Scooby-Doo! Team-Up #41 Review

Writer: Sholly Fisch

Artist: Scott Jeralds

Colorist: Silvana Brys

Letterer: Saida Temofonte

Published by: DC Comics

I am of the mindset that comics can be anything they want to be and you’ll often see some pretty graphic depictions within its pages. However, sometimes something a little lighter is called for and that is exactly what Scooby-Doo! Team-Up gives us: lighter fare that is true to its source material, but nonetheless a lot of fun to read.

This month sees the Scooby gang team-up with Penelope Pitstop from Wacky Races fame as they try and discover who keeps trying to kidnap her and putting her in peril. Fisch does a wonderful job of establishing exactly who the culprit is from the get go (it’s on page 2), who her friends are that keep helping her out (the Ant Hill Mob) and how silly the perils are (it always seems to be train tracks).

The story, as most old-school Hanna-Barbera cartoons, keeps to the structure of Penelope gets kidnapped, the Ant Hill Mob rescue her, the Scooby gang are involved in an ancillary fashion throughout, and the villain is in disguise. It’s not complicated, but it works exactly as intended.

With this simplistic story structure can come some issues of pacing and scene set-up, but Fisch navigates around these issues by utilizing silent movie-style captions to help place the scene for the reader. This is also allowing Temofonte to shine with the different styles of lettering used throughout.

With a more simplistic style story, you don’t want to overburden the art and Jeralds provides exactly the proper amount of detail within his work to accomplish just that. Every character is very distinct and can be picked out easily, and this is especially true for the Ant Hill Mob (who are very similar but still each one is unique). The characters are all very expressive and Jeralds manages to convey how each one is feeling at any given time (I especially like how Penelope is very nonchalant about her 3 to 4 kidnappings a day). It’s very well done.

This is all ties together with a very vibrant colour scheme by Brys. These comics need to be bright and full of colour and that is exactly what you get.