Comic Book Review: Future Quest Presents Volume 1 edited by Joey Cavalieri
One of the effects of the many corporate mergers that have taken place over the last few decades is that the rights to the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons are now owned by Warner Communications, the same folks that own DC Comics. A few years back, to help preserve the trademarks, a number of HB-related comic books were published, including a critically-acclaimed version of The Flintstones and a “Future Quest” line that brought together many of the adventure and superhero characters from the cartoons.
Most of the Hanna-Barbera hero cartoons were pretty shallow. When you’re aiming a twelve minute story at say eight year olds, it’s most important that you convey, “here is a hero with amazing powers. He fights evil and wins.” Things like backstory, deep characterization or who the hero is when he’s not fighting evil just aren’t relevant.
But for comic books aimed at a somewhat older audience, these topics become important. Thus this series, which went over the origins of some of the characters. Volume 1 contains issues 1-3 and 5-7, covering Space Ghost and Birdman respectively.
The Space Ghost story written by Jeff Parker with art by Ariel Olivetti uses a premise we’ve seen in other adaptations for the character. A la the Lone Ranger, the Ghost is the sole known survivor of the Space Force, a law enforcement unit that was wiped out by a cosmic menace. In this story, he needs to obtain more of the rare mineral that powers the Space Force’s power-bands. This requires him to return to the scene of one of the Space Force’s greatest failures and face the consequences of that failure.
The story also explains why Space Ghost is raising Jan and Jace, his teenage sidekicks, and their pet monkey Blip. We also get an appearance by the Herculoids, and their stone ape Igoo helps the Space Ghost crew in their mission.
The Birdman story written by Phil Kester with art by Steve Rude is perhaps a bit darker in its implications. Birdman knows that he is archaeologist Ray Randall, and still possesses those skills, but remembers almost nothing of his personal life before becoming Birdman and gaining the light powers of Ra. He’s been dealing with this primarily by just being a superhero full time.
It turns out that his origin ties into a cult run by Mentok the Mind-taker. They have somehow gained the ability to summon “gods” for various effects, and an early semi-successful result was merging Ray Randall (undercover at the time) with “Ra” and creating Birdman. Now Mentok wants to summon the Fleshless God to make Earth silent, but he’ll need Birdman out of the way.
Birdman’s amnesia makes him manipulatable as he can’t dispute what other people tell him about their relationships or what he did in the past. We also see some of Mentok’s past; he has suffered greatly, and is perfectly willing to sacrifice everyone else, even his own cultists, to stop that suffering.
Avenger, Birdman’s mentally linked hawk, is a sarcastic cuss who gives the story a bit of comic relief.
Both stories are well written and have good art, but I prefer the Birdman story, not least because I really dig Steve Rude’s art, and there’s more emotional depth.
Recommended for superhero fans, especially those that liked the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
