The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries! #1

The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries! #1

DC Comics 2021

Written by Ivan Cohen

Illustrated by Dario Brizuela

Coloured by Fanco Riesco

Lettered by Saida Temofonte

An all-new series teams the Dark Knight with Scooby-Doo and the sleuths of Mystery, Inc.! When Batman discovers his original purple gloves have gone missing, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo travel back in time to Batman’s Year One to solve the case! Will this “Glove Story” have a happy ending?

I really miss the Scooby-Doo Team-Up series and I’m sad that this is only going to be a twelve issue series because these are some of DC’s best stories being told right now. While I know there are folks out there that aren’t Scooby-Doo fans, I think they might by sociopaths personally, for those of us that are and grew up with him this is what it’s all about. This issue has everything and it’s great to see the history between Batman and the Scooby gang with this kind of familiarity it’s easy to see why Batman called upon them to help with this mystery. This is the perfect example of an all-ages story where kids will see one thing and teens another while adults will still see it all in a different light and that’s what makes this so darn successful to me.

I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented impeccably well. I mean this is the perfect introductory case for them to share as there’s no villain or monster involved and it has far reaching effects. The character development is completely and utterly perfectly done as every character we see is written so we instantly recognise who’s who and they feel comfortably familiar. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story and how the character act and react to the situations and circumstances they find themselves in is stupendous.

How this is being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and play themselves out really takes this to a whole new level of storytelling. I like how we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story constantly forward is excellent to see.

The interiors here are bloody well perfect. How we see the linework and its varying weights being utilised to create all the detail work that we see is utterly amazing. Plus how we see certain suits and the backgrounds, which are heavily present, ignite the readers creativity and imagination beautifully. The composition within the panels bring us some great depth perception, a sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story is beautifully done. I mean c’mon the rainbow suit, the Super Friends suit, Azrael’s suit all are so phenomenal to see here. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show such a masterful eye for storytelling. The colour work is astonishingly well rendered. It has the look and feel of the cartoon and that alone is amazing to see so that the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is perfection.

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I’m as giddy as a school girl around her first crush with this book. I cannot stress enough how much enjoyment there within these pages and how much of the past it reminds me personally of. Whether it’s the old Super Friends or Scooby-Doo cartoons of my youth to the sophistication of today’s world it all has this sense of the future and nostalgia at the same time. Leave this in the bathroom and guaranteed everyone reads it and you can have a device free meal talking about it.