Longbox Graveyard #163

Time for a Longbox Graveyard guest blog, as Kris Peterson of the Gravy Age podcast joins us with a favorable review of a comic that I casually dismissed at first impression … and maybe you did, too! Take it away, Kris!

Making a snap decision based on little to no information is the name of the game these days, things are hated from the moment they are announced, meaningless petitions are signed, online battles rage over the merits of taking an existing property and changing things for a new generation. I try (and fail) not to get too worked up over things, despite my sentimental attachment to movies or whatever the case may be. Scooby Apocalypse, from the first time I saw the name, was something I immediately wrote off as stupid, based on nothing but the title. Scooby. Apocalypse. Seeing the cover with Hipster Shaggy didn’t do anything but make me feel completely justified in hating this book.

Growing up, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? was an after school staple of my day. I was always crazy about old sci-fi and horror movies, which my mom always was happy to talk about with me. I loved the ghosts, werewolves, aliens, all of it. My dad was a detective, and until my first draft of this, and then talking to Paul over a couple emails, I had a weird realization. My parents divorced when I was very young, young enough that I honestly can’t picture them as a couple.

What does that have to do with Scooby-Doo? Even though the monsters always turned out to be some creep, dressing up like monsters or a ghost, there was also a mystery to be solved. Maybe back in the day, I associated the campiness and weird “monsters” with my mom, and solving mysteries with my dad. It was basically kids (or teens) solving mysteries. There is probably something in there I can wring for some emotional content. Something about latching onto something from each parent. And like most of the cases my dad worked, these were financial crimes. His cases leaned more towards embezzlement, and less towards, Old Man Smitty is dressing up like a Yeti to scare potential buyers away from the abandoned ski lodge, because there is a silver mine under it. Or whatever the heck any particular episode of Scooby-Doo was about. Even as a kid though I had problems with a cartoon with a laugh track.

Since my kids were out of school, we were heading up to the mountains for a week. I stopped by the comic book store and grabbed a pile of books to read. I picked up Scooby Apocalypse with no other thought than, “If this sucks I can make fun of it on the blog or podcast,” and pat myself on the back for being the super awesome prognosticator that I am. My record is flawless, in that I’m wrong far more often than I’m right.

I knew so little going in, that when I finally sat down to read it and saw the names Giffen, DeMatteis, and Porter on the cover, I was actually surprised. Surprised, and willing to give it a shot. Your milage may vary with those names, but I think they can make fun of things (I’m guessing Giffen’s doing), while also adding a surprising amount of depth and humanity to things (DeMatteis solo, and with Giffen can get deep in unexpected places). If nothing else, I figured it would be entertaining. Maybe because the bar in my head was set so low, that it didn’t have to do much more than not be awful for it not to be a waste of money. The thing is though, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it.

The first issue is the setup of the world, and our introduction to the gang. Velma is a scientist in some sort of shadowy cabal that was trying to manipulate the world’s population through a nanite plague. Shaggy is a dog-walker at the secret research lab Velma works at. Daphne is the host of Daphne Blake’s Mysterious Mysteries, a late night, cable television show. Fred is her loyal, if not particularly brave camera man. And Scooby Doo himself, a failed smart-dog experiment designed to help soldiers in the field. They are basically the characters I knew, although in all honesty they weren’t really deep characters to begin with.

Fred and Daphne especially, were almost non-characters. They are expanded upon here, enough to fit them into this world without changing them. There is a bit with Daphne punching Fred that feels kind of mean spirited. Fred gets the best panel of the issue, after being startled and throwing his camera, because he’s scared it could be, “Mole people,” which my son and I now just randomly scream at each other. We get some hints at a bit of backstory, at least for Daphne, in that she was once a well respected reporter, though why she left real journalism for the likes of her show haven’t been touched on yet.

The nanites, as originally conceived by Velma were supposed to be beneficial, removing greed, and anger. Unfortunately, the others in the project wanted to turn the rest of humanity into docile slaves. Velma wanted to alert the world to the plague, choosing Daphne, because she is languishing in deep cable, conspiracy, weirdo television that she wouldn’t even be on the radar of the others in the project as a threat to expose them. Before she can do that though, the lab goes into lock-down and the plague is unleashed, turning humanity into actual monsters.

There is also a back-up story about Shaggy meeting Scooby for the first time that fills us in that Shaggy has a special connection with dogs, and shows that Scooby lacks the killer instinct to be effective in combat, and is scheduled to be destroyed. In a show of bravery, Shaggy steps between Scooby and the other dogs to protect Scooby from being killed. Two of the dogs seem to be nods to Scooby-Dum, and Scrappy-Doo in size and coloration. Hopefully we don’t really get into Scooby-Dum or Scrappy Doo in this world though. Ugh.

The second issue gets to the actual apocalypse, with the gang trying to figure out what happened outside and how to escape the facility. It would be pretty easy to turn this into a gritty, kill ’em all, excuse to mow down monsters, and turn the gang into gun-toting bad-asses. Thankfully (and wisely) Giffen and DeMatteis don’t do that. These monsters aren’t mindless, they retain memories of who they were. The gang take no pleasure in having to kill them. I appreciate that the violence in the book has consequence, I appreciate that the characters are sickened by what they have to do to to survive. Daphne gets another punch in on another one of the gang that feels a lot more justified.

I hope I’m not selling this as too dark a book, it’s still a fun read. The humor is in there, in fact this book is not just the team from Justice League 3001, it’s almost a spiritual successor to the book. It takes different versions of existing characters and places them in a new world, and allows the creative team to have fun with ideas, they couldn’t get away with in a regular Scooby Doo book. The only real issue I have, (aside from Daphne’s punch) with the series so far is Scooby’s pointless, emoji projecting headset. Yes, Scooby can project emoji’s into Shaggy’s contact lenses. What purpose it would serve, I’m not entirely sure.

Like I said at the beginning, maybe I set the bar too low at the start, but Scooby Apocalypse caught me completely off guard with how much I dug it. And I’m pretty proud of myself for getting through this without a single, “Zoinks,” “Jinkies,” or “Ruh-Roh!”

Thanks for the review, Kris! It sound like Scooby Apocalypse might have caught some of the same magic that made Afterlife With Archie an unexpectedly great read. I hope Longbox Graveyard’s readers will check it out … and be sure to listen to Kris at the Gravy Age, and follow him on Twitter, too!

NEXT: Doctor Strange vs. Dracula!