Heavens to Murgatroyd! New Snagglepuss Comic Reinvents Him as a Gay Southern Gothic Playwright à la Tennessee Williams

I’m not mad at this.

Over the past year, Hannah Barbera has been boldly reinventing itself, first with a new Scooby Doo comic – Scooby Apocalypse – where the kids are all hipsters who meet at Burning Man  – as well a new, surprisingly relevant, take on the Flintstones.

Now, they’re planning on bringing back that flaming, ’50s-era, pink mountain lion Snagglepuss.

Says Mark Russell (who is currently writing the Flintstones and will be writing the title):

“I envision him like a tragic Tennessee Williams figure; Huckleberry Hound is sort of a William Faulkner guy, they’re in New York in the 1950s, Marlon Brando shows up, Dorothy Parker, these socialites of New York from that era come and go. I’m looking forward to it.

“[His sexuality] never discussed and it’s obviously ignored in the cartoons ’cuz they were made at a time when you couldn’t even acknowledge the existence of such a thing, but it’s still so obvious,” said Russell. “So it’s natural to present it in a context where everybody knows, but it’s still closeted. And dealing with the cultural scene of the 1950s, especially on Broadway, where everybody’s gay, or is working with someone who’s gay, but nobody can talk about it — and what it’s like to have to try to create culture out of silence.”

The first short story about “Snagglepuss being dragged in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities” will arrive in March but the ongoing won’t start until later this fall after Flintstones has finished.

Marlon Brando? Dorothy Parker? 50s-era socialites? OMG I AM SO THERE.  (via CBR)

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