IT'S THE GHOST OF NOVEMBERS PAST!
Take a trip down memory lane as we revisit some voting incentives from previous Novembers. This week's entry is from 2018! It's not new, but it's still fresh!
VOTE FOR SUCCESS ON THE MINOR LEAGUE CIRCUIT!!!
As for this comic...
Phoebe isn't in the comic here merely because I ran out of panel space. She's there. Just outside the panel, I'm sure.
This one was a bit of a nail-biter in terms of getting it done on time. I was planning to really crank on it Sunday night when a mean Colorado low came through and brought a crazy wind storm to Ontario. It knocked out my town's power for half of the day. And seeing as my ancient laptop's battery has a regular lifespan of about twenty seconds, that was a problem. But oh well. It's done now, such as it is.
Puck 573
IT'S THE GHOST OF NOVEMBERS PAST!
Take a trip down memory lane as we revisit some voting incentives from previous Novembers. This week's entry is from 2018! It's not new, but it's still fresh!
VOTE FOR SUCCESS ON THE MINOR LEAGUE CIRCUIT!!!
As for this comic...
Phoebe isn't in the comic here merely because I ran out of panel space. She's there. Just outside the panel, I'm sure.
This one was a bit of a nail-biter in terms of getting it done on time. I was planning to really crank on it Sunday night when a mean Colorado low came through and brought a crazy wind storm to Ontario. It knocked out my town's power for half of the day. And seeing as my ancient laptop's battery has a regular lifespan of about twenty seconds, that was a problem. But oh well. It's done now, such as it is.
what does Puck have against Scrappy-Doo?
What does the WORLD have against Scrappy-Doo is more the question.
Oh right. He’s an annoying Poochy-esque screen hog who sidelined all the characters people actually liked. Now I remember.
Scrappy might also be a villain in some live-action movie…
Yes, the ‘everyone hates Scrappy’ was a drum that James Gunn already beat to death in that live action movie. Did you know that JAMES FREAKIN’ GUNN wrote the first live action Scooby-Doo movie? That seems insane to me. Though whatever. I guess it’s a step up from Tromeo and Juliet.
Newer series like Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated take shots at how horrible Scrappy was.
(It’s a pretty good show!)
I’ve heard it’s good. Haven’t watched it but it has my respect from the details I’ve heard.
Good god, watch Mystery Incorporated! It’s literally the best interpretation of Scooby-Doo this millenium. I’m deadly serious.
Better than What’s New Scooby-Doo? Let me ask you this: does it have a theme song by SIMPLE PLAN?!?
I didn’t think so. Immediately inferior!
>:(
On a side note watch the scooby doo episode of harvey birdman attorney at law. Scrappy gets a nice send off at the end. Season 1 ep 3. I just found this comic and read up to here in 2 days. Good stuff!
I thank you for your dedication, good sir.
That’s one way to law down the law in both world’s, eh?
Indeed.
“willing to joining”?
Thanks for catching that. I fixed it. Like I said, this week’s entry was a rush job near the end.
I am ashamed of myself. I was once young and foolish and didn’t know any better. I think the Scrappy era may have been the first Scooby Doo I watched? I though Scrappy was funny… I’m sorry.
I since grew and developed taste and realised the truth.
Of course, I also became jaded to the point that I don’t really care about people’s opinions of shows I enjoy.
I’m in the same camp. We’re probably contemporaries. In fact, as a kid, I always found the human characters a little bit of a letdown compared to the crazy antics of Scrappy. But whatever. Scrappy is not bad, per se. It’s more that the show existed for over a decade in one form, and that form had a wide appeal to both young kids but also to teens and some adults. (Why else do you have Sonny and Cher guest star on your show? Do the four year-olds really care about Cher?) Then the show introduced changes that totally sidelined most of the cast and made the show be almost exclusively for younger kids. The fact that I WAS a young kid at that time made the change work for me, but in hindsight I see the sin.
For the longest time, it seems, the show I remember was driven by the guest stars. The ones I remember the most were the Ramones, the Munsters, the Addams Family, Elvira, etc.
Does that mean that I was a “Gothling” back then? lol
That is the stage of show development right before jumping the shark. First comes the “finding your feet” stage. Then comes the “golden era” stage. Then comes the “lots of guest stars” stage. Then the shark is jumped and cancellation is imminent. Though it must be noted that cancellation is usually imminent BEFORE the shark is jumped, and the jumping of said shark is usually an act of desperation to save the show.
This breakdown holds almost perfectly for the A-Team as well.
“I ain’t gettin’ on no plane, Hannibal”
“Wait, is that milk? I LOVE milk!”
*snore*
*wakes up om plane*
“HANNIBAAAAAL!”
That was golden age A-Team. Nothing better.
So I guess I’m the only one who is ever entertained by scrappy Doo? Also what about Scooby dumb? I always thought he was funny. But I guess he’s kind of a redneck Hicks stereotype.
Scooby-Dum has been almost completely stricken from the cultural record, sadly. Like Speedy’s cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez, all the characters who have ‘slow’, ‘dumb’ or ‘dopey’ in their names are viewed as unacceptable now, it seems. Though honestly, I’m not missing Scooby-Dum. At all.
Droopy Poodle – the most underrated HB character ever…
Scrappy was not the worst edition to the canon. Lest we forget Scooby dumb and Flim Flam.
There’s also the FIVE THOUSAND copycat shows that Hanna-Barbera introduced in the 1970’s in a desperate effort to repeat the formula. Those are all best forgotten.
The one show I wish Hanna-Barbera had kept? SwatCats from the 90s. That show was badass.
They made some great stuff in their waning years. The 90’s were a bit of a latter golden era for them before they were subsumed into the Cartoon Network.
I realize this opinion may make me unpopular online, but… I really don’t hate Scrappy so much. :-/
Besides, there’s plenty of Scooby Doo-material in which he never appears.
I’m actually with you, Rock. So we’re not alone.
Children ARE dumb. That’s part of why they’re not allowed to sign contracts. And Scrappy really was designed to appeal to small children in an era when there weren’t many, at least in the States. Our T.V. choices weren’t great. No wonder I was a Nova and Dr. Who fan.
It’s nice to see that Daph can still roll her eyes at Puck. It once took me half an hour to explain the turn of phrase to a Lithuanian. All I had to do was do it without the rolling.
If Miranda can’t be Fred, she can be a van! Cool!
I’ve liked Phoebe’s November incentives so far. I haven’t seen the latest yet, though, and I’m sure it’s good. And those in October incentives were really those women. I’m really not surprised that Daphne didn’t get into the act. That would not have been her.
Yeah, for whatever reason, lots of past November incentives have been Phoebe’s. Go fig. Not sure what you mean by the ‘really those women’ comment on the October incentives, but … I’ll take it as a compliment?
I generally leave Daphne out of the selection if there’s ever any kind of vaguely cheesecake incentive going on. One factor is obviously her age. She’s no more than sixteen or seventeen in the comic, so I just don’t want to go there. Also, it really doesn’t line up with her character and I don’t like making characters dress or act in a way that doesn’t make sense with their personalities. If I do put them in an outfit that doesn’t make sense for them, I always make the characters protest. And when it comes to cheesecake pics, Tracee will willingly wear (or not wear) anything; Phoebe has limits but she’s pretty game; and Puck, while she’s scornful of such things, is also ridiculously vain and would (I think) be a willing participant if it was all in good fun.
What did I mean . . . ? Hmmmmm.
Phoebe would dress as a sexy teddy-bear.
Tracee does see herself as a work of art, and she’s not that far wrong.
Puck would go for an elegant pig farmer.
And I agree with you about Daphne. I just notice that October had four weeks and three women. Daphne eshewed the shoot. I believe that of her for all the reasons you said.
I could have gone with Sexy Colin. But didn’t. I’ve done that before.
By the way, have you noticed how fast Puck went from dubious to invested? Colin knows his fiancee.
Well, I missed Sexy Colin. In that I didn’t see him that time you did it. To be honest, My only thought about Daphne would have been her in her normal atier (sp.?) asking, “What did you expect?”
I’ve pulled that gag before at least once.
You should do Colin in a Borat cosplay!
I can’t believe Borat is back. Maiy waaife.
It’ll be difficult to fit all of them inside Miranda-as-the-Mystery-Machine, won’t it?
Impossible. Really an impractical concept.
Why can’t Daphne be Fred and Miranda be Scooby?
Well, that COULD happen. But it would be weird.
Daphne could also be Shaggy, if she lets her hair out of the ponytails.
lets let the gal with the sonic try. either one of them.
(running for my health)
Puck and Phoebe will be the last two to decide which character to play.
Correct. Queens move last in chess.
But they move FIRST at a Drag Show!
Ba-dum tshhh…
Not if you get the bishops out of the way fast enough. Then again, I’ve always lost whenever I tried that strategy…
I like to lead with my Queen. It usually results in a speedy loss.
And queen bees need not move at all. They just get served. Oh what a life! 😉
Good to be da queen!
yeah, but they STILL are in for some intense work…
dropping an egg every ten seconds, all day, all night, all week, all month, all year…
LoL, I didn’t want to use the ol’ “24/7” line.
Tiring work. And when a queen is past her prime, the workers cook her through thermal vibration heating. It’s only love for Mom.
Scrappy the secret Sith…
Yeah. What’s that from? Was it Robot Chicken? That feels like a Robot Chicken thing.
maybe…i kinda just typed it, but it could have been a robot chicken thing knowing them.
I looked it up. It isn’t a thing. But it really sounded familiar…
this must be a thing! we need a corkboard, some yarn, pins lots of pins, and at least one victim.
Mr. Electric Gecko, I have purchased your first book and was wondering when you will be putting out your second one.
First, love the user name. Second, yeah, I kind of gave up on bringing Volume Two to print because very few of my readers seemed interested in buying a print copy. Volume One was a real bust in terms of sales, so I kind of became disheartened and gave up.
Maybe I shouldn’t have? I dunno.
Would you be interested in kickstartering in?
That way you’d have the money upfront, or if not, settle the reader interest question.
If you do, pls include option to get 1st book also. Maybe some PDFs of voting incentives? Pandemic Dream Phoebe forever!
Honestly, the snag isn’t the money. How I did the book the last time was through Amazon’s self-publishing wing, which meant I didn’t need to put any money down. They just do a print-to-order system, so if you want one book, they print one book. It also meant I didn’t really make much money on the books, but whatever. I wasn’t looking to make money; I was looking to get print copies of the comic into the hands of those who wanted it.
If I were going to do a print run with a real printer, I’d need to order at least 1000 copies, and seeing as I’ve sold fewer than twenty of the first book over the last five years, that would be a terrible idea. It would make more sense if I went to cons all the time, but I don’t.
The real snag is the time it takes to assemble a book. You wouldn’t think this would be an issue, given the fact that the comics are already made and I’m just putting them together and all, but … MAN, does it take a lot of work. Each page takes about fifteen or twenty minutes to set, place, format, and do all the processing to make a PDF out of it. And there are going to be about 150 pages, so that’s a full work week. Which is no big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it’s finding the time, what with my real job taking up most of the week, and the 20-30 hours of comic-related work I do on top of that.
Maybe I’ll make it happen. I would really like to see the thing in print, if only for my own sense of accomplishment. Besides, I’ve been slowly running through all those comics and fixing up minor errors so that they look better than ever. I’m doing it for the Webtoons posts (because the higher resolution of Webtoons is less forgiving of art errors) but the same could be said of print, so yeah.
I will get it done. Eventually. Just gotta find the time.
Thanks 4 the explanation. I see the math: 3 pages/hour * 150 pages = a full time job for a week and a quarter with a prospective payoff of a heck of a lot less than just working your day job and no real incentive to take a pay cut since the webcomic (and now Webtoons) probably reaches more readers than a print version would (I speculate). This is unfortunate, but economics is indeed the dismal science.
Anyway, thanks for putting in the effort that you do. It’s been a regular spot of joy for years now!
Scrappy wasn’t too bad in 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. The only Scooby Doo series to feature the voice acting of Vincent Price. That should win him some points. Plus he wasn’t horrible in the movies; Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School, Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf, and Scooby Doo meets the Boo Brothers.
You, good sir, are a veritable Scooby scholar.
Phoebe is the world’s sexiest Puritan. Are Satan and Tracee attending?
I don’t think there’s anything to attend! We already had our Thanksgiving. This is now just cosplay for cosplay sake.
lol I meant the scooby convention
Oh. Nah. They’re too busy being evil. Ish.
@Definitely Buggle
I like your new name.
Thanks for hanging in there as a Puck Fan all these years.
I could never figure out who Scrappy Doo was meant to appeal to; he was extremely annoying and distracting. I can understand why his previous owners apparently ditched him.
Little little kids. Like four year-olds. They liked him. Everyone else found him annoying.
As someone who watched the original run (i was 4) , all the versions have had their place . They worked for their time and many hold up. Scrappy just doesn’t . One can only take so much Joe Pesci. Later series retconning his history is almost as much fun to see for me . Having him the bad guy in first Live Action movie was great.
I felt the ‘Scrappy as villain’ thing was one step too far. Like, I love meta stuff, but that was TOO meta for me. Winks shouldn’t be that loud.
Perhaps Scrappy-Doo occurred in an alternate universe. Thus you can enjoy Scooby-Prime without worrying about whether That One is Really Canon.
This approach applies to any program that has embarrassingly bad episodes. We won’t all agree which one are from the alt-reality of course.
This is a very, VERY good approach to all popular fiction. I’ve personally done that with Star Wars many times. The snag is that Star Wars seems set on mixing the waters and intertwining the parts I like with the parts I don’t. For instance, I really, REALLY didn’t like most of their sequel trilogy (Force Awakens was pretty good; Last Jedi was a mess; Rise of Skywalker was one of the biggest cinematic messes I’ve seen in a LONG time) but I LOVE love love The Mandalorian. But I have a bad feeling that they’re going to try to tie in the Mandalorian to their abomination of a new trilogy in order to give that turd an air of legitimacy, and … I’m worried.
Still, if the show jumps the shark, I can just say that in my head canon that the later seasons don’t count. I had to do that with The Office.
I’m totally with MANDALORIAN until they Cancel-Culture Gina Carano for her tweets.
Go ahead, Disney – save me $5.99 a month.
Same with Netflix. Their disgusting “Cuties” show has me right on the edge.
This cat is far from thin-skinned. But even I have my limits.
I haven’t followed the latest Twitter storms. I try to stay away from such things. And as for Netflix, it’s a messy dumpster of everything sloshed into one giant mess. There’s some awful, awful stuff on there. Like all the newest Adam Sandler comedies, which are given a prominent place of honor on the front page. But whatever. There’s good stuff on there too.
As somebody who is not a fan of the show or its characters in general, Scrappy doesn’t bother me any more than the rest of the cast.
Well, that makes sense. If you hate a property, the most hated component of the property looks no worse to you than the rest of it.
Ohhh Damn.
My mom, the Yule Cat Jólakötturinn (Yuley to her friends), has begun to stir.
She is dedicated to fashion, and I am certain will not be pleased to witness anyone wearing a mask. Not even a “cute” one.
But I understand many must wear, so take my advice – avoid snowdrifts.
She rarely stalks without ready cover, and the drifts must be quite large, for she is enormous.
Be safe. When she awakes she is always hungry.
Guess who’s going to appear in the newest crazy voting incentive that I’ve been working on? Just for you, my friend. Just for you.
@EG
I nearly forgot to check the Patreon Feed this week, too !
My bad.
Well, it’s not up yet.
YULEY APPROACHES
What a sweet kitty petting that poor stray boy. I hope she had him neutered. Humans can do a lot of damage to their local environment.
Oh Noooo!
Yuley has already begun acquiring trophies.
A great deal of the appreciation (or lack of) for the Scooby Doo Show is simply based on whether it was an actual part of your Childhood or not.
If you’re not within a range of years (prolly ten), the show was either too early, or too late for you to be a fan.
In protest of this phenomena, Baldie (my human pet), has begun a binge of olde DANNY KAYE films, which are before pretty much anyone’s time ! And thus can be properly judged on their own merits, without nostalgia.
I challenge anyone to watch “Hans Christian Anderson” and not have an earworm or two of the really catchy tunes in it.
But so far, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is my fave.
Even in the first few minutes, you realize there was a time in Urban Life, when everyone, and I mean everyone, was dressed to the nines. Dresses, suits, hats – people had pride in their appearance.
And the packed streets are a refreshing window in how life should be in NYC.
Next, you will notice that beautiful women were in no way in short supply seventy years ago. They were everywhere.
But my favorite part is far too brief.
Walter Mitty works for a publisher of Penny Dreadfuls. Covering every wall is a painting of a magazine cover, and each has a gorgeous woman, mostly scantily dressed, being menaced by a villain: some human, some alien.
They even show these being drawn on old-fashioned Drafting Boards, and show the female Models in situ, posed with very fake props, and villains in equally absurd costume.
The artists had quite the challenge to transform these ludicrous scenes into magazine covers that transfixed the eye !
Whether the first few minutes are enough to reel you into watching the entire movie, those first few minutes remain priceless.
Well, shows you. I grew up on Danny Kaye films. Not because I was contemporary to them, but because I had a weird anachronistic childhood full of shows my mom would put on for me.
@EG
And yet you still turned out just fine 😛
@EG
My Name is Hans Christian Anderson
Anderson, that’s me!
@EG
It’s damn fine, isn’t it ?
🙂
Yes. But my perspective is coloured by nostalgia!
@EG
“Yes. But my perspective is coloured by nostalgia!”
But mine is not, and I guarantee you most of his films are worth watching.
Tho, to be honest, I was admiring Dick Van Dyke’s performance in the 2018 Mary Poppins.
And in my desire to watch some of his older work, I stumbled onto “Hans Christian Anderson”.
I did not realize Danny Kaye was NOT that same actor until I was thru more than halfway thru the movie.
The reason I realized at all, is why wife asked me when the actor died. I scoffed: “He’s still alive”.
She smirked: “No, he is not”.
Only then I realized my error.
Danny Kaye is definitely not Dick Van Dyke. Though they do have a certain synchronous energy.