One of the great things about comics is that they’re a relatively inexpensive medium
to try out new ideas and keep things alive and I think that’s a big reason why we have
so many different comic book adaptations and spin offs of these big popular established
shows.
However, one of the strangest comic book adaptations that I’ve seen has actually come from the
unlikely team up of Hanna-Barbera and DC Comics
At first, this might seem like an odd pairing, but it makes sense when you realize that both
entities are owned by the same parent company which I’m sure you noticed if you’ve ever
looked at Cartoon Network’s programming.
Well in 2016, DC decided to release a line of more “realistic” takes on classic Hannah
Barbera properties.
I’ve previously talked about how I surprisingly enjoyed the fresh take on The Flintstones,
but Scooby Apocalypse was easily their longest running and most successful.
I grew up on a LOT of Scooby Doo media.
Reruns of the original show, the VHS movie come back, A Pup Named Scooby Doo, the live
action movie, etc.
I adore these characters so when I saw that this new interpretation was going to look
like… this.
Well, I was definitely skeptical.
So much so that I didn’t actually read the series until it was over.
Part of what won me over was the writing being handled by the tag team duo of J.M. Dematteis
and Keith Giffen.
They have done some HUGE work in the comic industry.
Justice League International, Kraven’s Last Hunt, Ambush Bug, 52, Doctor Fate, Lobo, Annihilation,
and a LOT of work on my all time favorite superhero, Booster Gold.
That’s one hell of a track record so it’s a little weird that even though I’ve read
the entire series…
I still don’t know if I liked it.
As far as Scooby related media goes, I think this is probably the biggest departure from
the source material that the franchise has ever had.
I mean sure, we’ve seen the gang handle real monsters and ghosts and… sentient computer
programs, but how about being the sole survivors of a dystopian world overcome with a virus
that turned everybody else into creatures from as generic as vampires to as over the
top as literal monster trucks.
So how did this happen?
Well let’s start at the beginning.
Unlike most continuities, Scooby Apocalypse doesn’t start with the gang assembled right
off the bat.
We start off with Dr. Velma Dinkley who is arguably the main character of the book.
She’s an emotionless super genius that’s a high ranking scientist at “The Complex”,
a private paramilitary organization that was created by Velma’s four older brothers,
all of whom are high ranking officials in their respective fields.
Their initial goal was to try and better mankind though augmentation, but their first attempts
were actually performed on dogs.
Oof.
Or uh… woof?
The first of this “smart-dog” project was Scooby Doo.
He was implanted with a chip that stimulates the language centers of the brain and if you’re
wondering why he’s wearing this technology, those are his Emotigoggles which display visual
aids to help with Scooby’s speech.
They apparently link together with Shaggy’s special contact lenses, but it doesn’t matter
much because these details are practically never referenced again after the first issue.
Yeah, basically the only real function of the goggles is to give Scooby these holographic
eyebrows which is pretty underwhelming.
Speaking of Shaggy.
WOW, look at this dude.
He was hired by The Complex to be a dog trainer and he really stands apart from the scientists
with his new hipster aesthetic.
And dude, they lean into the hipster thing hardcore with this Shaggy.
He’s quoting Buddha, talking about how big retailers put his parents’ grocery store
out of business, making sure you know that he’s been to India, and he’s also a vegetarian
which admittedly is nothing new since almost every incarnation of Shaggy is a vegetarian
because his original voice actor demanded it.
Yeah.
It’s a real thing.
Look it up.
Anyway, Shaggy is known to frequently break the rules of The Complex by taking Scooby
out in public.
He happened to be doing this at the same time as when Velma decided to meet up with a TV
crew as a whistleblower.
See, it turns out that Velma is the creator of a nanobot virus that was released into
the world with the goal of bettering mankind, but her brothers wanted to make humanity more
docile and messed with her design, something that she didn’t discover until the virus
was already out there.
That’s why Velma decided to blow the whistle through a reporter named Daphne Blake and
her cameraman, Fred Jones.
Daphne used to be an ace reporter for the Washington Post and Fred’s been with her
every step of the way.
They tried dating for a little bit, but that was a complete disaster, but Fred is still
hopelessly in love with Daphne and is CONSTANTLY trying to propose to her.
I hope you like that joke because it happens nonstop throughout the book.
Fred and Daphne left the Post in order to produce the hit show, Enigma Quest.
It got canceled, but the two of them made a spiritual successor to it… on the Knitting
Channel.
Because of her former hard hitting journalism and current obscurity, Velma thought that
reaching out to Daphne with the details of The Complex’s wrongdoings would be the smart
move since Daphne is too low level for Velma’s brothers to notice.
After the gang is assembled, Velma showed everyone The Complex’s secret bunker that
would protect the higher ups from the nanite virus, but without warning, the doors were
sealed off and the virus was activated early.
Outside the closed doors, the tainted nanites turned almost all of the world’s population
into monsters and this is where the apocalypse part of the title comes in.
The majority of the series follows the gang traveling from town to town in an experimental
vehicle that they took from The Complex, a mystery machine if you will.
The general goal is to survive and hopefully equip Velma with the tech that she needs to
find a cure for the virus.
Another interesting part of this setup is that while the monsters in Scooby media are
generally just people in costumes or literal creatures, the monsters here were once people
that were transformed against their will.
The gang slaughters a LOT of these afflicted humans, mostly Daphne who, like in most modern
Scooby media, is an action girl.
Like dude, Daphne is a killing machine, especially near the end of the book.
There’s a point where the gang finds some unborn monster embryos and Daph straight up
guns them down.
Normally this would be relatively okay if these were just your run of the mill monsters,
but remember, these are people that could potentially be cured.
And if you think that’s just me reading too much into things and obsessing over it,
I need you to know that Scooby Apocalypse also obsesses over this detail, frequently
debating the moral implication of if these creatures are still human or not.
This kind of repetition in the book is something that bothers me quite a bit.
I mean, Scooby Apocalypse is constantly trying to poke fun at and lampshade the tropes that
the franchise generally relies on, but in practice, it’s just as repetitive at the
source material.
Fred is ALWAYS trying to propose to Daphne, Velma and Daph are constantly butting heads,
Shaggy is always mentioning his obsession with a woman named Daisy who later joins up,
etc.
For as smart and subversive as this book seems to think it is, it can honestly get pretty
boring.
Thankfully, there is one character that always steals the show whenever he’s around, Scrappy-Doo.
Scrappy is the leader of the other smart dogs that were able to escape The Complex and he
HATES Scooby because if he wasn’t such a failure in the smart dog project, then Scrappy
wouldn’t have been experimented on and he could have continued his life as a happy little
puppy.
So yeah, Scrappy is literally hunting down Scooby-Doo in order to kill him out of revenge.
Also, unlike the other dogs, Scrappy has extra upgrades… that turns him into a jacked dog
man.
It’s so absurd and I love it.
For a while, Scrappy had these little short stories at the back of each issue, showing
him and his pack tracking down the gang, but over time, the other dogs were killed off
and Scrappy acted as the only sort of formal villain of the series since most of the general
conflict was just with these monsters of the week.
Over time though, Scrappy turns into a sort of anti-hero and he's known to team up with
Daphne so that they can go on these monster killing sprees.
It's a little ironic that Scrappy was such a hated character in the source material that
he has an entire trope name after him for widely hated characters and yet, he's legitimately
the best thing about this book.
You can try to claim that there's better stuff here, but you're wrong and you shouldn't be
allowed to have opinions.
This is a good boy.
The problem though is that Scrappy’s transition into a member of the team doesn’t feel very
natural, a criticism that I share with the rest of the gang.
Like although everyone was butting heads at the beginning of the book, they eventually
started to see each other as family.
This is generally my favorite part of a zombie outbreak story, but I never really bought
into the chemistry between the characters or even the personalities of the characters
themselves.
The situation that the gang is in is a lot more interesting than the actual characters
that are actually going through it.
This is kind of what I mean when I said that I’m not sure I enjoyed the book or not.
I mean it’s definitely interesting and it kept me reading issue after issue, but if
I wasn’t invested in the Scooby franchise beforehand and wasn’t wanting to see how
this differed from the source material, I don’t know if I would have actually cared
enough about any of these characters enough to like the book if it stood on its own as
an original IP.
This stands in pretty stark contrast with something like Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated
which both modernizes and subverts the classic Scooby formula, but since this isn’t a cartoon
channel, I’m probably not the best person to talk about it.
However, I think I know somebody who is perfect for the job!
Hey, guys!
My name’s Billiam and I’ve been watching a LOT of Scooby-Doo.
I mean… a lot.
Like Drake said, Mystery Inc. is one of the more interesting takes on the franchise.
The Scooby gang is a lot more than just a couple of tropes and one note character gags
and traits.
They’re fully fleshed out and that’s what makes Mystery Inc. a great show.
It’s super character driven.
And while the overarching mystery in the series is pretty neat, you’ll keep tuning in because
you want to see what’s going on in these character’s lives.
Fred’s weird obsession with traps, Daphne’s allergies to seafood, Velma’s blogging,
and Shaggy’s willingness to do pretty much everything for his friends
These are awesome traits that add a lot more depth to the characters that we’re usually
not used to seeing and it’s at the core of what makes Mystery Inc. such a great show.
Yeah, I think that’s what’s really missing for me.
I mean Scooby Apocalypse tries to modernize these characters, but they ended up just turning
into a bunch of boring bland stereotypes.
Plus, they’re a lot more depressing since they live in the world of a depressing apocalypse.
I think with just a little bit more characterization then the character dynamics could have really
brought this entire book up at least a couple points in quality, but I still have a lot
to talk about such as the completely bonkers ending of the series.
So, you mind if I hop over to your channel to talk about Scooby-Doo: Mystery Inc.?
Because I got to get back to my stuff.
If you want to go see more Scooby content, I’m sure there’s other stuff on YouTube,
but if you come across my channel, you should probably check it out.
That’d be pretty neat.
In my personal opinion, Scooby Apocalypse took a major nosedive in quality once the
series jumped the shark.
So the gang worked to clear out a shopping mall and created a settlement there.
During a tense moment in one of the missions, Daphne finally accepts one of Fred’s proposals,
but he’s killed almost instantly after.
Then we suddenly get a time skip half a year to see that the settlement has attracted more
survivors and is now a fully functioning society.
In honor of their fallen comrade, the colony is called…
“Jonestown”.
Little weird considering you know…
Jonestown, but at least they lampshade it.
Other big changes include Shaggy and Velma becoming a couple and getting pregnant, a
random electric shock fixing Scooby’s implants and now he’s super smart, and…
Fred is now a zombie.
Okay, this is actually a bit more complicated than it sounds so let me explain.
When Fred died, he was infected with the nanites and they absorbed him into the hivemind which
allowed him to become their avatar.
He can control the monsters and apparently also technology.
He has super reflexes and super strength with him easily being able to take down the jacked
up Scrappy-Doo.
He also doesn’t even NEED to defend himself because zombie Fred is also immune to damage
and can reattach severed body parts.
While it’s framed like zombie Fred is going to be the final big bad of the series, he’s
actually still a good guy and willingly surrenders himself so that the gang can work together
to take on the true final villain…
The Nanite King…
The Nanite King?!
Seriously?!
And he looks like the Night King ands he’s got the crown and everything?!
UGH!
Okay, so it turns out that the HIVEMIND was able to separate into two factions.
The larger one thought that humanity needed to be wiped out and they physically manifested
themselves as the Nanite King.
The other faction believed that they needed to become one with humanity and they’re
the ones that infected Fred’s corpse.
Despite zombie Fred’s strength, the Nanite King was easily able to destroy Jonestown,
but one of Velma’s brothers was revealed to have survived the outbreak and brought
the remaining survivors to his private compound.
It’s here that Velma infected Fred’s nanites with a virus so that he could merge and infect
the Nanite King with it.
As a result, both Fred and the Nanite King were killed off for good and most of the monster
population reverted back to humans, save for a very few that were immune to the cure.
Velma and Shaggy have their baby, they name it Fred, and that’s the end.
Like I’ve said several times, I don’t really know if I enjoyed this book.
I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m not a huge fan of horror because I’m a little
scaredy boy and the genre never really appealed to me.
That being said, I understand that there are a lot of people out there that really enjoy
horror and I also recognize the long history that comics have with the genre.
I sincerely think that it’s a real shame that horror comics have almost entirely vanished
from the medium and with all of the legitimately gross stuff and the sometimes great art that
Scooby Apocalypse provides, I think that it is awesome that this book is filling a long
neglected niche.
It’s also just criminal that there wasn’t a single mention of Scooby Snacks.
The official description of the book on DC’s official website said that there would be
Scooby Snacks.
You lied to me, DC!
You lied to me!
Now is definitely a lot more to Scooby Apocalypse that I wasn’t able to touch on in this video
because it just didn’t make a lot of sense such as Belma’s brother, Rufus, who survived
the apocalypse and also all of the Secret Squirrel stories that started appearing in
the end of later issues.
So definitely go give the book a read if you want to learn more.
Don’t just watch this video and think you know everything because that’s not really
how YouTube works.
I also want to give a very big thank you to my buddy, Billiam, for coming on the channel
to help out with this collaboration.
If you want to see his video where I make an appearance then I’m going to go ahead
and link that as well, but anyway, I hope you learned at least a little something new
and hopefully I’ll see you next time.