Review: Scooby-Doo Team-Up #33

Hail to you, ye lads and lasses, and the best wishes of the holiday season all around.

What Happened That You Have to Know About

The Legion is haunted by the ghost of Ferro Lad, so they recruit Scooby-Doo and his friends from the present day to help them figure out what's going on. Turns out it's a scheme by the Emerald Empress to try to get the Legion to disband, and the story turns into a fight against the Fatal Five, which the Legion and their new allies win.

Review

Very simple story here, as you might expect. The investigation phase of the story takes up about half the issue; the fight takes up the other half. So there's not a lot of time to really get into anything.

It's a Scooby-Doo comic, so the writer, Sholly Fisch, has to fudge things a bit so that Mystery Inc. can do useful things in the final battle between the Legion and the Fatal Five. That's fine; that's fair. I'm not imagining things, right, Fisch has written the Legion before? Recently? In some kind of one-off or other? Yes? No?

"Bouncing Boy and Shrinking Violet are fighting Darkseid..." Oh, yeah, I remember that story.

I continue to be unimpressed that DC keeps giving us these nostalgic versions of the Legion. I mean, as with the Batman '66 team-up, it's appropriate, but why is that the team-up they're choosing to do in the first place? Anyway, Scooby-Doo is kind of a '70s property; why not bring in the Bates-Cockrum era LSH? Just to mix things up a bit.

So, you know, it's fine. I've certainly read worse comics. The problem is not that this comic exists; the problem is that there aren't any other Legion comics coming out these days. And I have to say I'm not sure we're going to get any.

Art

96 panels/20 pages = 4.8 panels/page. No splash pages.

The art here is provided by Dario Brizuela, who's new to me. Can't really say I'm impressed. The backgrounds are almost completely lacking in detail, and the Legionnaires look pretty generic. The action is clear, but everybody seems to be waiting around until it's their turn to do something. The Scooby-Doo characters are on-model, but there are some panels where they're rendered with a thicker outline than the Legionnaires. Not sure what that's all about. If it's a stylistic choice, then why not do it all the time? Anyway, there's nothing actually unpleasant to look at here, which puts Brizuela up on a few Legion artists we've seen, but overall there's not a lot going on here that's of any visual interest.