Happy 50th Anniversary To Scooby-Doo!

Happy 50th Anniversary to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, which premiered way back on Friday, September 13, 1969. Kind of fitting for a show about ghosts and mysteries to debut on Friday the 13th.

Also, not sure why there's an exclamation point in the title instead of a question mark, but there you go.

The series ran for two seasons, ending on October 31, 1970 (another apt date!). It was so popular it's still being shown to this day, and spawned a successful franchise of spinoff series.

The show featured four teens— Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers and his Great Dane Scooby-Doo— as they investigate various spooky occurrences and solve mysteries.

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! was created by Hanna-Barbera studios in order to appease parent watchdog groups, which were protesting what they considered violent children's TV programming. Seems odd that jittery soccer moms would approve of a show about monsters and ghosts (even if they turned out to be fake), but what do I know.

The show was originally titled Mysteries Five, then changed to Who's S-S-Scared? During this period, Scooby's name was actually "Too Much (?), and he was more of a side character rather than the main focus. In early versions of the script Too Much was a bongo playing sheep dog!

Eventually Too Much was changed to a Great Dane, and it was decided he's be a cowardly character whose over the top reactions could be played for laughs. Fred Silverman, who at that time was the head of CBS daytime programming, changed the name of the character and the show to "Scooby-Doo." According to Silverman, he got the idea after listening to Frank Sinatra's Strangers In The Night, in which Ol' Blue Eyes sang the nonsense line, "Doo-be-doo-bee-doo."

The original voice cast consisted of Frank Welker as Fred, Stefanianna Christopherson (Season 1) and Heather North (Season 2) as Daphne, Nicole Jaffe as Velma, Casey Kasem as Shaggy and Don Messick as Scooby.

Never in the history of television has a series endured so long by relying on just one plot. In EVERY episode, the gang travels to an area being plagued by a monster. After being chased by the creature for most of the runtime, they invariably capture it and reveal it to be a local resident who's trying to scare everyone away from some sort of treasure. 

Note that this happened in literally every single episode. I guess kids like repetition. 

Happy 50th to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

Scooby Who

Hey, it's a mashup of two of my favorite things: Doctor Who & Scooby Doo.

I was watching the most recent season of Doctor Who on DVD and it struck me that Rory very much resembled a live-action Shaggy (much more than Matthew Lillard did in those two mediocre Scooby movies). That was all it took for the idea of a Scooby/Doctor Who mashup to pop into my head.

I found the classic Scooby Doo "running characters" title screen online and started substituting Who characters for the Scooby ones. Obviously the Doctor had to be Fred. Amy worked out perfectly as Daphne. As I mentioned earlier, Rory makes a perfect Shaggy. River Song's not really all that Velma-like, but she'll have to do. I needed a Scooby, so who better to fill that part than the only dog in the Whoniverse-- good old K-9? Then all that was left was to substitute a Cyberman for the Creeper. It worked out much better than I expected. Why, it's almost as if the Who producers planned it that way.

I tried to match the Hanna Barbera animated look as much as possible, so it's a little different from my usual style. I think this was the first time I've ever drawn a Cyberman. They're tough to draw. Lots of angles and fussy little lines.

Before anyone says anything, I know that Amy didn't wear that outfit in The Pandorica Opens, but the Scooby girls both wore skirts, and I wanted at least one of the females here to be wearing one as well, so I fudged Amy's outfit a bit. Technically Rory should be in his Roman Legionnaire duds too, but I nixed that idea because I wanted to play up his resemblance to Shaggy. And of course K-9's never been in any Matt Smith episodes, but I needed a dog, so... chalk it up to Artistic License.

The text was hand drawn, based on the original Scooby lettering. Odd that the original title is actually a question, but there's an exclamation point at the end instead of a question mark.

Drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet.

Here's the original Scooby Doo title card.