DC Comics may have caused a lot of angst when they first started talking about reimagining a lot of the Hanna-Barbera characters with the series that they were putting out but fan reaction has been pretty positive for things like Scooby Apocalypse and Future Quest alongside Flintsones. The character is going to make his debut as an eight-page piece in the March Suicide Squad/Banana Splits Annual with plans for the ongoing to land in the fall after Flintstones concludes.
Now, the publisher has picked the next project to add to the mix with a relaunch of Snagglepuss, a character that originally debuted in animated form back in 1959 before becoming a part of the Yogi Bear Show as a series of shorts in the 1960’s. He was also a player in the Laff-A-Lympics series in the 1970’s.
The new series is being handled by writer Mark Russell, who garnered a lot of critical acclaim for his work on Prez for DC that had a hard time finding its audience. In talking with HiLoBrow, Russell revealed that their reinvention of the character is certainly going to be divisive for some as he’s being done as a gay Southern Gothic playwright.
“I envision him like a tragic Tennessee Williams figure; Huckleberry Hound is sort of a William Faulkner guy, they’re in New York in the 1950s, Marlon Brando shows up, Dorothy Parker, these socialites of New York from that era come and go. I’m looking forward to it.”
“[I]t’s never discussed and it’s obviously ignored in the cartoons ’cuz they were made at a time when you couldn’t even acknowledge the existence of such a thing, but it’s still so obvious,” said Russell. “So it’s natural to present it in a context where everybody knows, but it’s still closeted. And dealing with the cultural scene of the 1950s, especially on Broadway, where everybody’s gay, or is working with someone who’s gay, but nobody can talk about it — and what it’s like to have to try to create culture out of silence.”
[Source: CBR]
