Scooby-Doo Team-Up #29

The top dog meets Top Cat and his gang of felonious felines in this all Hanna-Barbera edition of Scooby-Doo Team-Up. Top Cat is up to his ways of playing tricks on Officer Dibble. This time, he's got one of his gang dressing up as the Ghost of Hoagy's Alley! With the Mayor making a real push to clean up the neighborhood, the policeman calls in the Mystery Inc. Gang to solve the mystery. 

In a twist on the corrupt land developer trope of Scooby-Doo stories, the detectives actually go out of their way to prove that the neighborhood really is haunt, least a pair of scheming real estate agents will buy up everything for real cheap and tear it all down to build luxury condominiums. This will not only evict Top Cat and his gang, it will put Officer Dibble on having to work a really dangerous beat. So cops and cat crooks work together to stop the plans of some modernizers from putting a lot of nice folks out of house and home. 

Community Gentrification. The only thing worse than monsters and ghosts. 

I'm not normally as much of a fan of the Hanna-Barbera crossovers as I am the DC Comics ones. They tend to be more formulaic and predictable. However, this story was such a switcheroo to the standard Scooby-Doo mystery that I actually felt like I was reading something entirely fresh and new. It probably helps that I know next to nothing about Top Cat. Still, what I know about Scooby-Doo, and I know a lot, is changed up so much to a point that everything was totally unexpected.

The writer Sholly Fisch is the reason this story was so original. He's a masterful writer who knows how to not just write for kids but the whole family! 

The only thing that I didn't like about the story was the unevenness of the art. But I don't blame Dave Alvarez for it. His renderings of the Mystery Inc. team is spot on. His drawings of the Top Cat universe of characters are great. However, the two franchises couldn't be any more different from each other. Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne are drawn much more realistically than Officer Dibble and the developers. Scooby-Doo looks like a pure-bred next to Top Cat. Thus, when these two worlds of characters meet, it just doesn't gel. At least when the Flintstones meet up with the Jetsons, you felt like Fred really could have been George's long lost ancestor. The art styles of these two franchises are like Edward Hopper's Nighthawks meeting Picasso's 3 Musicians.

If you can get over how striking the artwork is, you're in for a treat. This really is one of the most original Scooby-Doo mysteries ever written and it's a ton of fun.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera #2- Yogi's Easter Parade (2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

I'm constantly updating my reviews when I learn more about my favorite hobby. But it's not everyday when one of the creators of a work I covered provides some insight. I publish my reading challenge posts on a Facebook group and Mark Evanier was kind enough to give some background on Hanna-Barbera's search for a comic book publisher.  

Any corrections to this review will be in bold.

The 1960s and 70s were the golden age of Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, and Scooby-Doo were some of the iconic successes of animation geniuses William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Yet as successful as Hanna-Barbera was, they just couldn't compete with Disney and Warner Bros.

One could argue that the comic book presence or lack thereof, was a main influence in why Hanna-Barbera would often rank third in terms of most popular animation franchises. Just like Disney and Warner Bros. did, Hanna-Barbera partnered with Western Publishing to produce comic book adaptations of their work. 

Hanna-Barbera was very happy with Western in terms of story and art. Many of the staff at Hanna-Barbera had side gigs at Western, so the adaptations were almost like lost episodes. They were big sellers to the point that the animation studio wanted Western to increase the number of titles based on the Hanna-Barbera catalog. Yet Western would not budge on their output leaving Hanna-Barbera to find another comic book publisher. 

In 1970, Hanna-Barbera partnered with Charlton Comics to produce comics based on their product line. Charlton was more than willing to produce the desired number of works based on the world's greatest Saturday morning cartoons. Flintstones was Charlton's most popular series running for 50 issues. Almost a half-dozen spin-offs were released by Charlton based on characters from the prehistoric comedy, including titles devoted to the Great Gazoo and Pebbles and Bam-Bam. A Yogi Bear title ran for 35 issues and a Top Cat book made it to 20. 

The studio wasn't not happy with the artwork, believing that the publishers were just unable to get the trademark likenesses just right. The 70s were a rough time for the Connecticut based publisher. Dick Giordano had poached most of Charlton's top talent and brought them over state lines to DC Comics headquarters in the Big Apple. According to Mark Evanier, the partnership between the studio and Charlton was soon severed. It was another nail in the coffin for the dying publisher and Hanna-Barbera was without a comic book presence once again.

Hanna-Barbera decided to take its characters to New York City. But they didn't go to DC Comics. Instead, Hanna-Barbera partnered with Marvel. 

Despite being wooed by the House of Ideas, Marvel didn't devote very much attention to its new Hanna-Barbera line-up. From 1977-79, Marvel released only 6 main titles to Yogi Bear and his pals were released. Along with a Dyno-Mutt series and a fan-favorite adaptation of the massive crossover cartoon, Laff-A-Lympics. Also part of Marvel's Hanna-Barbera line was a 3-issue tabloid sized anthology called The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera. 

The first issue was a Christmas themed book. The last issue was devoted to Laff-A-Lympics. The middle issue was a rare Easter treat full of Hanna-Barbera characters, puzzles, games and other fun things to do. 

Mark Evanier penned the opening story that features nearly 2 dozen characters from your favorite Saturday morning cartoons. On Easter morning, Yogi and Boo-Boo awaken hoping for Easter Eggs. A quick search finds the Easter Bunny's allotment of eggs and a note saying that he's been kidnapped. So Yogi calls all his friends and they work to provide Easter eggs for all the kids of the Jellystone Park region while conducting a search for the missing rabbit!

Then Dyno-Mutt and the Blue Falcon team-up with Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Inc. gang to solve a caper involving a ghost and a number of missing items at a new museum. 

Evanier returns with a story involving Top Cat and his gang. Love is in the air with Officer Dibble, the cop who works the beat where Top Cat lives. However, Top Cat is suspicious of Dibble's new girlfriend when the officer gives her a check containing his life savings!

Lastly, go back in time to the very earliest days of baseball with the Flintstones. A struggling baseball team thinks that they have a superstar Babe in the making with tiny tot Bam-Bam. But a rival owner seeks to make sure the tyke doesn't make it to opening day!

The fun and games in this book include a magic trick presented by Magilla Gorilla and a find the twin game led by Captain Caveman. There's also a crossword puzzle and a word scramble for readers to do. But one must be the most knowledgeable of Hanna-Barbera fans in order to answer some of the most obscure questions.

By 1980, Hanna-Barbera had ended its partnership with Marvel. Bridges weren't burned as Marvel's Star Comics imprint did release a couple of books based on NBC's Foofur and the prehistoric prequel The Flintstone Kids. 

With exception to a few minis based on syndicated and Saturday morning toons, Hanna-Barbera wouldn't return to comics until the early 90s. Finding a home with Harvey Comics, Yogi and friends were welcomed by their new publisher. Unfortunately, it seemed like Hanna-Barbera was eternally snake-bit as Harvey ceased releasing new material by 1993. In 1995, Archie Comics signed an agreement to publish titles based on Scooby-Doo and the Flintstones. This agreement continued until 1997. A year prior, Hanna-Barbera Studios was purchased by Warner Bros. and absorbed into the Cartoon Network Brand. 

Since the merger, DC Comics has been the official publisher of Hanna-Barbera properties. In the quarter century since the purchase, DC has released dozens of titles. Scooby-Doo has been DC's most popular acquisition with 2 main series of over 250 issues and numerous spin-offs including the extremely popular Scooby-Doo Team-Up. In 2017, DC issued several one-shots pitting their most popular heroes with modern day versions of the Hanna-Barbera universe. Over the next several years, grittier reboots of characters such as Jonny Quest, Snagglepuss and the Jetsons were produced by DC with varying degrees of critical and consumer success.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #26 (Set During a Holiday Not in December) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Adam Strange/Future Quest Special #1

In this story, after a Zeta Beam malfunction, Adam Strange is sent back to earth. Only this is unlike any earth that the space travel has ever known. On this parallel earth, there is no Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman. But there is a daring young boy named Jonny Quest who just might have the means to get Adam back to his universe. 

Then in the back-up feature, that sly feline Top Cat is detained by the Batman. Here, Top details how a talking cat wound up in Gotham City. 

Both stories were quite good but the Jonny Quest story was better. It takes place almost immediately after the end of Future Quest. I've not read all of that story yet. Thankfully, this book really doesn't spoil too much so I still have the rest of that amazing miniseries to finish someday. This book also takes place right after the Death of Hawkman mini. I hadn't been keeping up with that, so any spoilers revealed that might ruin reading that book, I am unaware of at this point.

Top Cat's story was very interesting. I didn't so much get the feel that it's going to inspire a sequel like the Jetsons reboot has in the pages of the Booster Gold/ Flintstones special. But the seamless blending of cartoon funny animals with the gritty DC Universe has led me to believe that this was in some way the inspiration for Tom King's brilliant crossover of the Dark Knight and Elmer Fudd.

When this book debuted in March there really wasn't a lot of press. This Hanna-Barbera reboot crossover was a underrated delight to read. Marc Andreyko's ability to blend the worlds of Adam Strange and Jonny Quest was masterfully done and I thought the art in both stories was quite exceptional. Phil Winslade and Steve Lieber do great jobs on their persepective tales. But look at this cover by Evan 'Doc' Shaner. Wow- that's great stuff. I wish he had done the Future Quest story inside as he was the main artist on that project and did a kick-ass job.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.