Jonny Quest (TV series)


Jonny Quest is an American animated science fiction adventure television series about a boy who accompanies his scientist father on extraordinary adventures. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for, and was 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 time it appeared on all three major U.S. television networks of the time, new episodes were produced for syndication in 1986 as part of The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera's second season. Two telefilms, a comic book series, and a more modern revival series, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, were produced in the 1990s.

Development

artist Doug Wildey, after having worked on Cambria Productions' 1962 animated television series Space Angel, found work at the Hanna-Barbera studio, which asked him to design a series starring the radio drama adventure character Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy.
Wildey wrote and drew a presentation, using such magazines as Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Science Digest "to project what would be happening 10 years hence", and devising or fancifully updating such devices as a "snowskimmer" and hydrofoils. When Hanna-Barbera could not or would not obtain the rights to Jack Armstrong, the studio had Wildey rework the concept. Wildey said he "went home and wrote Jonny Quest that night—which was not that tough." For inspiration he drew on Jackie Cooper and Frankie Darrow movies, Milton Caniff's comic strip Terry and the Pirates, and, at the behest of Hanna-Barbera, the James Bond movie Dr. No. As Wildey described in 1986, producer Joe Barbera had seen that first film about the English superspy "and wanted to get in stuff like '007' numbers. Which we included, by the way, in the first Jonny Quest. It was called 'Jonny Quest File 037' or something. We dropped that later; it didn't work. But that was his father's code name as he worked for the government as a scientist and that kind of thing." Hanna-Barbera refused to give him a "created by" credit, Wildey said, and he and studio "finally arrived on 'based on an idea created by', and that was my credit."
The prime-time animated TV series Jonny Quest debuted on ABC at 7:30p.m. EDT on Friday, September 18, 1964. As comics historian Daniel Herman wrote,
Wildey did not design the more cartoonishly drawn pet bulldog, Bandit, which was designed by animator Richard Bickenbach.
Although they do not appear in any episode, scenes from the Jack Armstrong test film were incorporated into the Jonny Quest closing credits. They are the scenes of Jack Armstrong and Billy Fairfield escaping from African warriors by hovercraft. The test sequence and a number of drawings and storyboards by Wildey were used to sell the series to ABC and sponsors.


The show's working titles were The Saga of Chip Baloo, which Wildey said "wasn't really serious, but that was it for the beginning", and Quest File 037. The name Quest was selected from a phone book, for its adventurous implications.

Characters

The Quest family has a home compound in the Florida Keys but their adventures take them around the world. The Quest team travels the globe studying scientific mysteries, which generally end up being explained as the work of various adversaries. Such pursuits get them into scrapes with opponents, ranging from espionage robots and electric monsters to Egyptian mummies and prehistoric pterosaurs. Although most menaces appeared in only one episode each, one recurring nemesis is known as Dr. Zin, an Asian criminal mastermind. With yellow skin and a maniacal laugh, Zin was an example of the Yellow Peril villains common in Cold War-era fiction. The voices of Dr. Zin and other assorted characters were done by Vic Perrin. Race's mysterious old flame, Jade, appears in two episodes, as do the characters of Corbin and the Professor. The 1993 made-for-TV feature Jonny's Golden Quest included in its plotline the concept that Race and Jade had been briefly married years earlier, but it also depicted Race and Hadji in place with the family at Mrs. Quest's death, in direct contradiction to explicit statements and presentation in the original series. Jade's first name is revealed in to be Jezebel; but whether Jade is her surname, or her real name at all, is yet to be elicited.

Broadcast history

Jonny Quest first aired from September 18, 1964, to March 11, 1965 in prime time on the ABC network and was an almost instant success, both critically and ratings-wise but it was canceled after one season due to the animated show's high production costs.
Like the original television series, this series would be a big money-maker in syndication, but this avenue to profits was not as well-known when the show was canceled in 1965. Along with another Hanna-Barbera series, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest is one of the few television series to have aired on each of the Big Three television networks in the United States.

Episodes

All writing credits taken from
See also The New Adventures of Jonny Quest.

Merchandise

Items released in the United States during or shortly after the show's original run on ABC included:
Various episodes of the classic series have been released on VHS and DVD over the years.
On May 11, 2004, Warner Home Video released Jonny Quest: The Complete First Season on DVD in Region 1, which features all 26 episodes of the original series, although some have been edited for content, and nearly all episodes have incorrect closing credits.
On June 11, 2019, Warner Home Video released the original 1960s Jonny Quest series on Blu-ray for the first time. For this release, the original broadcast masters were used, and the episodes were presented uncut, unedited and uncensored. Most, if not all missing dialogue removed for the 2004 DVD version has been restored.

In popular culture