Jonny Quest - who were you for?

 I was probably a young kid when that first exposure to Jonny Quest happened, and as a young kid, I probably thought, "there's way too much going on here". As a preteen, my revisit to Jonny Quest was eye-opening, it did things no other cartoon would even come close to until the 90s. As a young adult, that original season of Jonny Quest was an aberration in a cartoon world that included Fred Flintstone and Penelope Pitstop and defied logic.

I'm not going to waste anyone's time and bother retreading a history of cartoons, except to articulate, to the best of my knowledge, who the audience was, in an effort to bring attention to the oddity that was Jonny Quest. There's the Disney story, and the Looney Tunes - often preceding whatever you were watching in the cinema that day. They were the "Coming Attractions" of the 1930s and 1940s. As more households acquired televisions, and in a push to expand programming hours, networks adopted what is colloquially referred to as the "Saturday Morning Cartoons" in the 1950s. Mighty Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Hanna-Barbera ushered in the early success of child-friendly programming on Saturday mornings. Hanna-Barbera alone had nearly put the final nail in Disney's coffin, when it decided to try something that essentially no one was asking for. Drunk on the success the studio had found with Tom and Jerry, they launched the first primetime cartoon, The Flintstones... and it was incredibly popular. Suspicions that adults were enjoying cartoons as much as children solidified into mission goals, and we arrive at perhaps the sincerest effort anyone made to give adult men and children a savory bit of fiction to bite into, Jonny Quest. Rich, detailed, textured art; dialogue ripped out of an Ian Fleming story; and a 10 yo protagonist that is too head strong to know better. Though JQ did not connect with an audience in it's original primetime airings, Hanna Barbera did not abandon the formula entirely. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? would revisit the idea of corrupted and greedy adults, and the lengths they would go to for power and property. The 1970s brought an age of cynicism, experimentation, and stark realities. Counter-culture artists embraced the medium to tell acid-fueled fever dreams that were made strictly for adult audiences; studios in Japan developed hyper-realistic, and dramatic feature-length films, while the American studios could only think to turn out absurd concepts like Wacky Racers that only served to lampoon their creations than evolve them. The 80s - oh the Reagan 80s... big money, baby! The Reagan administration removed the restrictions on advertisers, and Saturday Morning turned into a 3-hour toy commercial. GI Joe, He-Man - they existed to sell everything from toys to food products... cocaine is expensive! The explosion in cable programming and a return to sanity in terms of what was acceptable marketing was the death knell for Saturday mornings. 

With that jaunt through history out of the way, back to our originally scheduled program. Right from the onset, Jonny Quest borrowed more from the serials of the 40s than it did from any of it's peer animation at the time. Jonny, our protagonist, is a young boy and his father is a widow and a brilliant scientist that finds himself trapped within the military industrial complex as a result of his talents. He has to hire Race Bannon (the equivalent of a green beret) to protect not only himself, but also his son. The comic relief comes in the form of Jonny's bravado outpacing his skill, as well as his French Bulldog, Bandit. Early in their adventures, an Indian orphan named, Hadji, is "adopted" by the Quest Family. He is the intelligence that counter balances Jonny's recklessness. Hadji's character is one that does not age well, written with tropes of mysticism, and in the second season, and exiled prince of a sultan. In sharing that little bit about the main cast, it's probably already evident, the audience is being exposed to characters with some complexity and given motivations both tragic and relatable.

All good heroes need a villain counterpart, and JQ does not disappoint in this arena. Most of our antagonists are bent on some global scheme that would kill millions of people, and have been driven mad by power. What makes any of this remotely plausible is that the writers of JQ kill people. That's it's most outstanding and unique quality for a cartoon of this era, and for any era until we arrive at shows such as Archer, and the heavily-JQ-"inspired", Venture Bros. Fantastical as it may seem, it was entirely possible that deaths of any number of people, good, bad or innocent was attainable by a Quest nemesis. The show probably just skirted a more notorious reputation by making the deaths believable but not gory/gruesome - the writing staff new any kid was already capable of filling in those visuals thanks to cameramen being embedded with troops in the Vietnam war. The villains and their hired goons rarely escaped death on JQ - whether they be blown up, devoured by a monster, or thrown off a cliff... choosing a path of evil meant you would never be absolved of your sins. This is a black and white world, and there's two paths. 

Beyond a flair for non-judicial murder, JQ was a master-class in artistic world building. Incredibly detailed environments, choosing ultra-realism over easily replicated scenery... churning out episodes must have been a grueling feat. Only the early seasons of Scooby-Doo could arguably match in atmosphere and tension the scenes such as the one below evoked.

Hoyt Curtain's brass and percussive-driven score evokes high-energy a la The Ventures, and couples perfectly with the mystique and flow of every episode. Much like the serials that were the shows inspiration, each episode takes the viewer on a complete adventure that feels substantive; you've been transported into a world that not only looks real, it sounds real... fear, terror, anger are palpable. Characters are capable of cruelty and inhumanity that can seem frightening, and you genuinely believe that they would without hesitation murder the entire Quest Family given the opportunity. None is more bent on causing the group chaos than Dr. Zin - an arch-nemesis to Dr. Quest, who relishes in the torture of his foe at the expense of all others. 

With morally bankrupt murderers the norm, who was this unapologetically adult-themed cartoon with a 10 year old protagonist for? Was it the belief of Hanna-Barbera that this was a family-fun half hour; a father/son bonding spy adventure; or a stab at something that tapped into the Mod Squad, The Saint, and Mission: Impossible audience? The recipe spoiled quickly, and no one dared be so adventurous again until given the freedom to do so without repercussions. As mentioned, JQ legacy lives in shows like Archer, Venture Bros, and to an extent, the anime world, because it defiantly decided to do something completely unorthodox, and did so unflinchingly. I think in that vein, it shares a pedestal with shows such as Twin Peaks and The Prisoner - expanding what was possible in a very limited network world. Somehow in this world where we are compelled to retro-fit our cartoons for modern sensitivities, JQ escapes such scrutiny... murdering henchman and their leaders in the hundreds because it's what you do in a right and wrong world. It's escaped cancel-culture for it's bigoted tropes and caricatures, and maybe because it was a failed experiment... that exists only in it's legacy of influence and not at a sole representation of what it did well. It must have been a passion project for the men and women that built each episode, because they certainly weren't receiving the adoration for their efforts. Enough people, in the end, did recognize it and gave it life beyond the 1960s. 

JQ didn't find it's audience in the 1960's, yet somehow would set in motion what would one day be possible, and surely find it's audience decades later. Many, many efforts have been put forth to resurrect that appeal, but all have been flat... until you concede to the short-comings of this show, mostly for it's racist portrayals and willingness to be cruel on an equal scale, you can't have another JQ. And it's for this reason explicitly, we have The Venture Bros.