Scooby Apocalypse

It's rare to see Dan Parent working outside of Archie Comics, where he's the most prominent writer/artist of the last two decades. However, DC has unveiled variant covers drawn by Parent for their four Hanna-Barbera reboot titles: Scooby Apocalypse #7, The Flintstones #4, Wacky Raceland #5, and Future Quest #6. "I'm so excited to do these four Hanna- Barbera covers," Parent told ComicsAlliance. "As a lifelong fan, and fan of the new series of books, it was a dream come true!"

Here's something I want you to do right now: Take a moment and just try to imagine explaining this week's high-profile new releases to someone who was reading comics ten, maybe even five years ago. It would take hours, and by the time you'd dealt with all the incredulous reactions and clarified all the ways that we got to this point, you'd still have to launch into your third act with "and there was also Scooby Apocalypse, where the cast of Scooby Doo meets at Burning Man right before the world is destroyed by nanotechnology." What I'm getting at here is that it's a weird book --- and more than that, it's exactly the weird book that we all knew it was going to be ever since it was announced. The question, then, is whether it's weird enough.

We now have a better look at DC's upcoming Scooby Apocalypse, the sci-fi Scooby Doo update, written by J.M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen, with breakdowns by Giffen and pencils and inks by Howard Porter, thanks to a preview at TVGuide. The book is part of a larger relaunch of Hanna-Barbera properties by DC, which also includes Flintstones, Future Quest (a Jonny Quest/Space Ghost team-up book), and Wacky Raceland. Scooby Apocalypse #1 is available in stores and online on May 25.

DC Comics’ upcoming Hanna-Barbera line of comics is one of the boldest decisions Warner Bros has made with those properties in a long time, and DC seem committed to treating the individual series as just as important as its main line of superhero books. With veteran creators like Keith Giffen on the books, DC is throwing its full weight behind the new line, and has unveiled new variant covers for Scooby Apocalypse and Future Quest by superstar artists like Steve Rude, Neal Adams and Bill Sienkiewicz.

Listen, I gotta tell you about this dream I had last night. It was so weird 00- DC comics had launched a line of comics based on Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but they were doing these completely bonkers takes on all of them. Like, Scooby-Doo was set in the apocalypse and Scooby had a techno-monocle that allowed him to communicate through emojis, and Wacky Races was mashed up with Mad Max: Fury Road, and they even got one of the designers from the movie for it, and there was a big crossover with Space Ghost and Jonny Quest. And the weirdest thing of all was that the Flintstones were just the Flintstones, but drawn by Amanda Conner. Bizarre, right? Wait a second... I'm just catching up on the news, and --- holy cats. It wasn't a dream. DC Comics is actually doing a Hanna-Barbera line with post-apocalyptic Wacky Races and emoji-monocle Scooby-Doo. This is actually happening.