By Jonathan Edwards
I haven’t really been paying much mind to DC’s books like this. I read the first issue of Future Quest (it was fine), but that’s about it. Honestly, none of them have piqued my interest enough to override the sheer surreality of their existence. When I was a kid, Cartoon Network would routinely air reruns of many old Hanna-Barbara cartoons, so it’s just been kind of weird seeing them pop up, some more recognizable than others, in comic book form. However, The Flintstones was apparently well-received for most of its run. And since The Flintstones and The Jetsons have always been closely related, I figured that, despite my reservations, this book might have something to offer after all. And y’know, maybe it still does. But if so, you wouldn’t be able to tell that from this first issue.
The Jetsons #1 starts off pretty immediately on the wrong foot. With the first page, writer Jimmy Palmiotti tries to make use of the lyrics from the cartoon’s theme song to introduce the characters, and it should work. Yet, it doesn’t. The core of the problem is that we’re given a name and a face, but there’s nothing in their environments, actions, or even words that really define them as characters. We do learn a bit more about them throughout the issue. But with no foundation of basic personality traits to connect that information to, it all ends up falling pretty flat. The one exception to this is Rosie, and she doesn’t even get her own formal introduction. She’s just lumped in with Judy. Also, in this version, she isn’t the Jetson’s maid. Instead, she is George’s mother who had her consciousness transferred into a robot body. Yeah. It’s undoubtedly the most significant departure from the original series, and it’s not exactly a welcome change, more due to the execution than the idea itself. This is something that should completely change up the dynamic of the Jetson family, but it doesn’t. You could take just about all of Rosie’s scenes, only change a couple of words here and there, and they would work in the context of her as a robot maid. Even the big conversation she has with George about her transition, death, and religion (a decently-written sequence of character development that would’ve been impactful if George actually had a character to develop) could easily be easily retooled into a dialog about human consciousness versus artificial intelligence and still cover those same topics in more or less the same way.
As for the rest of the family, George is pretty much limited to his introduction, the aforementioned discussion with his robot mom, and a brief conversation with Jane near the end. Both Elroy and Jane have chunks of the issue dedicated to them, the former going to the ruins of a submerged city to find a painting for George’s upcoming birthday, and the latter attending a meeting of scientists at the International Space Station to discuss the meteor heading straight for Earth that will also end all life when it hits the planet. In contrast to Rosie’s change, making Jane a scientist is a pretty neat way to go, giving her far more agency than the cliché housewife and homemaker she was in the cartoon. However, by the end of the issue, that’s also the only thing we know about her. At one point, she makes a comment to George about how him spending time with the kids being more important than working overtime to please Mr. Spacely. This is after the revelation of the coming doomsday scenario, so the implication is that George, and probably Jane as well, have been neglecting their children and family because of their work. But, it’s not like we see a single hint of that anywhere in the issue. The kids both seem more than content throughout, and again, Elroy even goes to great lengths to find his dad a birthday present (not that anything is shown to suggest George would particularly appreciate a piece of classical art). Also, here’s a thought: why are so many significant paintings still sitting underwater in hermetically sealed tubes? Wouldn’t there be some future museum or ministry of culture that’d be actively sending divers to retrieve them? They clearly have the technology to do so.
I don’t like the art here. George and Jane look like people wearing cheap Halloween costumes of the characters they’re based on. Judy has lost her most noteworthy feature: white hair. And, Elroy, Rosie, and really the whole aesthetic of this future world is generic and boring as hell. The only silver lining is the underwater ruins, all of which are well-detailed without becoming messy. Other than that, it’s not an especially pleasant book to look at.
After finishing this issue, I went back and read The Flinstones #1 for the sake of comparison. And, there was a weird charm to it. The Jetsons #1 doesn’t come close to matching that. Instead, it’s little more than a clumsy attempt at making a dull sci-fi story pass as an adaptation of a classic cartoon. It’s not infuriatingly bad or anything, but there’s really nothing good about it.
Score: 2/5
The Jetsons #1
DC Comics