Scooby Doo
Noelle Stevenson’s Badass Scooby Gang (the name says it all)
Thanks to Super Punch, I’m now obsessed with Noelle Stevenson‘s illustrations of the Badass Scooby Gang, which have nothing to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and everything to do with the 1960s-’70s Hanna-Barbera cartoon. While I like the latest piece, in which Stevenson’s version of the Mystery Inc. bunch heads to the beach, I’m really taken by some of the older pieces, which recast the characters as something between an old-school criminal crew and and a team of spies, complete with a tattooed, cigarette-smoking Daphne, who’s apparently exchanged “danger-prone” for “dangerous.” I’m itching to see these spun off into a parody project, a la The Venture Bros.
If Freddie Jones Jr. in trunks and an ascot aren’t to your liking, Stevenson also has a series of endearing illustrations prominently featuring Hawkeye from Marvel’s The Avengers.
Comic strip dogs remind you to scoop that poop
Dog poop T-shirt
Threadless has a fetching new T-shirt aimed at spreading the word about the growing epidemic of dog owners who won’t pick up after their pets. The shirt features various cartoon and comic strip dogs and their owners, um, doing their thing, including Snoopy and Charlie Brown, Scooby Doo and Shaggy, and Homer Simpson and Santa’s Little Helper. If I ever had the urge to wear a shirt featuring dogs dropping a deuce, which I haven’t, this would be the shirt for me.
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Batman and Robin #14
Welcome once again to our weekly round of “What would you buy if your budget was limited?” — or, as we call it, Food or Comics? Every week we set certain hypothetical spending limits on ourselves and go through the agony of trying to determine what comes home and what stays on the shelves. So join Brigid Alverson, Chris Mautner, Kevin Melrose and me as we run down what comics we’d buy if we only had $15 and $30 to spend, as well as what we’d get if we had some “mad” money to splurge with.
This week we’re coming to you a day late, as comics won’t arrive in shops in the United States until tomorrow due to this past Monday’s big holiday. And check out Diamond’s full release list if you’d like to play along in our comments section.
Chris Mautner
If I had $15 …
Batman and Robin #14 ($2.99)
Glamourpuss #15 ($3)
Starstruck #13 ($3.99)
My three main purchases for the week. The one of note is the final issue of Elaine May and Michael Kaluta’s Starstruck. I have no idea if IDW plans on collecting the series or not, or if there are other Starstruck mini-series in the works (I’m guessing not; my Spidey-sense tells me that the series wasn’t a solid seller for the company), but if this is the end (at least for now), I’m grateful to IDW for taking a chance and introducing me to what can only be described as an utterly dense and utterly unique comics-reading experience.
