The Batman And Scooby-Doo Mysteries #12 - DC Comics

THE BATMAN AND SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES No. 12, November 2023

As “time-twisting final” issues go, Ivan Cohen’s storyline for “Scooby Beyond” must have landed quite well with its audience, even if Hugo Strange’s “job of predicting the future” à la Warner Brother's 1999 animated television series, is far too spot on to be even slightly believable. Indeed, the fact that the super villain miraculously guesses that Bruce Wayne’s city will be renamed Neo-Gotham, have flying cars, another incarnation of The Royal Flush Gang, the lawless Jokerz, Barbara Gordon as its Police Commissioner, and a protégé Caped Crusader, is surely three or four too many contrivances for most bibliophiles to comfortably stomach.

However, for those readers able to do just that, and accept the Professor’s plan for Mystery Incorporated to inadvertently reveal Batman’s true identity in a virtual reality as silly nonsense, then this comic’s twenty-page plot will probably provide a bit of senseless fun - particularly once Scooby-Doo and Shaggy Rogers accidentally clamber aboard a pair of flying playing cards and start whizzing across the metropolis’ fluorescent blue skyline; “I’m trying Scoob! But I don’t have four feet, you know!”

Perhaps slightly less enjoyable though is the former editor’s determination to depict Fred Jones’ gang as being perfectly happy to stand toe-to-toe against the King and his “multi-generational crime family”, despite the felons clearly being able to lethally “kzzzap” the teenagers with all manner of high-tech weapons. This fearlessness debatably proves particularly incongruous to the “Hanna-Barbera” characters when Daphne Blake pre-emptively attacks Jack and Ten with hot-dog relish from a nearby stall, and then later joins her friends to defeat the “playing card-themed” evil-doers with several blasts from some conveniently-located fire extinguishers.

Arguably far more impressive than this book’s penmanship, are Dario Brizuela’s prodigious pencils, which genuinely do a great job of capturing all the bright lights and glitz of Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and Alan Burnett's programme for "Kids' WB". Admittedly, Terry McGinnis’ heavily muscled physique is a little disconcerting for supposedly a sixteen-year-old boy. But alongside Franco Riesco’s vibrant colours, the “artist of comics, cartoons, and the box art that some of your kid’s toys came in” genuinely gives all the figures an impressive, dynamic physicality.

Written by: Ivan Cohen, Art by: Dario Brizuela, and Colours by: Franco Riesco