Scooby-Doo Where are You? #97 Review

Writer: Sholly Fisch

Penciller: Walter Carzon

Inker: Horacio Ottolini

Colorist: Silvana Brys

Letterer: Saida Temofonte

Published by: DC

This month sees the issue split into three short stories and as usual, they are just the perfect amount of Scooby-Doo to satisfy one’s love of the Scooby gang.

The first story sees the Scooby gang caught up in a bank heist by three old-timey bank robber ghosts. The second involves a ghost haunting the Mystery Machine. And finally, the third sees the gang experience an encounter from out of this world while trying to foil a jewelry thief.

The lead story by Fisch and Carzon is probably the best in terms of pure Scooby gang mayhem. The best Scooby stories always revolve around the gang being at the wrong place at the wrong time and solving the case in a fun way. This time around, Fisch also does a great job of adding a little character to the side characters as we have a snarky bank teller who keeps confusing the bank robbers throughout as they give contradictory instructions. How the gang solves the case was a little on the predictable side, but still fun nonetheless.

In “The Freeloading Ghost” by Kravitz and Matchette, the joke is that the gang solved an actual ghost mystery (and not someone dressed as a ghost), but didn’t do the best job of it as one straggler ghost ends up in the Mystery Machine. I really enjoyed Matchette’s art style here, especially her unique way of drawing the ghost. The only downside was Kravitz’s dialogue choice of making Scooby start every single word with the letter “R”. It’s fine to have it sometimes, but trying to read every single word that way became slightly tiresome and I don’t know if a kid reading this would enjoy it.

Finally, in “UFO-No!”, the gang are lost in the woods when they encounter a beam of light akin to what you see in UFO encounters. This leads them to a concert (weird, but sure) where the main singer has lost her necklace to a UFO. This was a fun story but unfortunately a little forgettable. It had a good placement in the issue as the third short.