The Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries #1 – Sholly Fisch, Writer; Dario Brizuela, Artist; Franco Riesco, Colorist
Ray – 8.5/10
Ray: One of the most surprising long-running titles in DC’s slate, this all-ages team-up book has now published close to a hundred issues and is back for another year-long engagement partnering the Mystery Machine gang with an array of Gotham City heroes and guest-stars. The first issue, by regular main writer Sholly Fisch, is set in a mysterious ghost town and features another of Fisch’s great deep cuts—he uses Batman Inc. hero Man-of-Bats as the hero of the wild west. It soon turns into a much larger plot, as the first ghost of the issue turns out to be Ubu, Ra’s Al Ghul’s henchman, as the Demon’s Head plots an EMP attack against the world and tries to take out the technology he blames for ruining the world. It’s an intriguing set-up with a larger-scale plot than Scoob and the gang usually deal with—and it looks like it’s going to bring in more than one member of Batman Inc.
The team is forced to split up, with Robin accompanying Shaggy and Scooby to Argentina for a team-up with El Gaucho and Batman going with the other teen detectives to England to investigate with Knight and Squire. But both those cases seem to be more mundane than Ra’s other plot. The whole crew of heroes are joined by the rest of Batman Inc. at Ra’s ultimate location—which is a clever play on words that works as the issue’s actual “mystery.” The final showdown against Ra’s Al Ghul kind of shows the limits of this book—it is ultimately a kids’ book, and any major Batman villain will have to be scaled down to a certain level to allow the kids of Mystery Inc. to win the day and come out alive. But in terms of what this book wants to accomplish, I think it does it very well. It’s a great primer for DC’s more obscure heroes with a little mystery to play along with.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
