Has anyone else read any of them? I've seen collections of the first six issues at my local bookstore, and they seem split pretty evenly between good and bad:
THE FLINTSTONES: Done as 'subversive social commentary' (ugh). Fred and Barney are shell-shocked war vets, Bedrock is racist against Neanderthals, and everyone's a lowlife. At the same time they keep the 'sapient animals as technology' from the original cartoon. Maybe it's just me, but lighthearted wacky stuff like that doesn't work well when you're trying to do SERIOUS. IMPORTANT. MESSAGE. STUFF.
WACKY RACELAND: Wacky Races meets Mad Max as the racers drive for the last place on Earth where a human could thrive if they win. The others will be left to die in this dark Mad Max–inspired hell. I could go on at vast length about how the various characters have been turned into utter swine, but really? Dick Dastardly is still a backstabbing, cheating, whiny, murderous creep who abandoned his wife and son to die (but he carries their rotting skulls around out of remorse), and he's the most moral of the characters. Literally everyone is a scumbag, the characterization is paper-thin, and in the end the whole race turns out to be meaningless. This lasted six issues and good riddance.
SCOOBY APOCALYPSE: The Scooby gang versus real monsters created when Velma, who's a mad scientist here, unleashes a nanotech plague that destroys human civilization by turning 90% of the population into monsters. It's far better than it sounds, with some of the best comic book characters I've seen in a while. And compared to Wacky Raceland, you can laugh every once in a while.
FUTURE QUEST: If only they were all like this. All of the classic Hanna-Barbera superheroes (Herculoids, Birdman, Space Ghost, Johnny Quest, the Impossibles, Frankenstein Jr., etc.) team up to fight a universe-eating monster, the F.E.A.R. organization, and Dr. Zin. Mature in all the good ways, and it remembers these characters are supposed to be heroes.
Like I asked -- anyone read any of these titles?
Eric,
I read Future Quest. It was, as you said, excellent homage and still a great comic all rolled into one.
Eric,
I read Future Quest. It was, as you said, excellent homage and still a great comic all rolled into one.
I wish they could all have been as good as that one.
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Eric,
This is true. The others have been pretty...scattered to say the least.
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Future Quest is the one that I stuck with. The others just didn't really grab me. But Future Quest is just great, has been a huge amount of fun to read.
Grey,
Indeed. I'd buy it again in a heart beat.