- Plot & Breakdown by Keith Giffin
- Dialogue by J.M. DeMatteis
- Pencils & Inks by Howard Porter
- Colours by Hi-Fi
- Concept by Jim Lee
- Cover by Jim Lee & Alex Sinclair
Those meddling kids-Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and their dog, Scooby-Doo get more ghost-debunking than they bargained for when faced with a fundamental change in their world. The apocalypse has happened. Old rules about logic no longer apply. The creatures of the night are among us, and the crew of the Magical Mystery Machine has to fight to survive-because in the apocalyptic badlands of the near-future, the horrors are real!
Pickup your copy of ‘Scooby Doo Apocalypse’ at Comixology now!
It’s fair to say that I have been greatly anticipating the arrival of ‘Scooby Doo Apocalypse’ given that a) it’s Scooby Doo and b) Jim Lee is involved with the character designs. This was absolutely a must read for me. Having read it I am now left scratching my head slightly.
The synopsis for the series (as above) gives a brief overview of the world that the Scooby Gang are inhabiting but fails to pick up on one major plot point. This is almost ‘Scooby Doo: Year One’. The characters we know and love are in fact not yet friends, there’s no Mystery Machine, no gang and therefore very little of the familiar.
That’s not to say that ‘Scooby Doo Apocalypse’ is all bad. The Jim Lee character designs are great, his cover is perhaps the most standout part of the whole book. Howard Porters pencils do a great job of interpreting his characters without simply trying to carbon copy Lee’s work.
What is most jarring is the extremely high concept story that the characters are inhabiting. Fans of the franchise are used to the simple mystery setup, clue searching, hijinks, unmasking, ‘I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids’ formula that works perfectly well in the cartoons. Granted from the outset we’re told the monsters are real but it’s more than that with ‘Scooby Doo Apocalypse’.
Velma is now an extremely successful scientist working for a shady company. Shaggy is a dog trainer working with Scooby and said shady company. Fred is camera man to Daphne, a once famous TV presenter who has fallen on hard times due to low ratings.
Thankfully there is no Scrappy Doo in sight!
There are traits of the original characters there albeit hugely contemporised to fit a modern audience. But it feels like ‘Scooby Doo Apocalypse’ missed the mark slightly and strayed too far in to the unknown.
Seeing Scooby with a scientific headset on might be explained away by the experiments that the company Velma works for are doing but visually it distracts from the charm of the character.
Arguably if somebody were to invent these characters today then this is most likely how the characters would appear so it’s not necessarily a huge creative leap to understand why the writers have done it. But I can’t help but miss the charm of the original version.
Story wise ‘Scooby Doo Apocalypse’ is thinking big. It’s going to be one of the biggest stories these characters have faced. This issue does do a good job of reintroducing the characters and their personalities, what it doesn’t do is spend a great deal of time introducing the world that they inhabit prior to the titular apocalypse. It’s a shame because, depending on the landscape that the gang emerge to after they leave the bunker, there’s very little to make us as an audience feel for anybody caught up in the story.
All-in-all ‘Scooby Doo Apocalypse’ #1 is not the ground-breaking issue I was hoping for but there is still enough to bring me back for it’s second issue. I’ll be intrigued to know what other fans of the original cartoon feel about this new comic.
2 stars
