***THIS REVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE NERD BLITZ PATREON***
After an…8 year absence, I am back with another Scooby-Doo Team-Up review!
It has been a hell of a long time and there have been a lot of changes, multiple Podcasts have been launched, sites have been built, but Scooby has still been teaming up with the best and brightest…or has he?
I dug the original Teen Titans cartoon, but GO never really sat right with me.
It was the OG, but squishier and screamy…er…
It always smacked of the loud, obnoxious, sugar rush shows that replaced all of the shit I loved on Cartoon Network, the shit that made me roll my eyes while watching Mystery Incorporated.
Little did I know, Be Cool was still to come…
Will this issue change my outlook on TTG?
Or will it calcify my distaste?
Let’s dive in and find out together, gang, as we wrap up this special month long run of Scooby comic reviews.
Guess what?
It’s ***SPOILER ALERT*** time, mother scratches!
Act accordingly.
Cover By Dario Brizuela: Nice and detailed, a good deal of dynamic movement, everybody looks like they were freshly drawn for this.
You may be surprised to hear me say this after those reviews earlier in the month, but I really dig it.
Could this have been before Brizuela started using so much distracting stock art?
Art By Dario Brizuela: Nope!
After reading this, I went back and looked at the 1st 3 issues again and I noticed that, while he used some art repeatedly in those, his reuse was far subtler and you had to be actively looking for it to notice it.
In this issue it once again sticks out like a sore thumb in a couple spots.
But, having said that, it still hasn’t become a major problem yet.
I think that must have surely changed as this series progressed.
For the most part though, the art is pretty solid.
Brizuela gets to play around with a lot of funky designs and such, though we have the return of the blank backgrounds I have also long despised.
Much like the Scooby-Doo crossover movies with Courage The Cowardly Dog & Batman The Brave And The Bold, I always find it odd when they just mash two vastly different art styles together with little to no effort to tweak them and make them blend together a bit more seamlessly, but it works here.
Bottomline, this is better than I’ve come to expect from Brizuela.
I wish he would take his time more often so his work could always be as fresh as this.
Story By Sholly Fisch: When ghouls, ghosts, goblins, and skeletons infest Titans Tower, Robin decides it must be time to call in professionals.
After a short while, Mystery Inc. solves the case and decides to hang around with the young heroes for a visit.
But soon a family member of one of the Titans comes to town and throws the Tower into upheaval and the gang helps to rid the Teen team of this mildly irritating menace, and learns something about earth in the process.
I mentioned above that it was odd that the art styles clash, well good ol Sholly came up with a story reason/joke for that and that is why it works.
This is the same Robin from the earlier issues in this run, but we all know that people look, act, and sound different depending on who they are around.
This, as I recall, was always a Sholly Fisch hallmark of this series, the semi-meta references, continuity, and jokes for students of Scooby/DC/Animation history, such as myself.
It always added a fun extra layer to reading these books.
Something I had forgotten about this series is that these were full 22 page comic books, not the short 11 page stories that every Scooby comic I grew up reading had.
That always added an interesting layer for me because it meant we got to get a Mystery as well as some hang out time with the gang.
No, it never goes super deep to where we learn something fundamental to the psyche of every member that changes them forever.
But it’s nice to see them just exist outside of the tropes from time to time and have a little bit of fun.
See how Fisch pulls them out of the normal monster chasing and plays with their personalities as just a group of friends that are mixing it up with caped legends.
Does this issue make me love Teen Titans Go?
Definitely not.
Does it soften my cold dead heart and soul closer in that direction?
Sure.
It’s still not for me, but if you dig it I can’t see why you wouldn’t love this issue.
It has the wackiness you’d expect, it has a mystery that is solid enough for your average Scooby comic, and it blends the two together well.
I say check it out, there are most assuredly worse ways to spend a couple bucks and 15 or so minutes.
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