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.

Zac Efron and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in JONNY QUEST … or not?

Before we get to the news story (well comics/movies/animation news anyway) that has been jerking me around so bad that I’ve got whiplash, we need to cover a few housekeeping chores here first.

1. Don’t forget … if you’re reading this blog and you want me to answer a question that you might have about comic books, especially behind the scenes stories that may have occured since I went professional in 1982 … ASK! We’ve even given this special fanatic feature a name and its own logo. This is your chance to ASK THE DWO. If you’re curious about me and what I might have some intimate knowledge of … check out the BACKGROUND page.

2. Vote for me. Immediately below the “Calendar” and the “Contact the DWO” headers in the right-hand, there is a little blue box that says “Vote for me.” While I admit that I don’t know exactly what this does, apparently the slaves rowing in the galley of the internet get an extra bowl of gruel if you vote regularly.

Miscellaneous Monday: Jan. 5, 2009 Let the Fanatic New Year begin!

The holidays are officially over and most all the decorations have been taken down and stored away until next year. Time to put your New Year’s resolutions into action and find a way to work off the extra pounds from the holiday meals. Enjoy the return of Miscellaneous Monday. Hold on tight.

FANATIC QUIZ QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Chaykin's AMERICAN FLAGG! #1

Put these six series in order of first release from FIRST COMICS.

GRIMJACK    •    MARS

JON SABLE, FREELANCE

EVANGELINE

E-MAN    •    AMERICAN FLAGG!

While all of these series didn’t necessarily start their lives as part of First Comics, all of them were published by the Chicago-area publisher between 1983 and 1987. Your job this week is to put these first FIRST issues in chronological order based on the month and year they were first published by FIRST COMICS.