Warning: contains spoilers for Jonny Quest #2!
Jonny Quest lore gets a dark twist, revealing that the titular hero fought in the Vietnam War. The classic Jonny Quest cartoon, despite being aimed at children, contained dark undercurrents, namely in its villains. Yet in Jonny Quest #2, by Dynamite Entertainment, this darkness is taken a step further, as it is revealed that an older Jonny was forced to fight to participate in the Vietnam War.
Jonny Quest #2 was written by Joe Casey and drawn by Sebastian Piriz. Team Quest has been thrust into the year 2024, and have joined with the Jonny Quest of that time to get home. During a moment of downtime, Race and the Jonny of 2024 share a heart-to-heart. Race notices Jonny no longer calls him “Race,” and asks when he stopped. Matters get heavy as Jonny reveals he stopped calling him Race the day his “number came up” in 1971. According to Jonny, Race told him then he no longer could call him “Race.”
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Jonny’s references to his “number coming up” is a clear allusion to the draft and the Vietnam War. The roots of the conflict stretch back to French colonization. Once the country gained independence, it was split into two parts: North and South. In time, North Vietnam would appeal to the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations 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 one of the worst conflicts of the Cold War.
It did not end well for the United States, who began engagements in the area in 1955. The Vietnam War stretched on until the Fall of Saigon in 1975, and by the late 1960s, had become highly unpopular with segments of the American people. Protests against the War broke out, sometimes turning violent and even deadly in some cases. At the time, the United States still had mandatory military service on the books, in the form of a draft. Functioning as a lottery, young men were assigned a number. If the number came up, they were drafted to fight.
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Did Jonny Quest Really Fight in Vietnam?
When Jonny Quest premiered on television in 1964, the United States was slowly ramping up its involvement in Vietnam. The War was still not on people’s minds like it would be just a few years later. Jonny Quest’s single season did not touch on the sociopolitical climate of its time, nor did it last long enough to do so. Casey and Piriz have largely kept with the tone of the classic Jonny Quest cartoon, but Jonny’s involvement in Vietnam significantly darkens the lore. That Jonny was drafted, and essentially had no choice, makes it even worse.
There is a possibility, however, Jonny did not fight in the Vietnam War. At the height of the War, certain men who were drafted and did not want to fight fled the country. While these “draft dodgers” were few and far between, they did exist. Yet, given how sad Jonny becomes when he mentions being drafted, it is more than likely he went to Vietnam and became a soldier. The Jonny Quest of 2024 is a broken and lonely man, and some of his trauma may very well stem from fighting in the Vietnam War.
Jonny Quest #2 is on sale now from Dynamite Entertainment.