Written by: Keith Giffen & Jim Lee
Art by: Howard Porter
Publisher: DC Comics
When Scooby Apocalypse was first announced, many cried about their childhoods being ruined. To be fair, internet whining happens almost every time a beloved IP is rebooted, but in this case I couldn’t blame them. Shaggy has been transformed into a modern hipster with a hint of Green Arrow and Scooby is now a emoticon using millennial. I went into this issue expecting to hate it and I feel weird saying this, but I was pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong, Shaggy still looks terrible and the emoticon Scooby is completely pointless, but what this issue lacks in character design and art, it makes a valiant effort to make up for in the writing.
In Scooby Apocalypse, although the character origins have been changed, their personality will be quickly recognizable. These characters have been given a new coat of paint, but they’re still the same ones you all remember from your childhood. Shaggy is still a goof, Velma is still the genius, Fred and Daphne are still the same and Scooby is still Scobby. Having the characters be relatively similar to their previous selves makes their new look easier to take in.
The book has quite a few hilarious moments in it, especially those that focus on character interactions. The book also has some moments where the jokes fall flat, most of them ironically are making fun of the modern hipster culture that the book itself is trying so hard to be a part of. But most of the book is focused on its overly complicated plot. There’s more than a couple pages of lengthy, wordy, exposition. A little less than half the book is literally Velma walking around explaining the entire plot in the most boring and wordy way possible. If this comic is aimed towards kids, they would drop the book at that point.
With the strong start this issue had, I’m willing to forgive the boring exposition drop in the hope that it was a necessarily evil to keep the rest of the series focused and well paced.
Overall, Scooby Apocalypse is a surprisingly better book than most expected it to be. While the character designs are still something I’m bitter about and I hope one of the villains they face in this series takes a razor against Shaggy, the characters themselves are just about as I remembered them. There is a lot of promise in this first issue, and I’m excited to see where it heads.
