Hanna-Barbera and DC Comics are teaming up for a new line of comic books. Revealed by Entertainment Weekly, DC is releasing multiple comic book series featuring the classic characters from the world of Hanna-Barbera. The kicker is that DC will be revitalizing these characters with brand new stories, in brand new worlds.
Scooby Apocalypse, Future Quest, Wacky Raceland and The Flintstones were the four series revealed in this announcement, but they're going to be adapted for a new generation of reader, giving them brand new stories and making them a bit more contemporary.
"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," explained co-publisher Dan Didio. "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."
One of the more interesting titles from this series seems to be Future Quest by Doc Shaner and Jeff Parker which features Space Ghost, Jonny Quest, Birdman, the Herculoids, and more. Wacky Racers (now called Wacky Raceland) gets a Mad Max facelift and will have Mark Sexton and Ken Pontac behind the creative side of the book. Both Amanda Conner and Mark Russell will be working on The Flintstones. Finally, the creative team of Jim Lee, Keith Giffen, and Howard Porter will be working on Scooby Apocalypse.
Didio went on to say that they didn't want to repeat what people saw in the past and each book will be a bit of a departure from the original series. "You're gonna have an epic adventure in the future stories with Jonny Quest and Space Ghost," says DiDio. "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."
There is no news yet as to when these series will make their debut from DC Comics.
