The Jonny Quest song I play for myself at least once-a-week.

I don’t have the time this evening to write a long diatribe about my deep and abiding love for all things Jonny Quest. I’ve written of it many times here before.

This animated classic got under my skin as a young fan who depended on television to be both my friend and my window into the worlds of the fantastic. And then as an adult my interest continued. I was beside myself with fanatic GLEE when Comico got the rights to publish comics featuring the further adventures of Jonny, Race, Hadji and Co.

As luck would have it, at that time, I was working at a fan magazine called Amazing Heroes, back when comic fans actually read fan magazines. The offices for the publisher of Amazing Heroes was less than fifteen miles from the home of Doug Wildey, the man responsible for the creation of Jonny Quest. Exercising my editorial prerogative, I assigned myself the job to get an interview and write a feature about Doug for the launch of Comico’s series. Besides being amazingly talented, Doug Wildey was soft-spoken and incredibly generous with his time. Doug even did a painting that we used for the cover of Amazing Heroes.

Then, he gave me the painting. And it hangs on the wall of my office where I can enjoy it every day.

At the bottom it reads, “For Dave, a fine writer and a nice human being. – Doug”

Many years later, I got a CD (we still have those, right?) called Saturday Morning, it featured many songs from my television-polluted youth by popular bands (of the time). If you enjoy this blog, you should own this CD. Then something happened this evening that drove me directly to my blog to write this new post.

I found a video featuring Reverend Horton Heat’s version of the Jonny Quest theme song. It segues in the middle into “Stop The Pigeon,” the theme song from Dastardly & Muttly, but I still play this song for myself at least once a week. If I had a guarantee that the good Reverend would play this song live in concert, I would travel across a time-zone or two to hear it in person. Now you can ENJOY!

That’s my version of the story.

Malibu Comics Secret Origin (part 4)

In the first part of this “series” I talked about the state of the comic industry that Malibu was born into. In the second part I talked about my personal path prior to the birth of Malibu. In the third part, I talked about 1986, the year that Malibu was born and some of the things that came together at Sunrise Distribution that would be instrumental in Malibu’s success.

Kevin Nowlan's cover to one of the first AH issues that Tom and I worked on together. (issue #35: featuring The Inferior Five)

In part four, I’m going to talk mostly about Tom Mason. I’d met Tom the first day I worked at Fantagraphics Books. I had been hired to be the managing editor of Amazing Heroes magazine. That first day on the job in Connecticut, I was introduced to Tom, who was the art director for Amazing Heroes. We worked together closely. We became friends in Connecticut and when Fantagraphics Books move to Sourthern  California, both Tom and I were along for the ride (and keeping our jobs).

STARTIN’ FROM SCRATCH WITHOUT ANY SCRATCH

Malibu Comics Secret Origins (part two)

In this post, I’m going to begin to go over my personal path to becoming Publisher of Malibu Comics. Maybe others will be able to relate to my personal travails, we’ll see. But first (as they say in the trade) some housekeeping.

This is a good time to remind all readers (and there seems to be a bunch more now than there were a few weeks ago) that Funny Book Fanatic has a standing offer for readers to ask me questions.  I call it “ASK THE DWO” and in the past I’ve managed to answer some interesting questions about: comic characters with fur, the Comics Code Authority and Dale Keown’s work at Aircel Comics. If you want some tips about what you might ask me, check out the Background page.

There are also a lot of activities for fanatics visiting here, especially if you page down, reading all the cool stuff in the right hand sidebar.

     • Click the VOTE FOR ME button just above my lovely picture (by artist Matt Busch).  ——–>

Year-end interview with ComicNews.info

Before I get to the meat of the post today, let me take a brief, but unavoidable digression. 

Go ahead, click on the picture and you’ll see what it is and what it has to do with being a funny book fanatic. Go ahead. Click away. I’ll wait until you see it. I’ve got no comment here, except to say a quick “thank you” to fellow fanatic and good guy John Nee (until recently a VP at DC Comics) for pointing this out through Facebook. You may as well click on it if you haven’t already, I’m not going to spoil the surprise in this text. But feel free to comment below … is this one of the signs of the apocalypse? All I can think is … WHY?

Miscellaneous Monday: Dec. 22, 2008 (abbreviated)

FANATIC QUIZ QUESTION OF THE WEEK

In the Summer of 1990, a title was released called  Creatures of the Id #1. 

Name the publishing company, the person serving as publisher, the creator behind the comic and the popular character (that currently has a movie optioned) that made its first appearance here?

 

 

 

ANSWER TO FANATIC QUIZ QUESTION FROM LAST WEEK

The comic executive whose, “resume includes jobs at Eclipse, Dark Horse, Wildstorm and Todd McFarlane Entertainment” is, of course, the talented Ted Adams at IDW Publishing. He along with four partners founded IDW (Idea & Design Works) to be a creative services company in 1999. Under Ted’s guidance and with the help of a smart and creative staff, IDW has grown to a company with 20 full-time employees and 150+ freelancers. In 2007, Adams negotiated the sale of a majority interest in IDW to IDT’s Internet Mobile Group. IDW has been named ‘Publisher of the Year’ in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2008 by Diamond Comic Distributors. Fanatic comic readers probably know IDW best for either their many licensed properties (like Transformers, Star Trek or G.I. Joe) or for well-received originals (like 30 Days of Night).