A curious thing happened in late January 1990 as I prepared to move to Sydney, by overnight Kirklands bus no less, and tried to sort out my belongings at my parents’ place.
I decided to throw out, for reasons that completely escape me now, almost all my ABBA collection (since replaced and then some through eBay) and most of my comic books, accumulated through many visits to the local wooden newsagency in the main street which, for a small town, stocked a pretty impressive range of British and American issues.
Who knows what was going on in that often frantic brain of mine, except a stressy need to start over, but the comics went and it was only years later that I was able to buy many of them again, including a lot of Scooby-Doo comics, hands down my favourite character and the most consistently fun to watch … and read.
Deciding to read an old issue, Scooby Doo … Mystery Comics #1 – not to be confused with the earlier series of the same name from 1977 – turned out to be a lot more than expected.
As anyone who has indulge comic book nostalgia knows, the stories that once entranced you as a child, don’t always ring as true as an adult and you can be left feeling a little deflated, all that expectation about experiencing the fun of childhood again coming to nothing.
But the fun part of Scooby Doo … Mystery Comics #1 is how fun it was to read it and how much it recreated in print form, episodes of, especially, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? which ran for one memorable season in 1969-1970 (two seasons and 41 episodes total) and which gave rise to a host of other TV shows, movies and, of course, comic books in the decades that followed.
Reading the six stories in the issue – “Mystery of the Ghosty Goose”, “The Gypsy’s Curse” (yep, some modern day issues with that one), “Space-Age Spook” (wait until you see what 2032 looks like lolz), “Tribute in Flames”, “Money See, Scooby Doo” (see what they did there?!) and “The Gorgeous Ghost” – really feels like the show is unfolding in front of you.
Admittedly, the narratives are a tad threadbare but then the show wasn’t exactly War and Peace either which is completely fine because Scooby-Doo is supposed to be 100% escapist cartoon/comic entertainment, but they are long enough to give the gang a chance to do their thing, for the ghosts etc to scare and terrorise and for the mystery to be solved with some “If it hadn’t been for these snooping tourists …” etc lines thrown in for good measure.
You even get to read Scooby’s internal monologues which, to be fair, while aimed at being cute, kinda wreck the vibe of the character – sometimes less is more, you know?
Still, Scooby Doo … Mystery Comics #1, unlike some comic trips down memory lane, was a lot of kick back and soak up the silly mystery-solving past and I honestly did feel like a kid again, laughing at all the right places, celebrating the unmasking of the bad guys and feeling like maybe 1983 could be recreated all over again if I could just get the right comic book.
Like this one …
