GamesRadar+ has posted the solicitation for Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #5, which will be our only Scooby comic for May. Batman fans will be excited to see that the cover art uses the style of Batman: The Animated Series!
THE BATMAN & SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES #5 Written by MATTHEW CODY Art and cover by PUSTE $2.99 US | 32 pages ON SALE 5/7/24 Dr. Kirk Langstrom believes the cure for his monstrous alter ego lies in studying the infamous Dr. Jekyll. When Batman accompanies him to Jekyll’s abandoned lab, they’re attacked by the ghost of Mr. Hyde himself! The Mystery Inc. gang has a history with this so-called spook, so Batman calls for their help. But, like, no one told them they might be facing Man-Bat, too!
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In "A Good Medium Is Rare," Phyllis Diller had five ex-husbands. In real-life, at the time of this episode's airing, she had only divorced one man and was currently married to another.
Phyllis married her first husband, Sherwood, in 1939. She was married to him for 26 years, and divorced him in 1965. Later that year, she married actor Warde Donovan, who she was still with when "A Good Medium Is Rare" aired. In 1975, she divorced Warde due to his problems with drinking, and was single for the next 10 years. In 1985, she married Robert Hastings, who she remained with until his death in 1996. Phyllis did not remarry again after her third husband's passing. Our winning option last week won by a huge margin, getting over 3 times the amount of votes of any other option!
What is your favorite viking episode? Curse of the Viking Lake - 41 Norse Case Scenario - 11 Scooby the Barbarian - 8 The Phantom of the Country Music Hall - 8 As I posted about a few weeks ago, some old concept art and storyboards from SCOOB! have recently surfaced thanks to the Behind the Scoobs Instagram account. In that post, I did a brief write-up in the linked post about how the film drastically changed from what it was originally supposed to be. I was enjoying following their SCOOB! concept art while they were posting, and I was inspired to do a deeper dive on how the original film would have differed from what we ended up getting. From what I can find, there isn't one comprehensive article that tells the story of the original concept for SCOOB!, so I thought it would be fun to compile that story myself, and share it with you all through interviews, concept art and news articles. Just so it's clear, all of the concept art and other materials were found and shared previously with the fandom around the time SCOOB! came out, so I am not linking to any new information that hasn't been seen before.
Disclaimer: All of the concept art I'm linking to is all publicly available on the web and can be viewed by anyone. All concept art is owned by the individual artists and Warner Brothers-Discovery, and will be credited to the respective artists in each instance they are referenced throughout the post. To avoid any potential copyright or crediting issues, I will be linking to the places where the concept art is posted on the Internet rather than including the images directly in this post. I do not take credit for any of the concept art linked to. In addition, there is no definitive source to tell us what the movie would have been about. This is just me piecing things together based on my own interpretation of the interviews, concept art, and news articles that are out there, and I make no claims as to whether my interpretations are correct or not. If any of the artists or anyone at Warner-Brothers Discovery has any issues with me sharing links to this publicly available concept art, please don't hesitate to reach out and I will be happy to remove the links from this post. For those who don't know, SCOOB! was originally announced as far back as August 2013 via Variety. Charles Roven and Richard Suckle, who produced the first two live action movies, were set to produce the film. Matt Lieberman was the first person hired to write the script. Another announcement was later made in June 2014, sharing Randall Green had joined the writing team, and also that it would "reboot" the franchise. Early concepts featured a much more experimental tone, involving the Mystery Inc. gang joining forces with former villains to stop a larger threat. In a storyboard posted on Nassos Vakalis's art portfolio website (the third one in the second row), The Creeper joined forces with Simone from Zombie Island to stop some demonic creatures. This concept was later scrapped. On the movie's release day in 2020, Matt Lieberman shared in an interview with SyFyWire that SCOOB! originally was titled S.C.O.O.B., standing for Special Covert Organization of Otherworldly Beings. Despite the acronym being written out of the movie, the title was kept. A different interview with Matt Lieberman confirmed 80% of the basic plot of the film stayed the same in the final version; it was just the atmosphere and scenes that changed. In August 2015, it was announced that Tony Cervone would direct the film, and his wife Allison Abbate would help produce it alongside Roven and Suckle. It was also announced that Dan Povenmire would executive produce the film. In April 2016, Entertainment Weekly reported that the film could lead to a Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe, providing the official tagline of "our first shot at unlocking the whole Hanna-Barbera Universe." In September 2016, Dax Shepard was announced as a writer and director for the film by Variety, and the release date was announced as September 21, 2018. In May 2017, Variety reported an update that the release date would be pushed back to May 15, 2020. According to a Variety article from 2017, S.C.O.O.B. was originally supposed to be Hanna-Barbera's version of the Avengers/Justice League, with a group of heroes teaming up to stop Dick Dastardly and Muttley. A piece of concept art from 2015 by character designer Paul Sullivan on his website, shows one of the concepts that was considered for this "Justice League" of Hanna-Barbera characters. As can be seen from this art, the original concept included more than just Blue Falcon, Dynomutt, Dee Dee and Captain Caveman. Jabberjaw, Penelope Pitstop, Atom Ant, and Grape Ape were also originally a part of the film, but were written out in the final version. An art portfolio page by Alex Konstad shows some much darker, more sinister concept art for the film was at one point considered. This page also shows that Captain Caveman appears to have originally had a much bigger role in the film than just the brief scene that he got. According to Konstad's Instagram, he pitched The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones as the villain, similar to how Scrappy was made the villain of the first live action film. In the original version of the film, there was a mystery with a zombie named Dr. Bandersnatch planned as a villain. Artist Bill Robinson posted designs on his Instagram for the villain, which appear to have maybe been inspired by Dr. Coffin from "The Harum Scarum Sanitarium." Robinson's Instagram caption mentions the character was from a "cut scene," meaning it could have also just been an opening scene, rather than part of the main plot. Sheriff Stone would have also made an appearance in the film, according to another Instagram post by Bill Robinson. The film originally appears to have gone much deeper into Greek lore, as can be seen in a few other storyboard animatics on artist Nassos Valakis's website. The Greek lore looks like it would have been more heavily embedded into the whole film with a darker tone. Alex Konstad's site features captions on some of the concept art like "The Gates of Hell" and "It Follows," which may further hint to the darker tone this film originally had. A design on John Nevarez's website even shows Dick Dastardly meeting what appears to be the Grim Reaper. In September 2018, it was announced by Variety that Dax Shepard was no longer involved with the project. Tony Cervone remained as the sole director, and Kelly Freamon-Craig replaced Shepard as a co-writer. It was also announced that Chris Colombus would produce the film, and that Derek Elliott and Jack Donaldson had written a previous draft of the script. This appears to have been the turning point for the film, as much of the cast and story as we know them today starting getting announced in March 2019. So, why were all these changes made? I was curious about this too, so I did some research to see if I could find any official statements from the crew who worked on the film about the shift of direction from the original version. In an interview with Michael J. Lee of RadioFree, Tony Cervone shared that a struggle the film faced is that telling the story through the lens of the broader Hanna-Barbera universe caused a sort of identity crisis for the film, because there were too many characters to be properly developed. "Scooby and Shaggy really just wanted to be Scooby and Shaggy, you know?" Cervone shares. "We spent a lot of time thinking about, "Should we create one overall look that can fill this whole universe?" Like, how are we going to create one look that accommodates Fred Jones and Dick Dastardly? They're so radically different. And we just did it the Hanna-Barbera way, and the Hanna-Barbera way mixed stuff up all the time. I knew Iwao Takamoto, and I knew a lot of the Hanna-Barbera people, and in a way, I was just kind of listening to them in my head, and they were all like, "Play to the characters' strengths, listen to the characters. And I think that's kind of what led us, and where we eventually wound up." Producer Pam Coats adds on to Cervone's sentiment in another interview with CinemaBlend: "At the core you want to end this movie really emotionally attached to Scooby and Shaggy, Dastardly and Muttley, and Dynomutt and Blue Falcon, and we couldn't do that with those characters there." Tony Cervone, who took part in this same interview, added "I think when we first started this was much more like Hanna-Barbera Avengers, and then somehow along the way the more time we spent with Scooby and Shaggy, we were just like, 'This is all we care about.' Scooby and Shaggy had their own gravity that took up space." In an interview with ComingSoon.net, Tony Cervone explained that Marvel's Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse was an inspiration for the creative team. "Just like “Into the Spider-Verse”, the “Spider-Man” movie Sony made, was such a great representation of New York, we wanted to do that for L.A. We wanted this movie to feel like, “I could drive down that street. I know where that is.” And we knew we would go to some very fantastical places, so we wanted our Southern California to feel idealized but still kind of real." Cervone shared. In a sense, the Avengers/Into the Spider-Verse metaphor is perhaps the best way to sum up the difference between the other version of the film, and the final version we saw. The original concept was focused on the broader Hanna-Barbera universe and was larger-than-life, similar to what Avengers is within the Marvel Universe, whereas the final version is a much more grounded picture that focused on a specific group of characters' universe, like Spider-Verse is in relation to the rest of the Marvel Universe. I had a lot of fun researching for this article, and even though I already enjoyed SCOOB!, doing this research gave me a greater appreciation for what we ended up getting. I think Cervone and everyone involved did a great job creating a very grounded, character-focused story that was still able to properly service the Hanna-Barbera universe. "Gates of Gloom" from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated features Daphne, Fred and Scooby saying famous action movie quotes at pivotal points in the episode. Scooby saying "They drew first blood, not me" is a reference to the film First Blood with Sylvester Stallone. Fred and Daphne's exchange of "What have I done?" "What you had to do. What you always do, turn traps into a fighting chance to live" is a parody of a famous quote from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
This wasn't the first time the series parodied famous films, though. Although there are some parodies that were obvious, two of the notable full-episode examples of parodies that you may not be aware of include that "The Midnight Zone" was a parody of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which featured a very similar plot of robots taking over a city, and a holographic head turning out to be a corpse in a chair. "Nightfright" from Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated also parodies the movie Fright Night, which is a famous horror movie that came out in 1985, one month before The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo began airing. We had a pretty clear winner from the start last week, with only a few other options getting a sizeable number of votes.
What is your favorite theater episode? The Backstage Rage - 23 Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright - 14 Happy Birthday, Scooby-Doo! - 7 Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire - 5 The Nutcracker Scoob - 4 Theater of Doom - 4 Quit Clowning! - 3 The Phantom of the Country Music Hall - 2 In Fear of the Phantom - 2 Screama Donna - 2 The Sorcerer's a Menace - 1 A Fright at the Opera - 1 Punk Rock Scooby - 1 The Spirit of Rock 'N' Roll - 1 Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Capers - 1 The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! - 1 0 votes: Backstage Scooby, Horror Scope Scoob, For Letter or Worse, Fright of Hand, Too Many Dummies!, The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament! There are a few instances in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated where a character is credited despite that they should not have been. In "Where Walks Aphrodite," two referees are credited to Matthew Lillard and Tony Cervone, but there is only one referee, and he does not speak in the episode. There is also a guard credited in "Scarebear" and a reporter credited in "All Fear the Freak," but no such characters appear in the episode (although the reporter is credited to Nolan North, who played the reporter in the previous episode, "Pawn of Shadows").
Although they weren't technically theaters, I did include TV stations where a stage was a main part of the plot in case anybody wants to vote for them.
The final results are in for our Be Cool Daphne quirk polls, and puppets win by a large margin! Puppets ended up getting 63 votes, and mime ended up getting 15 votes. Thanks again to Greybishop for suggesting this poll series idea! **Spoiler warning: This fun fact contains spoilers for the Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! episode "Night of the Upsetting Shorts"**
We have another Be Cool fun fact to go along with the conclusion our Daphne Quirk polls! At the beginning of "Night of the Upsetting Shorts," the Ape Man is watching the gang seconds after they walk into the nursing home with Grammy and her friends. This leaves a large plot hole in the episode, as Grammy is the culprit, and could not have been watching the gang as the Ape Man while she was still with them. The votes are in, which means it's time for our final round of the BCSD Daphne Quirk polls, where we pit the two winners against each other! Here are the full results from the season 2 poll:
Mime - 8 Secretly planning heist - 6 Shaggy's fake girlfriend - 5 Fourth wall puns to camera - 4 Rollerskating - 4 Zombie Velma - 3 Believing everything is a dream - 2 Movie studio tour guide - 2 Obsessed with rules - 2 Practical joker - 2 Protesting against witch discrimination - 2 Campaign manager - 1 Feng shui - 1 Heightening her senses - 1 Pretending to be Fred - 1 0 votes: Inventing modern inventions in Renaissance era, Playing the trombone, Protesting against dog show, Going viral, Getting out of doing tasks for Velmonia, Understanding the Plant Monster, Dressing as her ancestor Ginger Fuzz |
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