Piriz has remarkably sharp skills with respect to architectural rendering in the background. So often the atmosphere of an adventure story gets lost to the action in the foreground. Piriz’s clever framing and sharp use of detail in the background give Johnny and his extended cast a great deal more depth than would have been allowed by the mass-produced visuals at Hanna-Barbera several decades ago. The detail given to the character design is quite clever as well. Piriz and Scarameli are true to the overall character design of the beloved ensemble while adding detail around the edges that fits more or less perfectly into a much more detailed and atmospheric background.
Honestly...there wasn’t that much that was truly original about the original cartoon. It was a simple extrapolation of sci-fi adventur4e fiction that had been circulating around various mediums including radio, pulp fiction and TV for decades by the time Johnny made his first appearance. The deification of syndication have found a place for Johnny deep in the heart of Boomers and Xers that work their magic on the page in a way that feels just as engaging for those of us who WEREN’T interested in the original animation.
Grade: A
