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Showing posts with the label Hanna Barbera

Into the Longbox: Scooby Apocalypse

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I love Scooby-Doo, so when DC added a Scooby book to the Hannah-Barbera revival line it immediately caught my attention. In Scooby Apocalypse , we get a glimpse of what it would be like if the Scooby gang met for the first time just as the world ended. It’s a kind of sci-fi version of The Walking Dead , where the Mystery Inc gang is cast as the survivors of a nanotech plague that transformed the whole world into monsters. The main characters are indeed named Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby. They do indeed ride around in a green van they call the Mystery Machine. Their visual models even show inspiration from the classic characters … and there ends any resemblance to anything remotely Scooby-Doo. The original cartoon endures due to the formula of the mysteries and the chemistry of the characters. They’re obviously tight knit friends who work well together and look out for each other. The Scooby-Doo cartoon mysteries are some of the most well-crafted stories in the busines...

Into the Longbox: Wacky Raceland

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In the summer of 2016, Warner Bros decided to try and reimagine their popular Hannah-Barbera cartoon characters as more mature versions of themselves. This line included four titles: Future Quest , which united the Hannah-Barbera actions heroes on an adventure throughout space and time; The Flintstones , looking at the stone-age Honeymooners through a modern sitcom lens; Scooby Apocalypse , where the Scooby gang meets for the first time just as the world ends; and Wacky Raceland , twisting the goofy wacky racers into post-apocalyptic speed demons in a world where it’s drive or die. The old cartoon Wacky Races pitted 11 alliteratively named drivers and their impossible machines on a no-holds-barred cross-country demolition course with predictably goofy results. The new comic book looks like Mad Max meets Speed Racer . The cars now have an attitude of their own, driven by an AI that reflects, distorts, and sometimes clashes with the personality of their driver. These turbo-cha...