“Ghost of the Old Witch”

SCOOBY-DOO — Issue no. 5, March 1978

Book: Scooby-Doo

Issue No.: 5

Published: March 21, 1978

Titles: “Ghost of the Old Witch,” “Two Dog Town,” “The Spook Who Loved Lemonade”

Cover Price: 35¢

As I’ve mentioned before, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! is one of my all-time favorite Hanna-Barbera cartoon. So this is the book in Marvel’s late-1970s Hanna-Barbera line of comics I was really looking forward to. If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s about four teenagers (Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy) and their dog (Scooby-Doo) traveling around in their sweet custom van and solving mysteries. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of a hip, swinging early 1970s updating of the Hardy Boys.

Anyway, after finally getting to read the Scooby-Doo comic book... it’s fine. Like the other Marvel H-B books, this one is aimed at younger readers. And I know Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! is a show for kids, but the mysteries here are even simpler than the ones on the TV show. At least they are in the spirit of the show, where the monsters and ghosts are not supernatural but just someone running a (usually convoluted) scam.

Having watched a lot of Scooby-Doo, I don’t remember ever seeing any of the main characters go home. They’d stay overnight in hotels and whatnot, but we never got a glimpse of where they went when they weren’t hanging out together. In the first story in this book, when the gang is struggling to figure out a mystery, Fred suggests they all go home and sleep on it. And then we see Scooby and Shabby asleep at home! Shaggy sleeps in red polka dot PJs, by the way.

The creative team makes an interesting decision regarding thought balloons (which were used in comics in the late ’70s a lot more than they are these days). Scooby-Doo, who is basically a talking dog in the original cartoon, is less vocal in this comics adaptation, but he’s pretty much the only character in the book that gets thought balloons.

This book features a ten-page Scooby story and a shorter five-page Scooby story. And in what seems to be a tradition in these Marvel Hanna-Barbera books, there is a two-page non-Scooby story that serves as a teaser for another book in the Hanna-Barbera line — Dynomutt, starring the titular superhero robot dog, in this case.

If you’ve read my coverage of these Hanna-Barbera books, you know what I’m gonna say is my favorite part of Scooby-Doo — the one-page “Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbara” article, which gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at how animated TV shows and movies are made. This one is narrated in the voice of Hanna-Barbara star Yogi Bear, and it’s about how backgrounds are created for animation. Honestly, I wish this article had been two pages — I feel like they kind of glossed over a few things. But I managed to follow along.

Next time — I check out the Green Goliath’s black-and-white magazine, The Rampaging Hulk!