I Reads You Review: SCOOBY-DOO, Where are You? #42

SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? #42
DC COMICS – @DCComics

STORY: Heather Nuhfer, Terrance Griep
PENCILS: Eduardo Garcia, Leo Batic
INKS: Eduardo Garcia, Horacio Ottolini
COLORS: Heroic Age
LETTERS: Deron Bennett, Travis Lanham
COVER: Eduardo Garcia
28pp, Color, $2.99 U.S. (April 2014)

Rated “E” for Everyone

I have a subscription to DC Comics’ most recent Scooby-Doo comic book series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (which launched in 2010).  I bought the subscription through a fundraising drive for the school which my nephew attends, and I recently received the fourth issue of my subscription.

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? #42 opens with “Viral Villain” (written by Heather Nuhfer and drawn by Eduardo Garcia).  The story finds Mystery Inc. on a short break to relax from all the mysteries they have been working.  Shaggy and Scooby, however, are bored, so they visit a local video game story, looking for something with which to entertain themselves.  They find a copy of the hot new game, Celestial Edge, but the store owner warns them that the game has been making some of the people who have played it act crazy.  That may explain why Shag and Scoob are seeing the game’s villain, Lord Vicious, walking around in the real world.

In “Sleeper’s Peepers” (written by Terrance Griep and drawn by Leo Batic), the gang visits the lake that is the site of a wakeboarding tournament.  They are helping Tad Laurent, the top-rated wake-boarder, get ready for the tournament.  However, the “Scaled Sleeper,” a monster that looks like the creature from the Black Lagoon, wants an end to the tournament so that he can keep sleeping.  Of course, the Mystery Inc. gang sees his threat as the start of a new mystery to be solved.

Once again, an issue of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? offers two stories that would work better as one issue-length story.  Ten and 12 pages, respectively, don’t do justice to the stories, especially the 10-page, “Viral Villain.”

I must admit that that I am impressed with the artist of “Viral Villian,” Eduardo Garcia.  You could mistake him for an animator drawing cel art for an actual Scooby-Doo cartoon.  He is a true Scooby-Doo artist, and his illustrations, combined with Heroic Age’s coloring, make “Viral Villain,” seem like true-blue Doo.

B-

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


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