Jonny Quest is a media franchise that revolves around a boy named Jonny Quest who accompanies his father on extraordinary adventures. The franchise started with a 1964-65 television series and has come to include two subsequent television series, two television films, and a video game.
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Jonny Quest – often casually referred to as The Adventures of Jonny Quest – is the original American science fiction/adventure animated television series that started the franchise. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for Screen Gems, and created and designed by comic-book artist Doug Wildey.
Inspired by radio serials and comics in the action-adventure genre, it featured more realistic art, characters, and stories than Hanna-Barbera's previous cartoon programs. It was the first of several Hanna-Barbera action-based adventure shows – which would later include Space Ghost, The Herculoids, and Birdman and the Galaxy Trio – and ran on ABC in prime time on early Friday nights for one season in 1964–1965.
After spending two decades in reruns, during which it appeared on all three major US television networks of the time, new episodes were produced for syndication in 1986. Two telefilms, a comic-book series, and a modernized revival series, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, were produced in the 1990s.
By the mid-1980s, the edited episodes of Jonny Quest were part of the syndication package The Funtastic World of Hanna–Barbera. Each episode was time-compressed and edited to reduce the runtime from 25 to 22 minutes, with edits focused on the comical scenes with Bandit. Thirteen episodes were produced in 1986 (although some sources state 1987) to accompany the originals in the Funtastic World programming block. These episodes were referred to simply as Jonny Quest in their opening title sequence (the same ones seen on the original series since the censoring), and were noticeably less violent and more "kid-friendly" than the 1960s originals, and introduced the new regular character Hardrock ("The Monolith Man"), an ancient man made of stone. Hardrock did not return in any later versions of the program.
A feature length animated telefilm, Jonny's Golden Quest, was produced by HannaBarbera for USA Network in 1993, which again pitted the Quest team against Dr. Zin, who murders Jonny's mother in the film. Jonny’s Golden Quest also reused the storyline of the recent series' episode "Deadly Junket," wherein a little girl named Jessie Bradshaw, the daughter of a missing scientist, asked the Quest party to help find her father. Here she is revealed to be lying about her parentage at Dr. Zin's behest, and to Race's surprise is actually his and Jade's daughter. Jessie would appear as a character in all subsequent versions of the Jonny Quest property. A second telefilm, Jonny Quest vs. The Cyber Insects, was produced for TNT in 1995, and was promoted as being the final iteration of the "Classic Jonny Quest".
All three of these productions featured the voices of Don Messick and Granville Van Dusen as Dr. Quest and Race Bannon, respectively. Messick also reprised performing the "voice" of Bandit in the series, but the features had this done by Frank Welker.
The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, premiered on all three major Turner Broadcasting System entertainment cable channels (Cartoon Network, TBS, and TNT), and met with mixed ratings and reviews. The characters were aged, with Jonny, Hadji, and Jessie becoming teenagers. Dr. Quest's compound has moved to a rocky island off the Maine coast.
Production on the series had been problem-laden since 1992, and when it was finally broadcast, it featured two different versions of its own Jonny Quest universe: the first batch of episodes (referred to as the "season one" episodes) gave the Quest team a futuristic look, while the second batch (referred to as "season two") harkened back to the original 1960s episodes. Several of the "season one" adventures in this series took place in a cyberspace realm known as "Questworld", depicted using 3-D computer animation. Both "seasons" aired during the 1996–1997 television season, and the show was canceled after 52 episodes (26 of each season). A live-action movie was planned to debut following the series premiere but never materialized.[1]
The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest returned in the late 1990s on Cartoon Network. It was part of the original Toonami rotation when the block launched on March 17, 1997 and aired consistently on Toonami until September 24, 1999. It then continued to air sporadically until December 14, 2002. The first 13 episodes of the first season were released to DVD on February 17, 2009.
The character Dr. Zin was believed dead during the first season of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. However, creators of the show felt the series wasn't reminiscent of the original enough and brought Zin back[2] in the second season episode "Nemesis," where Zin reveals himself as alive to Quest and holds a NASA station launching a new satellite hostage. Zin's two daughters, Anaya and Melana, returned to later episodes of 'Real Adventures' after being absent from the 'New Adventures' series.[2]
In the early 1990s, Turner planned a "Year of Jonny Quest" marketing campaign to feature a new television series, the release of classic episodes on VHS, the creation of two new animated movies in classic continuity (Jonny's Golden Quest and Jonny Quest vs. The Cyber Insects), and the production of a live-action film.[3][4][5] Director Richard Donner, producer Lauren Shuler Donner, and Jane Rosenthal optioned the rights for the live action film, having expressed interest in the property soon after Turner's acquisition of Hanna-Barbera.[1][3][6] Slated to begin production in mid-1995, filming was pushed back to 1996 and ultimately never began.[6] By early 1996, the project had already fallen well-behind development of other films, such as a live-action Jetsons movie.[7]
Zac Efron and Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson were reported in 2009 to have been cast as Jonny Quest and Race Bannon in an upcoming live action movie, respectively, according to a Moviehole.com interview with Johnson [1]. No further announcements regarding the movie have since been reported.
A Jonny Quest comic book (a retelling of the first TV episode, "Mystery of the Lizard Men") was published by Gold Key Comics in 1964. Comico began publication of a Jonny Quest series in 1986, with the first issue featuring Doug Wildey's artwork. The series was written by William Messner-Loebs and ran for 31 issues, with 2 specials and 3 "classic" issues drawn by Wildey retelling Quest TV episodes ("Shadow of the Condor", "Calcutta Adventure", and "Werewolf of the Timberland"). Wildey drew several additional covers, as did Steve Rude and Dave Stevens. The series also spun off a 3-issue series named Jezebel Jade — drawn by Adam Kubert — which told the story of Jade's relationship and adventures with Race Bannon.
In 1991, Hi-Tec Software published Jonny Quest in Doctor Zin's Underworld, a licensed Jonny Quest platform game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 home computers.
In 1993, Hollyware Entertainment published "Jonny Quest: Curse of the Mayan Warriors," a licensed title available only on 3.5" floppy disk. The pre-release title was "Jonny Quest and the Splinter of Heaven."
In 1996, Virgin Interactive published Jonny Quest: Cover-Up At Roswell for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.
In January 2009, IGN named Jonny Quest as the 77th best in its "Top 100 Animated TV Shows".[8]
Powerglove covered the theme song to The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest on their album Saturday Morning Apocalypse.
The characters and setting of Jonny Quest have frequently been the subject of brief parodies, especially in later animated programs, some of which have aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late-night programming block. (Time Warner owns both Cartoon Network and the rights to the entire Hanna-Barbera library, including Jonny Quest) In addition, there have been several substantial references to the show:
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