Warning: Contains spoilers for Johnny Quest #2!
Johnny Quest Lore gets a dark twist, revealing that the titular hero fought in the Vietnam War. The classic Johnny Quest Cartoon, despite being aimed at children, contained dark undercurrent, namely in its villains. Still in Johnny Quest #2, by Dynamite Entertainment, hHis 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 was written by Joe Casey and drawn by Sebastian Piriz. Team Quest is set in the year 2024 and have joined forces with the Jonny Quest of the time to get home. During a moment of downtime, Race and the Johnny of 2024 share a heart-to-heart. Race notices Johnny no longer calls him “Race,” and asks when he stopped. Matters get complicated when Johnny reveals that he stopped calling him Race the day his “number came up” in 1971.. According to Johnny, Rice told him he could no longer call him “Race.”
Jonny Quest has just bumped into a real world event
Jonny Quest debuted on the eve of great social unrest
Johnny’s reference to his “number coming up” is a clear allusion to the draft and the Vietnam War. The roots of this conflict stretch back to French colonization. Once the country was independent, it was divided into two parts: North and South. At times, North Vietnam would appeal to the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations for help. The countries were communist, and at that time the United States waged a “cold war” against the Soviet Union. As a result, the Vietnam War became a proxy war, and one of the worst conflicts of the Cold War.
It did not end well for the United States, which began operations in the region in 1955. The Vietnam War lasted until the fall of Saigon in 1975, and by the late 1960s had become deeply unpopular with segments of the American people. . Protests broke out against the war, which sometimes turned violent and even deadly in some cases. The United States still had mandatory military service on the books, in the form of a draft. Functioning like a lottery, young people are assigned a number. If the number came up, they were drafted to fight.
For the first time, Jonny Quest is engaging with the real world
Did Johnny Quest really fight in Vietnam?
when Johnny Quest Premiered on television in 1964, the United States is slowly ramping up its involvement in Vietnam. The war was not yet on people’s minds as it would be just a few years later. Johnny Quest One season didn’t touch on the sociopolitical climate of its time, and it didn’t last long enough to do so. Casey and Piers have largely kept with the tone of the classic Johnny Quest cartoon, but Johnny’s involvement in Vietnam significantly darkens the lore. That Johnny was drafted, and essentially had no choice, makes it even worse.
It is a possibility, but Johnny did not fight in the Vietnam War. During the Great War, certain men who had already been drafted and did not want to fight fled the country. Although the “draft dodgers” were few and far between, they did exist. However, as sad as Johnny gets when he mentions being drafted, it’s more than likely he went to Vietnam and became a soldier. The 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 is now on sale from Dynamite Entertainment.