(I was going to publish this months ago, but then Archive.org was hacked and taken down. Now that it’s been restored I can embed the site’s videos again.)
Jonny Quest was a big deal for me, and a lot of other young animation fans, when it appeared on ABC prime time TV in 1964-65. I have both the DVD collection of the series and the Blu-ray set, which restored Doug Wildey’s name to the closing credits.
I used to sign my name that same way, enclosed in a box like a TV screen. The series is included with HBO’s MAX streaming service.
After Jonny Quest, Space Ghost in 1966 was a big step down in animation quality for Hanna-Barbera. On the plus side, the art generally stayed on model with Alex Toth’s character designs. A year later, it was all too obvious the budget had been cut even more for The Fantastic Four.
The only way, that I’m aware of, to see the FF cartoons today is on Archive.org. Whoever transferred them from the old Boomerang cable channel did as good a job as anyone could do.
Alex Toth’s character designs are very good, but the animation rarely does them justice. Nonetheless, I’d like to see these cartoons given a proper restoration and presentation.
Mostly, I’m interested in the episodes that are adaptations of the original Marvel Comics stories. The groundbreaking Kirby/Lee/Sinnott “Galactus Trilogy” from FF #48-50 is crammed into a single episode. It’s #14 in this playlist.
