It's Saturday Morning All Over Again with DC's Future Quest

Remember when you'd get up on a Saturday morning before your parents, sloppily make yourself a bowl of cereal (using the mixing bowl, the whole box of cocoa-whatevers, and half a gallon of milk), then turn on the television and do nothing but live in the animated world until lunchtime? It was fun, it was adventure -- and it was serious business! Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, the Herculoids, the Impossibles, the Galaxy Trio, Birdman, Space Ghost, Frankenstein Junior, and more were always there to take you on the ride of your young life.

That experience lives again in FUTURE QUEST #1 by Jeff Parker and Evan "Doc" Shaner. Reading through these pages, I could hear the JONNY QUEST theme music playing in the background as Jonny and Hadji flew jetpacks over the Florida Everglades under the watchful eye of Race Bannon. I could hear the high-pitched cycling of fist lasers as Space Force (a tip of the hat to Doc Smith's "Lensman" series) sacrificed themselves (in what I must assume to be the "Secret Origin of Space Ghost"). I had the same old questions about where Doctor Zin had his cameras if he could see and hear Dr. Benton Quest all the time, even in his top-secret and secure facility. And of course my cranium reverberated as soon as mighty winged warrior, Birdman, took flight with his trademarked cry of self-identification.

The goal of FUTURE QUEST is to bring all the disparate Hanna Barbera cartoons into a cohesive universe. But how to do that? Well, with Jonny Quest, Birdman and Space Ghost, it's not that hard. But where does everyone else fit in?

They don't. But Parker provides an answer for that in the form of multiversal portals, allowing us glimpses into the worlds of the Herculoids and others. They don't play a role in this first issue, but you know they're coming.

Another thing that makes this all work is the painstaking effort of Shaner to give everyone a cohesive, realistic look. You can't put the cartoon versions of Jonny and Hadji in the same panel with The Impossibles and have your brain accept it. But Shaner's redesigns work without ruining the spirit of the original (unlike some "Dizzy Drivers" starring in another series that I could mention but won't).

I plan to follow this one on a monthly basis. Don't wait for the collected trade, get it now.