A delightful start to this underrated Scooby-Doo! show.
In this episode Jerry Sloan, a comic book writer, is being haunted by The Blue Scarab, a fiction superhero that he created. The Mystery Inc. Gang (including The Blue Scarab's biggest fans Shaggy and Scooby) set out to solve the mystery. This episode was adapted from a Scooby-Doo! comic book story entitled Mark of the Scarab and published for Gold Key Comics' Scooby Doo... Where Are You! #24. That comic book story was written by Mark Evanier, who also wrote this episode.
This is simply a really fun episode. This episode is a change of pace by not being spooky, like a typical Scooby mystery, but the superhero as a villain is a really fun plot and one that works great for this franchise. The mystery works especially well here as there are multiple suspects and which one has a very good reason to have done it. When the real villain is reveled it perfectly makes sense and all the clues add up. The design of the villain is also wonderful and memorable even if it differs from the average Scooby bad guy. Scooby and Shaggy's love of comic books is wonderfully fun here and would be used later in the Tv show, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo! and the direct to video movie Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon (2013). The humor here is quite good and Scrappy even gets a few good gags in this his first appearance. Speaking of Scrappy, I love how no time is spent on an origin story for Scrappy or the story of how he joined the gang. When he calls Scooby, "Uncle Scooby" that is all we need to know. Anything else would have been unnecessary and would have taken time way from the mystery and gags. Mark Evanier is a wonderful writer and delivers a tightly constructed and fun script here.
All in all this is a wonderfully fun episode
If you want to read an in-depth account of Scrappy's origins, I recommend Mark Evanier's blog posts on the subject, here, here, here and here.
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