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The Legend of Aquaman Review

By Meagan Milton for TheComicBookDen.ca

“…when in the fortunes of opposing forces are decided on the basis of matters as deliberate and dispassionate as the tides”

It was with these words that I was able to understand, possibly for the first time, what Aquaman’s true motivation is: balance. Balance between his kingdom and the seas at large; balance between his life in the sea and his life on land. Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for providing me with my copy of The Legend of Aquaman.


Scooby Apocalypse Volume 1 Review

Written by Stephen Hopkins


Our copy of Scooby Apocalypse was provided to us for review by Penguin Random House Canada.


Scooby Apocalypse Volume 1

Keith Griffin

J.M. DeMatteis

Howard Porter

Published by DC Comics


I always found that Scooby Doo was kind of a hard pill to swallow, like, where does the gang get their money from? Why are there so many abandoned, haunted amusement parks? Why even keep Shaggy around? He literally doesn’t do anything but be scared and eat questionable food. So when I found out about Scooby Apocalypse I just had to see where they were going with it, and zoinks did they ever go for it.


Scooby Apocalypse brings us a new origin story for the crew of the Mystery Machine and gives each member of the gang a new background to work from. Daphne is a guerrilla journalist with Freddy playing her man slave/camera man, Velma is a high ranking scientist at a giant multinational corporation, Shaggy, a bearded hipster dog trainer, and of course Scooby Doo, the failed product of a government smart dog program.


The expository issues cover all the introductions and tell us how Velma has essentially helped in bringing about the end of the world, and ends up recruiting the rest of the gang to help her stop it… Which is weird because she’s a scientist, and she picked a journalist obsessed with ratings and getting her own show, her subservient cameraman, and a hip dog trainer and his rejected science project buddy to assist her. Smort!


As things progress we see the gang get back into the swing of things as the story jumps forward into full on apocalyptic mayhem, how they went from rag tag group of random people to armoured monster combatants is a bit of a mystery but hey, there’s a talking dog that wears a saiyan scouter to send people emoji’s so… let’s not worry about logistics here. We get plenty of familiar Scooby tropes throughout the book and even a reimagined mystery machine, replacing the old psychedelic VW bus with an Armored LAV. This book is for fun people, not anyone who wants to sneer at a lack of respect for the source material.


The art is well done for the most part with everyone looking more or less like themselves and keeping to the familiar colour schemes of each character, Velma is definitely the least changed character, while Shaggy is just…. Well he’s hipster Shaggy. Hipster Shaggy might be Produce Pete’s new nickname… Scooby is handled well for the most part as well and Freddy is as forgettable as ever (in a good way).
All in all, this is a very fun read and a good use of these classic characters, the story is as sound as literally any other Scooby Doo story and it’s pretty to look at, although some panels are a little too busy for my liking. The amazing “after credits issue” included at the end of this book will definitely get a few people excited about the return of a much beloved character from the show. If you’re like me and you like Scooby Doo and apocalyptic tales, then Scooby Apocalypse might just scratch an itch for you.