Vintage Comic Review: A Pup Named Scooby-Doo

To continue with our "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo" theme this week (which was totally unintentional by the way, just coincidental), I'm reviewing a very special and very rare piece of Scooby media: the only A Pup Named Scooby-Doo comic ever made! This issue was published 1995, and was written by Bill Matheny and drawn by Scott Jeralds, both of whom worked on the original A Pup Named Scooby-Doo television show. 

Before I go and further, I want to give a huge thanks to my friend Deandre (aka Scoobyfan4ever) for sending this comic to me so I could read and review it!

We started with "The Pizza Delivery From Beyond," which feels like a lost episode of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. It stays very true to the tone and style of the series, and all the characters are on-point with their younger personalities.

We get the normal assortment of minor characters, including this one random zoo ape lol.

And speaking of minor mentions, we also get O'Greazy to return, who was a recurring character for three episodes of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. I thought it was really cool how we learn his first name is Al.

The comic starts off with Shaggy narrating that him and Scooby are waiting for a pizza delivery, but they get way more than they bargained for when a monster pizza deliveryman attacks them. After a narrow escape, they alert the gang and attempt to solve the mystery. 

The plot is very much something that could have happened in the show, even down to the villain design, which is really cool. I was very disappointed however, that Red Herring never appeared, and even more so that Freddy didn't accuse Red Herring! 

But overall, it's a great short story and my favorite of the two.

The final story is titled "Daphne Has Risen From The Grave!" and features Daphne going exploring in some caves, and returning as a blood-sucking vampire. After she attacks Shaggy and Scooby and tries to turn them into vampires, they enlist the help of the gang.

I enjoyed this story, but we quickly find out (spoilers) the culprit is just Daphne practicing for the school play and I felt that was a little cheesy.

We do get one inconsistency in this comic, however...the cave Daphne is "turned" in is discovered to be a place where Scooby Snacks are mined, but "Wanted Cheddar Alive" would beg to differ since they are made in the Scooby Snacks Factory in that episode.

This really felt like it could be an episode of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, though. They captured the tone of the series perfectly once again, even down to Freddy accusing Scooby of being a vampire as one of his crazy conspiracy theories.

It's funny, Daphne turning into a vampire seems to be unintentionally foreshadowed in the beginning of "The Ghost of Mrs. Shusham," when the animators forgot to animate her reflection in the mirror lol. (Actually, now that I'm thinking of it, it's further proof that she was a vampire in that one Scrappy episode, "I Left My Neck in San Francisco," when she was never around when the vampire was and looked similar to the Lady Vampire of the Bay haha.)

Overall, these two stories were a fun nostalgia trip for me! Though the stories were pretty short to be full episodes of the series, I could see them working as good 11-minute shorts like the three they did in the final season of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. The one element I would say was off in an otherwise perfect representation of this series is they seemed to s separate Shaggy and Scooby by themselves for about half of each story, which is more of a trope in the series where they are adults, but not in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. 

Thank you again to Deandre for sending me these stories! This article would not have been possible without him!