Johnny Quest #1 // Review
It’s as though the entire island is getting ready to defend itself. The look on Doc’s face in making Race nervous. Race’s nervousness is making Johnny nervous. Hadj feels only danger and despair. So clearly they’re all in a place that feels hostile. Precisely how they’re going to handle the situation will be defined in Johnny Quest #1. A whole new series based on the popular animated series from the 1960s issues its opening pages courtesy of writer Joe Casey and artist Sebastián Piriz and colorist Lorenzo Scaramella. The classic adventure series comes to life once more on the comics page in a style and form that feels more or less perfectly in-line with the original series.
Somewhere deep in a shadowy room, a shadowy figure is watching via hidden surveillance cameras. The room is filled with monitors. The figure presses a button and a door opens. Race is beginning to suspect that the place is haunted, but the Doctor knows better. Clearly they are being led into a trap, but they scarcely have any other option being on a big island in the middle of nowhere. Theoretically they could turn down the implicit invitation, but they ARE being invited into their on home, so what could possibly go wrong?
Casey opens the series on sort of a fun adventure. So often long-running adventure series begin with the adventurers leaving home. It’s a fun turnabout of expectation to have the intrepid explorers return home at the opening of an adventure. The intrigue may feel a bit cliche aside from some of the basic fundamentals of the set-up, but Casey manages to keep it interesting by way of serving both as an exploration of the situation AND an introduction to the characters. It’s an enjoyable opening chapter to a new series.
Piriz plays it reasonably safe with the art. This is a respectable approach for the opening of a new issue. There’s a rich sense of detail between Piriz and the colorist that goes way beyond the cel animated flatness of the original series which established the look and the feel of Johnny Quest about a half a century ago. (The series celebrates its 50th anniversary on September 18th of this year.) Piriz frames some of the action with cleverly skewed angles that keep the visuals feeling fresh without losing sight of the simplicity of the iconography that makes Johnny Quest distinct.
The whole, the first issue is rather deft and gaining the interest of even someone who might not normally have been interested in the property. Casey is managing a really tightly woven mystery that immediately launches the series into really fascinating new directions. Things have changed a lot over the years. Explorers of the unknown aren't quite as popular in popular culture as they had been in the past. Casey knows what he’s doing, though. The pulpy, intrepid adventures that have been going on in popular fiction for well over a century. Continue to be really appealing if they handled right.
