“We need to defend this wall. Our lives depend on it!” “And our Scooby Snacks!”
Scooby-Doo Team-Up #46
DC Comics (March, 2019; as featured in the digital version of the trade “It’s Scooby Time”)
“Justice…Like Lightning”
WRITER: Sholly Fisch
ARTIST: Dario Brizuela
COLORIST: Franco Riesco
LETTERER: Saida Temofonte
EDITOR: Kristy Quinn
Our gang shows up at the Suicide Slum high school but another gang is trying to recruit, namely the 100, Tobias Whale’s outfit. Now he’s using kids to recruit other kids into the gang, but they’re chased off by gangster ghosts, as in the Al Capone type. Black Lightning chases both off and with our heroes disguised confronts Whale, who knows nothing about it. The gang (Scooby gang, not the other two) comes up with a plan to expose the ghosts, who were just trying to use the gang outfits (the ghost one) to scare off the gangs (the 100–wow, this is confusing). Whale shows up and Velma manages to get a confession out of him, with the now former teen recruits deciding to also turn evidence. Whale is taken out by Black Lightning.
What they got right: There’s actually a decent mystery, even with the limited clues available. Black Lightning and Tobias Whale look interesting in this art style. And no mention of real estate developers…though I do wonder how what Mystery Inc does is a career. I didn’t think they got paid for this.
What they got wrong: I’m not sure why the gang needed disguises outside of playing on the “Black Lightning” name and a joke about their combined timeless fashion statements. They’ve gone up against other DC and Hanna-Barbera supervillains in this series previously, though it does lead to an essential clue later on. The real confusion come from every time they’re convinced the mob ghosts aren’t part of the 100 mob they seem to forget the next time it comes up.
What I think overall: This is one of the better stories in this series. It’s a good team-up and almost a good mystery by DC’s writing standards. You’d think the company named after Detective Comics would have better mysteries for Scooby and friends but I guess when you can’t kill a hundred people they stopped knowing how somewhere in the 1990s.
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