I've been feeling a bit more cynical about Blogging these days, and it's time I showed some of it by presenting the cover of THE BATMAN & SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES #9 (DC Comics, 2022 Series - Cover Date: August, 2023 - On Sale Date: June 13, 2023)...
The idea of a "Scoob-Signal" is actually a great one, and is nicely rendered by artist Scott Jeralds... but Shaggy's line adds NOTHING to it!
Yeah, we know that Shaggy is a Master of Bad Jokes (a title that has been bestowed upon me as various times as well), but most of his "Bad Jokes" are good! This cover, however, would have been much better by letting the visual of the "Scoob-Signal" BE the gag, rather than the set-up for one!
I'm not even sure that it's really called the "Scoob-Signal", as I've just come home with the issue, and have not read it yet! But, "Scoob-Signal" seems as good a name as any!
I'm betting that the story therein, is a goody - as all issues of the series have been, to one extent or another - but Shaggy's needless and unfunny line dims even the otherwise blinding brilliant light of the "Scoob-Signal"!
Okay commenters, if you're still out there... tell me why I shouldn't be cynical over this - if you dare! ...Or if maybe I should become more so?
The comedy stylings of Shaggy, in better days!
ADDED: June, 17, 2023: The SILENT VERSION!
16 comments:
I agree that the Scoob-Signal is, if you'll excuse the pun, brilliantly rendered by Scott Jeralds. Reminds me of the Spanish Civil Guard (police force)'s Bat-Signal parody a few years ago: https://twitter.com/guardiacivil/status/1424452854719205380?lang=en (Yes, they really still use tricorne hats!)
That said, I'm more cynical than you about the Scoob-Signal. It seems out of character for Scooby-Doo and Shaggy to be enthusiastic about their being called to fight crime. Aren't they known for being cowards?
That is SOME image, Sergio!
Check it out HERE!
I’d welcome you as a “Brother in Cynicism”, but for one thing… “It seems out of character for Scooby-Doo and Shaggy to be enthusiastic about their being called to fight crime. Aren't they known for being cowards?”
True, they may be two of the most “classic cowards” of all time – though I still regard Doctor Zachary Smith from LOST IN SPACE as Number One – but they also enjoy the accolades they receive from their limited participation in actual crime fighting… not to mention all the FOOD that comes with it!
…Besides, aren’t you supposed to make me feel LESS cynical with comments? :-)
No disagreement from me here on the cover. The best covers make their point without any dialogue...and if there is dialogue, it should either be necessary clarification or a really, really worthwhile joke. Which this one is not.
In my list of my 70 favorite comics covers, there's not a single one with any dialogue on it! But then, there are no superhero comics covers on my list, and in this country those have been much more likely to include dialogue, right? Some of my favorite cover illustrations do have words incorporated into them, but not dialogue: William Van Horn's story titles, or Jonathan Gray's blueprint labels (U$ 410A), or a label on a specific object, like the label here on Gyro's giant hypo:
https://inducks.org/story.php?c=HC+DD1996-27
You do need some sort of label on the injector: Tutti Frutti or the like. Love the tutti frutti tree here...though what really gets this onto my faves list is Helper's little light-bulb tree! I'm *so* happy to have a copy of the Dutch comic with this cover.
Pointless one-liners on covers is really more of an Archie Comics thing than DC, even Silver Age DC had cover dialogue that would sell the issue rather than crack a dumb joke.
It's interesting, though: as far as I know, the early comics, still unsure in their new form, saw the need to explain in words what was going on in the panels. Later on, comics somewhat "matured" and such a practice was more or less avoided and seen as a sign of subpar storytelling. Are we seeing now a kind of reversion to the early state?
If I were to be cynical, I'd say that it might perhaps indicate that authors/ publishers/ editors/ whoever is responsible for this see their audience as not smart enough to grasp things based on images alone... hence the additional explanation. Hm.
As regards covers, I'd wager that one-liners are more of an American thing (but I'll be glad for any statements to the contrary, as it's just my guess, and not exactly an educated one). Just to refer to the classics, no cover of "Tintin" or "Asterix" includes any word balloon (save for an occasional signpost) - and here they are, to prove my case:
https://www.tintin.com/en/albums#
https://asterix.com/en/the-collection/albums/
Sometimes an understatement is definitely a better choice. I had only a few "Tintin" albums as a kid, and I can recall looking at the gallery of covers at their back and imagining what adventures might lie between those uncanny and eye-catching scenes.
Elaine:
First: I’ve added an image of the cover without the dialogue in question… and doesn’t it look better? Just redraw Shaggy’s mouth as closed – or, at least less open!
Western Publishing did it right when it came to covers. No dialogue and occasional cover captions if the cover illustrated an adventure or mystery story. Any dialogue would unnecessarily dilute a gag cover. They even did this with the brief Dell run of MUTT AND JEFF where dialogue balloons were previously an integral part of the cover. Harvey Comics followed suit with their subsequent run of MUTT AND JEFF.
Third: That Gyro cover owes EVERYTHING to Carl Barks’ Gyro story “You Can’t Win” from UNCLE SCROOGE #33 (Dell Comics, Cover Date March-May, 1961)… take a look …But, I must admit, it IS a great cover!
Deb:
Couldn’t agree with you more on those Archie covers – certainly during my brief flirtation period with Archie: 1969-1970… ending when I finally realized that, if you read about TEN (maybe even fewer) Archie Comics, you’ve seen EVERYTHING they had to offer, story and gag wise! (…Guess, I was cynical back then, too!)
But at least those balloons helped carry the gags, such as they were! The worst example of this is when Harvey devoted nearly ALL of their line to RICHIE RICH (…a comic I couldn’t stand) in the 1970s and added (as you say) “pointless one-liners” to further drag down annoying and unfunny cover gags!
T:
I’m not even certain that such verbiage on covers was all that much of an “early comics thing”. The Dell Comics never did it. And the DC and Timely (Marvel) early Golden Age comics just as often, if not more, had silent illustrations for their covers. I’d say this was more of a “later Golden Age through Silver and Bronze Ages thing”!
Though, referring to my comment about 1970s Harvey, I’d likely agree with you that “the authors/ publishers/ editors/ whoever is responsible for this see their audience as not smart enough to grasp things based on images alone... hence the additional explanation.” …And I could also apply that to SOME of the modern SCOOBY-DOO covers, but certainly not all of them.
But HERE is an example of where it holds true and silence is indeed golden! …Although the line itself is not quite bad. It’s just that Gold Key showed that it was not necessary.
Oh, and that link also shows a prime example of the RICHIE RICH covers I so despise – and contrasted with a far superior UNCLE SCROOGE cover by Carl Barks, so check it out!
Not that I’m any great expert on Non-American comics, but I’d agree with you that “one-liners are more of an American thing”. And, YES… those TINTIN and ASTERIX cover are great, not unlike the best of the Dell covers!
Here are T’s links for TINTIN and ASTERIX ! Tell me they aren’t GREAT!
Joe said: "I’m not even certain that such verbiage on covers was all that much of an “early comics thing”. The Dell Comics never did it. And the DC and Timely (Marvel) early Golden Age comics just as often, if not more, had silent illustrations for their covers. I’d say this was more of a “later Golden Age through Silver and Bronze Ages thing”!"
Oh, I agree - by talking about the "early comics thing", I meant the method of narration used inside the book rather than on covers.
Older comics would often use captions and balloons to describe what a character was doing at the moment and what was very well visible on the picture itself, like commenting "Superman hits the meteor with all his might" next to a picture showing Superman hitting the meteor with all his might. Afterwards, this was used less and less as authors understood the pictures can convey the meaning on their own, but here we may be witnessing a kind of a resurgence of this style
... Truth be told, in general in today's age "on the nose" seems to be winning with "subtle", when it comes to getting a message across.
You mean Barks' Gyro story "Madcap Inventors" from U$ 38, dontcha? Yes, it certainly owes the central idea of "injection with huge hypo makes trees bear different fruit" to that story. But I still love the tutti frutti version...and while Helper created his own formula in Barks' story, he didn't get to make a little tree bear light bulb fruit. One of the all-time best Helper covers. And here's my favorite Helper cover without Gyro:
https://inducks.org/issue.php?c=nl%2FDD2020-13
Isn't that every Duck-comics-reading kid's dream?
About the link with the cover comparisons: even stranger than the dialogue balloon is the idea that Shaggy would be taller than George Jetson. George wasn’t depicted as being short on TV. He was certainly taller than Mr. Spacely!
T. (you write): “ ...Truth be told, in general in today's age "on the nose" seems to be winning with "subtle", when it comes to getting a message across.”
One thing I noticed during my last round of reading modern mainstream comics was that the “descriptive caption” had all but disappeared in favor of “first person narration”. That meant that the art would play a greater part in telling the story...
…But, with today’s hyper-stylized, overly-rendered art, I sometimes (often, actually) found myself missing those “descriptive captions” to better explain just what the heck I was looking at! I’m talking about Image-or-Anime-influenced stuff here… So tragically unlike the great graphic styles of Neal Adams, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson (especially as a team), Dick Giordano, Jim Aparo, and so many more.
On a personal note, I *love* doing captions. I try to make them as unique as possible, rather than just “Meanwhile”s or “Later”s. I especially enjoy creating the chapter intros and outros for two (or more) part stories! You can easily see the fun I have with those things!
Elaine: (you write): “You mean Barks' Gyro story "Madcap Inventors" from U$ 38, dontcha?”
I actually DO mean “You Can’t Win” - go back and look at it! Though, now that you mention it, “Madcap Inventors” has the same imagery!
When I read your comment, I remembered the “tree hypo” because I had written about it for a Fantagraphics text piece – so I looked up the book I recalled writing it for… and “You Can’t Win” was the one I found! And, until now, I hadn’t completely realized that Barks had done this twice, let alone so close together! Let me know if this is true for you as well!
That is REALLY a GREAT Helper cover! It remains me of how I read “Return of the Phantom Blot” back in 1964! Check it out, everyone… HERE.
Since it’s not “Return of the Phantom Blot” that they’re reading, given the presence of that red plane, it might just be one of the other ALL TIME GREAT Mickey Mouse tales – “Sky Adventure” (…perhaps better known as “Island in the Sky” and various other derivatives), which I first saw in THIS COMIC… and I probably read that one the same way – just not with a bulb-headed robotic helper.
Deb: (you write): “About the link with the cover comparisons: even stranger than the dialogue balloon is the idea that Shaggy would be taller than George Jetson. George wasn’t depicted as being short on TV. He was certainly taller than Mr. Spacely!”
My goodness, Deb… I’ve been so fixated on the same cover gag with and without extraneous dialogue that I NEVER NOTICED the height disparity between Shaggy and George! GOOD GRIEF!
Fortunately for my aging perceptive senses and my now-sagging self-image, I did make quite the fuss over such height disparities in this subsequent issue of SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP!
…And, at least, Shaggy and George were of a more comparable height INSIDE the book!
One additional message to all of you – those who have already commented, and those who may yet do so – seeing all these lively comments at this humble Blog makes me feel just like “Days of Old” … and less “cynical” to be sure! Thank you!
Ah! I do not have a copy of "You Can't Win"--I only have #s 2, 3, 4, & 6 of the Gladstone Gyro albums, and I'm not buying the Fantagraphics Barks library because I have all the Barks I need (including all the Uncle Scrooge stories) in Gladstone albums, where I like the coloring better anyway. But I know this means I'm missing out on some great commentary! I must have read "You Can't Win" in WDC 532, but I don't have that anymore, either, since I only save a tiny minority of all the comics I buy and read. And I clearly didn't remember the story. I can see from the first page of "You Can't Win" on INDUCKS that Gyro does use a giant hypo to make trees grow in different ways, so Barks did reuse that idea soon after. Interesting! I'd still contend that "Madcap Inventors" is a more obvious inspiration for the cover, since there Gyro's giant hypo engenders different fruit. You can see that INDUCKS says that the cover refers to "Madcap Inventors" with the note "similar idea."
Glad you like the Helper-as-light-for-reading-under-the-covers cover! Sure, let's say they're reading "Sky Adventure"--in my personal Duckworld, after all, as in Rosa's Duckworld, Mickey Mouse exists solely as a comic book character. Though if you believe Mickey exists in the same universe as the Ducks, I suppose you could still think there are Mickey comics in Duckburg, just comics that are based on his real-life adventures!
Post a Comment