Doug Widley 1964 animated series “Jonny Quest,” animated by Hanna-Barbera, only lasted 26 episodes, but for Gen-Xers, it may seem like a lot more. Thanks to a series of sweet, sweet syndication deals, along with the clever remixing and repackaging of the company’s 1960s and 1970s shows, Hanna-Barbera cartoons remained in reruns for decades, allowing new generations to grow up watching “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?,” “The Flintstones,” and, uh, “Jabberjaw.” For kids of the 1980s, not a Saturday slipped past without several Hanna-Barbera shows making their way into our eyeballs, often entirely by accident.
“Jonny Quest” always seemed to make its way into my generation’s cartoon rotation, and many viewers my age became very fond of the show’s chintzy, stilted animation, thick-lines drawing style, and stock “laser” sound effects. The premise was the stuff of boy’s adventure novels: Jonny Quest (Tim Matheson) was an 11-year-old wunderkind who was skilled in martial arts, weapon use, and scuba-diving. He was the son of Dr. Benton Quest (Don Messick), a freelance scientist who often took jobs for the U.S. government investigating unusual acts of high-tech malfeasance.
Jonny’s mother, meanwhile, had died and his live-in guardian was Race Bannon (Mike Road). There’s nothing to indicate Dr. Quest and Road were boyfriends, though. Joining the adventures was Jonny’s 11-year-old brother Hadji (Danny Bravo) and his pet dog Bandit (also Messick). The Quest family lives and operates out of Florida. Their arch nemesis, Dr. Zin, was voiced by Vic Perrin, perhaps best known as the narrator for the opening to “The Outer Limits.”
“Jonny Quest” debuted in September 1964, and ran on a weekly basis until March 1965 when it was canceled. The series did well with critics and even fetched pretty high ratings. Hanna-Barbera ultimately pulled the plug on the series because, well, it was just too expensive to make.
Jonny Quest was too expensive
Like many shows before it, “Jonny Quest” didn’t find a massive audience until it was in syndication. It often came packaged with other Hanna-Barbera series (kids of the ’80s can tell you that the show’s reruns aired in the middle of giant animation blocks), so it was seen time and time again for two straight decades. “Jonny Quest” also had the distinction of airing reruns on ABC, CBS, and NBC in its life. Few other shows were broadcast on all three networks.
“Jonny Quest” took a lot of its visual cues from Milton Caniff’s popular comic adventure newspaper strip “Terry and the Pirates,” with Doug Widley added high-tech devices like speedboats and jetpacks. Back in 1986, Widley was interviewed about “Jonny Quest” (an interview that has been preserved on a “Jonny Quest” fan site) and he revealed that he was initially hired by Hanna-Barbera to design characters for a TV adaptation of the radio drama “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy.” That project changed and mutated during development, however, as Hanna-Barbera couldn’t secure the rights to the Jack Armstrong character. Hence, Widley turned the character into Jonny Quest and a legend was born. Initially, Hanna-Barbera didn’t want to give Widley a created-by credit, but it eventually capitulated.
The actual budget numbers for a typical episode of “Jonny Quest” cannot be easily found, but it should be recalled that Hanna-Barbera tried assertively to work on the cheap. Indeed, many of Hanna-Barbera’s characters were designed in such a way that animating them would take less time. Most Hanna-Barbera characters are seen at a 3/4 angle, meaning they could be looking to the side or right at the camera, depending only on their eyes. Think of Fred Flintstone. This design ethos allowed for a type of limited animation that was cheaper and quicker to produce. It allowed Hanna-Barbera to stick to a weekly TV schedule, something most animation studios couldn’t do.
“Jonny Quest,” in being more visually rich, likely took too much money to make and too much time to animate. Perhaps unable to keep up with Hanna-Barbera’s rigors (and budget), “Jonny Quest” was canned.
The Jonny Quest legacy
Thanks to the endless reruns, “Jonny Quest” remained in the pop consciousness for years, and interest in the character remained high. Indeed, in 1986, Hanna-Barbera tried to revive the character with the animated series “The New Adventures of Jonny Quest.” Scott Menville played the eponymous character, and Don Messick returned as Dr. Quest and Bandit. This new series was originally intended to be a sequel series with a grown-up Jonny Quest as the main character, but the studio re-jiggered it into a reboot. That version, however, only lasted 13 episodes.
A decade later, in 1996, Hanna-Barbera tried again with “The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest,” which added even higher-tech — as well as an “edgier” tone — to the young boy’s adventures. Also, Jonny was aged up to 14. “Real Adventures” was sharper and made use of high-tech computer animation, with J.D. Roth playing Jonny. It aired on Cartoon Network and was the most successful “Jonny Quest” show yet, lasting 52 episodes spread across two seasons.
A live-action “Jonny Quest” movie had been stuck in Development Hell for over a decade now, and about a dozen directors have been attached to the project. There was a version with Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron in the works way back in 2009, Robert Rodriguez was once said to be working on a “Johnny Quest” film, and Chris McKay was on the hook to helm a “Johnny Quest” movie in 2018. There is no script and nothing has been greenlit, so we’ll have to wait to see if that film ever gets made.
Those involved with the film had better hurry, though; the people who still know about “Jonny Quest” are all middle-aged or older now.
