I included Where's My Mummy? it does have a bug villain in the film (the Spirit of the Sand), even though it's not the main villain. It also felt like a glaring omission not to have "The Exterminator" as an option, even though the bugs aren't really the villains, so I included that here as well.

In terms of last week's results, supporters of Scooby-Doo and Batman: The Brave and the Bold were quite brave about showing their love of the film, so brave in fact that it won with 21 votes! However, it looks like "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair" also had a dynamic week, coming in just behind with 20 votes! It wasn't a dark night for "What a Night, for a Dark Knight!", given that it came in third with 7 votes! "The Caped Crusader Caper" was also a crusader and came in fourth place with 7 votes. Don't think for one minute that this means "One Minute Mysteries" was a loser, since it also tied for fourth with 7 votes! However, the lack of votes for "Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases" was quite strange with 2 votes. "The Scooby of a Thousand Faces" most certainly didn't get a thousand votes...in fact, it just got one. 

After over two years of waiting, we will finally be getting the next Daphne & Velma novel on September 6 according to Amazon. When I reached out to her last year, the author Morgan Baden revealed that there were some printing issues that were preventing the book from release. Unfortunately, it seems like these issues prevented the book from having a physical copy released. The book will be available as an eBook only according to Amazon.

Happy Monday! James is with us to provide today's fun fact, detailing Kevin Smith's odd history with the Scooby-Doo franchise. 

In the 1990s, Kevin was approached by Time Warner to write a film for Scooby-Doo. However, his production partner, Scott Mosier, had no interest in writing for Scooby, so Kevin declined. This is despite Time Warner sending him lots of merch twice in attempt to persuade him to write for Scooby. This was said on the View Askew board a long time ago, but it was taken offline. The archived version of that source can be found here.

In 2001, he decided to feature a parody of the Scooby-Doo gang in his film, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Mark Hamill voices the Scooby-Doo like dog. There was a deleted scene, but it was removed for being too obscene (or should I say it was obscene lol).

In his extremely excitingly titled biography My Boring Ass Life, he makes several Scooby references, including how his friend Jason Mewes watched Scooby-Doo and bought a Scooby puzzle for his daughter, which was extremely hard for his wife and child to put together.

Scooby also was mentioned twice in his show, Comic Book Men. In the episode "Captain and the Clerk," he introduced his show by saying "the only one smart enough to keep Scooby away from Groot." In addition, in the episode "Bats Ahoy!," Kevin and his colleagues have a discussion about if Mystery Inc. were better detectives than Batman.

He and Jason Mewes also had a cameo in Rock and Roll Mystery, and hosted the Comic Con panel that July for the film. You can read an interview about it here, and you can watch their interview at the San Diego Comic Con panel in the YouTube video above.

Possibly because of all the Scooby references, Kevin and Marc Bernadin had an artwork made of them in which they look like Shaggy and Fred, respectively. 

As you can see, Kevin Smith has quite a few more connections to Scooby than you'd expect! A big thanks again to James for researching all of this and finding these links.

Courtesy of GamesRadar+, the Scooby-Doo comic solicitations for October have been released with some big news. It appears that demand was so high for The Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries that they've chosen to reboot the series! Oddly, it has the same title, and they're starting over with #1, but nonetheless, the series will return in October!

THE BATMAN & SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES #1
Written by SHOLLY FISCH
Art and cover by DARIO BRIZUELA
$2.99 US | 32 pages
ON SALE 10/11/22
THE TEAM-UP SERIES YOU DEMANDED IS BACK!
A strange mystery pulls Batman, Robin, the Batmen of All Nations, Scooby, and the gang into a jet-setting race to some of the most haunted places on Earth. Even scarier, the trail leads straight to Ra's al Ghul and his League of Assassins!

Thanks to Shadowscooby for coming up with this poll idea! I limited it to Justice League superheroes just so we weren't getting into all the superheroes like Commander Cool that are exclusive to this franchise.

The theme song for What's New Scooby-Doo knocked it out of the park for last week's poll, getting a total of 53 votes. However, 13 people said they'd do anything to ensure "I'd Do Anything" got their vote.  "You Don't Mean Anything" tied for second place, also getting 13 votes. On the other hand, "The Worst Day Ever" had...well, the worst day ever​, given not a single person voted for it.

We already know Roger Eschbacher from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated will be writing for the new Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Pups series. On Instagram, two more writers have just announced their involvement with the series. Sarah Eisenberg and Becky Wangberg have been signed on as writers for the Mystery Pups series. Both of them have significant previous experience writing for preschool series, including Thomas & Friends, Batwheels and Muppet Babies. Here is a link to their Instagram announcement.

Mr. Neither joins us again for this week's fun fact to break down the number of plot holes in "Homeward Hound" from What's New, Scooby-Doo?. It makes little sense for Lady Moonbeam to dress up as Scooby, as unless the dognappers somehow came up with their entire plan in a half hour, the gang hadn't decided whether to go to the dog show yet and thus having another dog dress up as Scooby wouldn't make sense. Perhaps if it was Chrissy it would have made sense, since she was already in the dog show. Moreover, when it's discovered Scooby is fake, no attempt was made to unmask him or somehow find its owner. The fake Scooby completely disappears until the unmasking. In addition, the gang wouldn't have known where Scooby might have been, so it seems unlikely that they would have found him so quickly in such a random spot.

For those that didn't know, "I'd Do Anything," "You Don't Mean Anything" and "The Worst Day Ever" were not just random songs made up for Scooby; they were were the first three tracks off of Simple Plan's first album, (please excuse the horribly cringey album title they chose) No Pads, No Helmets...Just Balls. "I'd Do Anything" was the second single off of the album, and it was charting on the Billboard Hot 100 when it was used as a chase song in "It's Mean, It's Green, It's the Mystery Machine." The song was certified gold in the US, and it ultimately peaked at #51 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #15 on pop radio. It was the only chase song to date that was currently charting when the episode aired, and had just been released as a single less than a month before the episode came out. I find it interesting that WB was guest stars and chase songs as a form of album promotion back then. Lindsay Pagano also revealed in the fun fact she wrote for the blog that her inclusion in the episode was part of a marketing strategy, since WB was trying to promote her debut album.

(As a side note, I hadn't ever heard "The Worst Day Ever" in full before making this poll, but I thought it was really good!) 

*to be read in Snagglepuss voice* Heavens to mergatroid! It looks like "What a Night for a Knight" wins this poll, with a whopping 29 votes! "Fright House of a Lighthouse" wasn't far behind in second place with 21 votes. "Nowhere to Hyde" comes in last with 20 votes, but lost by a close margin. It lost by one vote, even! That about does it for last week's results. Exit, stage left! *insert cartoonish running sound effects here*

Just a little creative spin on the title of the random book that appears "Which Witch is Which?" haha. We have some big news on Multiversus: the Open Beta launches on Tuesday, July 26 at 9:00am in the pacific time zone! The open beta will be available for anyone on Steam, PlayStation 4 and 5, as well as Xbox One and X|S with full progression support and cross-play. You do not need a Playstation Plus or Xbox Live membership to play the Open Beta on these formats. However, once the Open Beta launches, new content will continue to roll out over the coming weeks in the beta, including new maps, new characters, and even seasonal content. There is no end date for the open beta, meaning it will essentially serve as a soft launch of the game.

In terms of characters, Shaggy, Harley Quinn, Jake the Dog from Adventure Time, and the Tasmanian Devil will be available immediately when the Open Beta begins. Other characters will unlock as you progress through the game, including Velma, Bugs Bunny; Arya Stark (Game of Thrones), Finn the Human (Adventure Time); Steven Universe and Garnet (Steven Universe); Tom & Jerry (Tom and Jerry) and The Iron Giant (The Iron Giant). You can also play with a number of different maps including Scooby's Haunted Mansion, Trophy's E.D.G.E., Trophy’s E.D.G.E. 2, Classic 3, Tree Fort 1 vs. 1 (from Adventure Time, the Batcave, Classic 3 Platform, and the training room. Players will be able to choose what mode they want to play in, including 2 vs. 2 team-based cooperative mode, 1 vs. 1 matches, 4-player free-for-all, 1-4 player local matches, co-op vs. A.I. matches, custom online lobbies, practice mode, and tutorial mode.

In addition, players who played in the Multiversus Closed Alpha will receive the exclusive opportunity to play in the Open Beta one week early. Those individuals will receive a code through their email by Tuesday, July 19 at 9:00am PDT and gain early access to the game.

Dying to play the game before July 26, but you weren't part of the Closed Alpha? There's still a way you (yes, you reading this blog post lol) can gain early access to the game on July 19 through a number of steps. First, you must set up a WB Games account (if you don't have one created already) and link your Twitch account. Then, watch any Twitch streamer play the Multiversus Open Beta with drops enabled for a full hour. You can check as your progress as you watch, and once a full 60 minutes of watching elapses, you can also play the game using your WB account! So now when your bigwig Closed Alpha friends contact you and brag about getting to play the game early, you can look right in their face and say, "Well actually, I'm playing it too! Ha!" lol.

The game will take up about 7 GB of space on your computer. It is required you have the following specifications on your PC to play the Open Beta: 60 FPS, Low Settings, 720p (settings), Intel Core i5-2300 or AMD FX-8350 CPU, GeForce GTX 550 Ti or Radeon HD 5850  | Intel UHD 750 or Radeon Vega 8 GPU, and 4 GB of RAM. However, it is recommended you have 1080p, high settings, Intel Core i5-3470 or AMD Ryzen 5 1200 CPU, GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon R9 GPUA, and 8 GB of RAM. Do I know what any of that means? No, but if it's not working on your device, it's safe to say you probably don't have one of those specifications lol.

A colorblind-accessible option will be available in the Open Beta. In addition, the user interface will be customizable based on player preferences. I think it's really cool they included this feature so the game can be more accessible to anyone who is colorblind!

The Open Beta will be available all throughout the United States, South America, Europe, and New Zealand. No release date has been announced for any other continent. ​

I couldn't resist making that ridiculous frame of Shaggy from last week's review into a meme lol. Hope you enjoy the cheesy graphic that it took me about two seconds to create haha.

Anyway, Mr. Neither joins us for today's fun fact to point out a large number of inconsistencies and animation errors in two episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?.

Beginning with "What the Hex Going On," when the gang stands outside the mausoleum, the door completely disappears at one point.

There were a number of inconsistencies with Uncle Stewart's physical features. At one point, Shaggy comments that Uncle Stewart was wearing a blue suit. This doesn't make sense, as he is wearing a brown suit. Moreover, after his makeup is removed, somehow he is suddenly wearing glasses, despite not wearing them when he had the makeup on.

Moreover, as was somewhat common in the early series, Daphne's voice comes from Velma's mouth twice throughout the episode, once in the swami shop scene and another one when the culprit is revealed.

In addition, in "Never Ape an Ape Man," when Shaggy asks where Fred went, the script Fred had been reading mysteriously vanishes from the table for a brief moment.

Hope everyone has a great start to their week, and that they're doing a lot better than Shaggy looks to be doing in this picture lol.