It’s the month of September, when we celebrate the debut of the greatest cartoon franchise and character of all-time, Scooby-Doo.
And today we have a special review of a book I’ve talked about a few times on the main show and in Doomed, a book I read at least twice twenty-ish years ago, once after having it spoiled by a loud mouthed asshole neighbor and again in the lead up to the sequel.
I dug it back then for it’s unique perspectives.
I’m excited to dive back in and revisit this so many years later and see if it still has all of the charm I remember from back then.
So come along, gang, let’s solve this mystery together.
This is your super groovy 21 year ***SPOILER ALERT***, act accordingly.
We should all know the story of this one: Mystery Inc. faces an acrimonious break up in the opening and go their separate ways.
Some time later they’re unwittingly reunited by reclusive theme park owner, one Emil Mondavarious.
They soon find that somebody is trying to take over the world using an occult artifact, the Daemon Ritus, to replace visitors to the Spooky Island theme park.
Can Mystery Inc. put their differences aside and work together to save not just the park, but the entire world?
Let’s get the bad out of the way so I can sail high on all of the good things I love about this book.
There is one thing about this book that enraged me and caused me to quit reading for a week long stretch twice, something I have bitched about in the past when talking about Scooby comics.
For the love of all that is oxygenated and life sustaining, will writers fuckin’ knock it off with the starting every word Scoob says with a goddamn R already!?
And to make matters worse, it occasionally happens every syllable!
Go back and listen to everything Don Messick recorded, Scooby does not talk like this and I don’t understand where the perception that he comes from.
Scooby talks with his own unique affect/accent, it’s almost like his tongue is too long or, as Frank Welker has astutely pointed out in the past when talking about watching Don voice Scoob for so long, his face is too saggy and jowlly causing the vocal distortion.
Neil Fanning (voice of Scooby in the movie this novel is based on) fell into this R trap and it’s one of my main issues with his, otherwise pretty good, performance.
Bet you didn’t expect to get vocal analysis in a review of a junior novel of a twenty year old movie, didja?
Well, I ain’t done yet!
I was reading along fine, enjoying the way this story is told (I’ll get to it soon, I promise), and I had just started to wonder why I had yet to come across a Scooby focused chapter when I finally hit one and, I shit you not, this is what it said: “Rin ra rorest ri raw a rign rat raid RAMRURGERS RHIS RAY. Rit ras rare, Ruth ri ras rungry. Rand ri rove RAMRURGERS. Ri rollover ra rings runtime ri round a rag.”
I’ll save you your last brain cell and tell you the only two reasons I didn’t quit reading it right there are 1. Because up to this point I was really groovin’ on the style in which this story is delivered and 2. This chunk of horseshit is translated by Shaggy.
It still pissed me off enough that I quit reading for a week though.
I don’t know how anybody is expected to decipher that jumble without a decoder, and the second instance doesn’t provide one.
Most writers do it so I can’t even lay the blame on Weyn, so is this some idiotic edict passed down by the WB braintrust that seems to just keep sticking?
Either way, I hate it and it needs to stop happening in prose books and comics.
Please, just knock it the fuck off already!
Now, with that rage out of the way, let’s get to what I liked, which thankfully was everything else.
I love the little added touches to the story, most of which are nods to extended/deleted scenes that can be found on the DVD/Blu-Ray.
But there are some that I wonder if they were bits in a draft of James Gunn’s script or just artistic flourish by Suzanne Weyn.
A specific instance of this would be the ending where they have a slightly extended conversation about the Mud Bog Ghoul in London where Fred realizes they’ve all grown, it’s not at all necessary but it is a great character moment that is a great cherry on top for this version of the characters.
Something else I adore, so much so that I’ve talked about it a lot over the years because it stuck with me as a great way to learn more about these characters, is that each chapter is told from the perspective of a member of the gang instead of from an omniscient narrator.
Getting each unique perspective and voice adds such a rich layer of detail to the story and characters voices that is unbeatable in any other Scooby story I have read.
It makes me wonder what a Gelsey or even original book in this style from Weyn in this style would be like.
As I’ve gotten older and expanded my reading horizens I realize this isn’t a particular new storytelling device, but it was my first exposure to it and having experienced it with my favorite characters helped it stick in my mind and hope for more.
Sadly, we’ve never gotten more Scooby novels in this style (except, I believe, for the sequel’s novelization).
Something else of note that I got an odd amount of amusement out of would be the, even at the time, dated pop culture references.
Marky Mark The Funky Bunch and the Harlem Globetrotters being the most memorable.
It almost makes it feel a bit timeless and dated at the same time.
Unlike say Shrek that is very much a time capsule of music and such in that very specific time, this one just references a bunch of shit from all of the decades leading up to and including the time of release.
It’s a fun little look at the world up until 2001-2002-ish.
Overall, with the exception of those two, mercifully short, chapters, this is a damn good adaptation of a solid Scooby-Doo story.
At times it feels heavily filtered in the same way as a game of telephone, mostly to clean up some more adult themes, but still.
The shifting narrator is such a great tool and holds up as well as I remembered.
I don’t think my main issue is something that bothers most people, so take that for what it is.
If you can find a copy of this, I’d highly recommend giving it a read, gang, particularly if you enjoy this movie.
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Until next time, stay safe out there, gang.
