So we are supposed to believe the Tom Quest novels had *no* connection to the development of the Jonny Quest series? That’s hard to swallow. At the very least, the GENRE itself had to have influenced their ideas.

Well, in the sense that they all kind of started with “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy,” sure. In fact that’s Jonny Quest’s most direct ancestor; the show originally started as a Jack Armstrong pilot. Another of Jonny’s influences was alleged to be the Rick Brant series of books, which in turn has been suggested as being the success that Tom Quest was trying to emulate.

Honestly, this is a genre where it’s really hard to pin down where influence stops and plagiarism begins. These are formula series books and they almost always are designed from the get-go as “let’s do a teen book series based on….” something else more successful. Christopher Cool and Geronimo Johnson were clearly designed as teenage versions of U.N.C.L.E.’s Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, but is that actually theft? When does Jonny Quest turn into its own thing and stop being, say, a sci-fi version of Terry and the Pirates? And so on.

Still, fun topic. Where I live (Puerto Rico) this kind of books were not available on newstands; I discovered (some of) them only at my high school library. But only a few; names like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew were unknown to me until later, sadly.

Here’s hoping you feel better soon, Greg!

Answer: probably. At least mine was. Because the author of Gene Autry and the Redwood Pirates as well as several others, was a gent named Bob Hamilton…. and I rooted out another Autry juvenile, Gene Autry and the Big Valley Grab, that we already had here (wondering if I’d somehow missed seeing Fran Striker’s name on it) and that one’s written by W.H. Hutchinson.

So now I’m wondering what the hell Fran Striker did actually write. He sure was a genius at getting his name on stuff other people did.

~P~

I love Johnny Quest (have since I was a kid, lo many decades ago)!

This kind of behind-the-scenes, built-in history is the stuff of nerd-dreams.

~P~