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!
12 Comments
Samuel Kirkwood
7/17/2020 10:45:13 am
That was intriguing!
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whackman
7/17/2020 02:41:17 pm
looks like scoob is in first place at the box office worldwide. Should have waited and not thrown it dtv in america wb. It took 900k in one country and $1.8M total in five markets.
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Samuel Kirkwood
7/18/2020 04:05:44 am
They messed up badly not waiting or releasing at same time. It was all down to money at end of day as guessing all toys and publicity stuff was probably already in production when it started. Sadly I won't be buying it digitally due to their poor treatment of us European fans.
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7/18/2020 08:59:03 am
Agreed, and I don't blame you for not wanting to buy it. They did a horrible job publicizing anything as to when it would be released in Europe, almost right up until they released it. 7/17/2020 04:49:06 pm
I thought it was going to bomb due to the uuuuuuuh negative reviews it got but Im glad its doing well in other countries but is that enough for a sequel or even to continue the hannah barbera cinematic universe?
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7/17/2020 06:27:06 pm
Only time will tell, I'd say. It definitely didn't get all negative reviews. There were people, including myself, that liked it.
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Amber noel
7/17/2020 06:57:24 pm
I know some people like it I also like the movie too but some times it feels like their is more people that dislike it than like it and thats why I was worried that the movie wouldn't do that well
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7/17/2020 07:36:38 pm
Yeah, I would agree with you there. It seems like people don't really like the direction they went with SCOOB!, which admittedly was a bit of an experiment with the animation style and plot.
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Amber noel
7/17/2020 10:47:23 pm
Yeah it just feels like people are forgetting that it is ment to be a start to the hbcu imo
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7/18/2020 09:00:37 am
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think people are just judging it as a traditional Scooby film rather than as part of the HBCU. I know there was a Flintstones and Jetsons one in production, but I'm not sure if that's been affected now with the pandemic or if SCOOB's not so great reviews possibly caused them to reconsider.
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