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Johnny Bullet
DC Comics
Future Quest #12
By Hervé St-Louis

May 15, 2017 - 11:23

Publisher(s): DC Comics
Hanna-Barbera
Writer(s): Jeff Parker
Artist(s): Evan Shaner
Colourist(s): Veronica Gandini
Letterer(s): Dave Lanphear
Cover Artist(s): Evan Shaner, Tonny Harris
$3.99


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The Crew fights Omnikron with all of their powers and manages to remove its anchor on Earth. But some of the new gear and weapons created to combat the monster don’t quite work and overtake Dr. Quest and Dr. Zin’s mind falter. Can Jonni Quest and his brother Hajdi replace the brilliant scientists and outmanoeuver Omnikron?

This issue is the wrap up of a series that I will miss but that lasted too long. It dragged itself, creating chapters with very little development early on. The story itself could easily have been told in five or six issues. Jeff Parker seems to have dragged this story to introduce and explore all of the Hanna-Barbera characters that are loved by so many. These characters are great. I really love them and those that I remember were highlights of my Saturday morning cartoons.

But the story, while epic did not do them justice or allow enough new ground to be explored. Ominkron as a threat was barely developed. We still don’t know what it is and why it absorbs so much. If it has been revealed, it was lost in the shuffle and was not important enough after reading this comic for one year to matter. This comic should appeal to kids and people on the fringe of super hero reading but I would not recommend it, even to nostalgic fans of these characters. Too many opportunities were missed. It’s a bland comic featuring exceptional art.

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Evan Shaner was the real star of this comic. He started strong but then had to pull out of several issues which made the weak storyline more obvious. The characters’ update in this series both visual and thematically was strong which means that we will see them much more at DC Comics. If there was one strong contribution by this team, this is the update of these characters.

Shaner’s last chapter on this story is impeccable as usual. He does have stock characters for women, men, and kids. They are reused often but in a meta way, is that not how animation model sheets were designed in the 1960s and 1970s anyway? The colours from Veronica Gandini continue to be strong, except for the fact that even though I reached out to her way back in the summer of 2014, she continues to draw the palms of non-white characters the same colour as their regular skin tone. She really doesn’t get it does she? Let me repeat this one more time. Humans have no melamine in their palms and soles. They are not “brown” all over unless they are depicted as cartoon and caricatures. Gandini doesn’t care about how insensitive her colouring is.

I want to see more of these characters but I want the stories to avoid dragging and to mean something.



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