Warning: This contains spoilers Johnny Quest #2!
Johnny Quest The lore takes a dark turn, revealing that the titular hero fought in the Vietnam War. Classic Johnny Quest The cartoon, despite being aimed at children, has dark undercurrents in its villains. Still in Johnny Quest #2, by Dynamite Entertainment, tHis darkness is taken a step further, as it is revealed that an older Johnny was forced to fight to participate in the Vietnam War.
Johnny Quest #2 written by Joe Casey and drawn by Sebastian Peerage. Team Quest is thrust into the year 2024, and joins Johnny Quest of that time to return home. In a moment of downtime, 2024’s Race and Johnny share a heart-to-heart. Race notices that Johnny doesn’t call him “Race” anymore and asks when he stopped. Things get heavy as Johnny reveals that he stopped calling her Race the day his “number came in” in 1971.. According to Johnny, Race told him he couldn’t call him “Race” anymore.
Johnny Quest just bumped up against a real world event
Jonny Quest debuted on the eve of great social unrest
Johnny’s references to his “numbers coming” are a clear allusion to the draft and the Vietnam War. The roots of the conflict extend to French colonialism. After the country gained independence it was divided into two parts: North and South. Over time, North Vietnam would appeal to the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries for help. These countries were communist, and at the time, the United States was fighting a “Cold War” against the Soviet Union. As a result, the Vietnam War became a proxy war and was one of the worst conflicts of the Cold War.
This did not end well for the United States, which began engagement in the area in 1955. The Vietnam War extended to the fall of Saigon in 1975 and became extremely unpopular with segments of the American public by the late 1960s. Protests against the war broke out, sometimes turning violent and even deadly in some cases. At the time, the United States still had compulsory military service on the books in the form of a draft. Acting as a lottery, youths were assigned a number. If the number came, they were drafted to fight.
For the first time, Jonny Quest involved the real world
Did Johnny Quest really fight in Vietnam?
when Johnny Quest Premiered on television in 1964, the United States is gradually increasing its involvement in Vietnam. The war was still not on people’s minds as it would be a few years later. of Jonny Quest The single season did not touch upon the socio-political climate of its time, nor did it last long enough to do so. Casey and Peerage kept to the tune of the classics Johnny Quest cartoon, but Johnny’s involvement in Vietnam darkens the lore significantly. That Johnny was drafted, and basically had no choice, made it worse.
There is a possibility, however, that Johnny did not fight in the Vietnam War. At the height of the war, some men who were drafted and did not want to fight fled the country. Although these “draft dodgers” were few and far between, they did exist. Still, given how sad Johnny gets when he mentions being drafted, he probably went to Vietnam and became a soldier. D Johnny Quest 2024 is a broken and lonely man, and some of his trauma may very well stem from fighting in the Vietnam War.
Johnny Quest #2 On sale now from Dynamite Entertainment.