It looks like it’s not just its superhero titles that DC Entertainment is looking to reboot, with Entertainment Weekly revealing that the publisher is set to launch a new line of comics based upon classic Hanna-Barbera characters – including Scooby-Doo, Johnny Quest, Wacky Races, Space Ghost and The Flintstones – which will “revitalize them for a new age”.
“From a personal standpoint, I was always a fan of the old Hanna-Barbera characters, having grown up on them,” states Dan DiDio, co-publisher of DC Entertainment. “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. 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.”
You’re gonna have an epic adventure in the future stories with Johnny Quest and Space Ghost,” DiDio continues . “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.. .This is just a lot of fun for us. We put out a lot of great superhero fare, we put out some crazy issues in our Vertigo universe, but this is something who really appeals to a mass audience — people who grew up with these characters — and we’re hopefully building a whole new generation to have that same level of love that we have for them.
Originally published January 28, 2016. Updated November 24, 2022.
