Scooby-Doo Where Are You? #52 review, like..skip this caper

Scooby-Doo is classic and timeless.  Readers of a certain generation will always associate Shaggy to Casey Kasem and it’s only logical that the comic book should be timeless.   And in part, Scooby-Doo Where Are You is great for an all age comic book, but it also feels like something is lacking.

The comic has two stories, both of which are the same length.  In Knight Mare the gang is at a renaissance fair.  A ghost is supposedly haunting the fair, scaring the customers and putting the gang as you know them back to work.

This story is fun, packed with Scooby puns and is something that kids will really enjoy reading.   Immediately at the end of that story things go to a new one with everyone going to London.  The only visual cue that the story ends and a new one starts is “The End”.  The new one starts without a title page and a noticeably different layout.

The art in the second story is the same size, but the panels are about 15% smaller.  That results in a large white border around the page that looks odd and out of place.  It doesn’t help that the words in the second story are bigger than the first story or that this new story is suddenly numbered, starting with “1”.  Alas, page one in the second story is about 15 pages into the comic and that, combined with the art and font size make the comic seem patched together.

Is it possible they took random stories and patched them together?  Sure, The Simpsons does that all the time with their illustrated comic, but in that instance the art is consistent and the quality is there.

We still love Scooby-Doo overall, but Scooby-Doo Where Are You is strictly for the kids.  Parents will notice the differences and may not think as fondly of this comic as the Scooby in their memory.  I look forward to the next issue to see if the font and art issue is isolated to this one or a constant in the series.