DC meets Hanna-Barbera

We’re about a year in with the four Hanna-Barbera comics being published by DC and personally I think three of them will survive another year. Meanwhile, DC decided to take a chance on having the cartoons encounter characters from the DC Universe. Each book also had a short story involving what may be next in the H-B line.

Booster Gold is currently the most familiar time-traveling superhero DC has outside of their TV show Legends of Tomorrow. Booster being a self-serving type trying to make a name in the 25th Century accidentally kills an alien prophet when he materializes in Bedrock. Now the human race is doomed and Booster has to set the events right.

The bonus feature is a new take on The Jetsons and how Rosie, their robot housemaid comes to be. Should it become a new monthly title, I’m there.

Adam Strange doesn’t get beamed to the Earth he knows but to the H-B version and to make him even more confused, he arrives in The Valley of the Dinosaurs setting. Jonny Quest and the gang rescue Adam from the clutches of FEAR agents also trapped in the Valley, hinting as to how things may end in Future Quest‘s first major story arc. Adam regains his bearings and enlists Team Quest and Birdman to find out where the Zeta Beam will hit Earth next, returning him to the Planet Rann.

The bonus feature is Top Cat being stranded in Gotham City, telling Batman his life story and how he ended up in the DC Universe (or Earth 1). Here DC and H-B are mixing up realities, a resident from an anthropomorphic universe being lost in a “real” one. Top Cat is also a bigger jerk than the Sgt. Bilko he was loosely based on in the Sixties.

Hal Jordan drifts into an unknown sector to rescue Larfleeze and is then attacked by Space Ghost. They obviously team up on a nearby planet that believes they are the only source of life in the universe. It’s cool, just predictable. The only twist is each hero having to use the other’s power sources.

The follow-up comic Ruff n’ Reddy is something I’ve never heard off. A cat and dog duo of stand-up comedians in the Fifties who form their act as revenge against others who stole their jokes and treated them badly. I don’t know how DC/H-B will make this a monthly.

The weirdest and possibly dumbest team-up turned out to be better than I anticipated. In this universe, the Banana Splits and Suicide Squad do co-exist which has me speculating they’re a separate universe unto themselves.

Anyway, the Splits are a struggling, has-been pop-music act who get arrested. Nothing too serious but Squad overseer Amanda Waller uses the four animal musicians to rescue Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Killer Croc and Katana. Seems the Squad’s current mission has gone sour and the goofy quartet is the perfect, expendable unit to make the attempt. The success then leads to the Splits updating their sound to something more akin to contemporary gangsta’ rap.

The follow-up, The Snagglepuss Chronicles, has more promise with the effeminate pink cat being a cartoony Tennessee Williams living amongst a homophobic, communist-fearing Fifties with anthropomorphic animals and humans co-existing. Of the four short features, it was my personal favorite because I still like Snagglepuss’s catchphrases.