Creator Shows Glimpse of Hit Cartoon Network Show’s Scrapped Spinoff

Animator Ian Jones-Quartey, creator of OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, has revealed the details of a planned spinoff that never came to be. In a Twitter thread earlier this month Jones-Quartey described an anime-style spinoff that he and some of his collaborators had developed. When fans showed serious interest, he shared even more freely with them.

Jones-Quartey was replying to a fan on May 16, who tweeted: “You’ve mentioned briefly how you had a few ideas for potential OK K.O spin-offs, and I wanted to ask; have you ever considered or thought about an anime-esc [sic] Koala Princess Spinoff? I assume that’s what her scrapped backstory episode was going to be like, or similar to.” The questioner got more than an answer — Jones-Quartey posted some artwork for Hue Troop, “a new limited series,” which apparently got pretty far along in the development phase.

“There was only one OK KO! anime spinoff we wanted to do,” he explained. “We got close on this one. Maybe I will share the story about it someday.” In a follow-up tweet, Jones Quartey wrote: “Let me know if you’re curious, I might compile all the art we did and post a thread about it.”

In a third tweet, Jones-Quartey wrote: “Haha okay watch my twitter in the next week or so. I’ll put a thread together with some of the artifacts from the Hue Troop anime that I developed with [artist Mira Ong Chua]!” However, so far that thread has not come together.

OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes is a beloved but short-lived series with a meandering path to success and then to cancellation. It premiered in its first form during Cartoon Network‘s 2013 Summer Shorts project as a pilot called Lakewood Plaza Turbo. It was then picked up as a web sires on Cartoon Network’s YouTube channel starting in February of 2016. The series was finally greenlit for TV in August of 2017.

There were three seasons of OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes on Cartoon Network, ending in September of 2019. From the beginning, many fans have felt that the show was under=appreciated and not recognized for its greatness, and that held true with its short lifespan on TV as well. Jones-Quartey’s revelation about the potential spinoff served as proof of some of the untapped potential in the series.

The show was set in a retro-futuristic world full of aliens, ninjas and all manner of other anachronistic genre tropes. It centered around a work-a-day hero named K.O. (Courtenay Taylor) who juggled superhero ambitions with an average life working at a bodega in a strip mall.

The show may be over, but it is finding a resilient ongoing fandom in the age of streaming. OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes is streaming now on HBO Max.