The Batman And Scooby-Doo Mysteries #3 - DC Comics

THE BATMAN AND SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES No. 3, February 2023

Seemingly stepping straight out of the animated television series which “Hanna-Barbera Productions” launched in 1969, Matthew Cody’s script for Issue Three of “The Batman And Scooby-Doo Mysteries” rather succinctly folds the secret society known as the Court of Owls deep within the ‘Elseworld’ where Mystery Incorporated regularly patrol Bruce Wayne’s darkly-lit metropolis alongside the Caped Crusader. Sure, the centuries-old criminal organization is greatly reduced in scale from that of a “violent cabal of some of Gotham City's oldest and wealthiest families” down to a simple haunting used to cover a number of antique thefts. But that still doesn’t arguably stop a lot of menacing fun from occurring at Bibi’s poorly-attended birthday party inside the Owl Court Hotel, as a Talon (or two) scare poor Shaggy and Scooby-Doo within an inch of their lives.

Indeed, the Missouri-born writer manages to imbue this twenty-page periodical with some genuinely classic moments inspired by the “fifth-greatest TV cartoon of all time” (at least according to “TV Guide” in 2013) - most notably that of Rogers and his great dane dressing up as a pair of bell boys and momentarily defeating their murderous ‘ghost’ with the utterly hair-brained “Your room’s, like, ready already” gag. This laugh-out-loud action sequence, prodigiously pencilled by Erich Owen, is obviously doomed to failure. Yet readers will surely still hear the canned hilarity in their head when the deadly assassin turns out his embarrassingly empty trouser pockets when required to pay the unprofessional porters and subsequently gets buried under a ton of tightly-packed luggage cases; “Sorry sir, but no tip, no special service!”

Similarly well-written are the rest of this comic’s quite considerable cast, with Cody providing a particularly intriguing insight into Daphne Blake’s old cheerleading days, courtesy of the “pretty snobby” Bibi. Likewise both Fred Jones and Velma Dinkley are able to ‘show off’ their impressive investigative muscles, even arguably besting Batman to the punch when they notice just how odd the hotel’s brand-new light switches are when compared to the rest of the place which “is covered in an inch of dust.” This deduction notably occurs before the Dark Knight has made his physical presence known, and leads to the teenage group’s “bespectacled resident genius” single-handedly locating the Owl-beast's secret lair.

Written by: Matthew Cody, Drawn and Coloured by: Erich Owen