“I go where puppet-related crime rears its ugly head.”

Drake’s rating: Well, now I’m craving some Scooby snacks

Drake’s review: Batman is certainly a character that has gone through a wide variety of permutations over the years. Originally a solitary crimefighter whose origins were directly descended from pulp heroes such as the Shadow and comic strip characters like Lee Falk’s The Phantom, Batman was soon sporting a brightly-clad kid sidekick as he duked it out with the criminals of Gotham City, a move that brightened not only the comic book’s color palette, but the tone of the stories as well.

In the 1950s that tone got downright psychedelic, as the one-time Dark Knight Detective was now dealing with space aliens, inter-dimensional imps, and a cast of villains who had traded their threatening demeanor of the decade before for wacky antics. Heck, Batman even got himself a Bat-Hound, complete with a masked secret identity.

If that all sounds like a horrible fever dream, it really… wasn’t? In truth, those Silver Age years were a rush of imaginative storytelling, with the writers and artists embracing a change necessitated by the nonsensical Comics Code Authority and keeping Batman relevant and on the comic racks through some very tough times. And it was those comic books in that era that spawned Batman: The Brave and the Bold, a wonderfully off-beat cartoon that ran from 2008 to 2011. Diverging from the darker tones of his more recent animated series, here Batman (voiced by Diedrich Bader, Eurotrip) was once again engaging in lighthearted adventures and teaming up with a wide variety of often lesser-known DC characters, such as Kamandi, OMAC, and Plastic Man.

It was glorious, and it ended too soon.

But in 2018 there was a capstone of sorts, as Batman teamed up with those meddling kids who spent the ‘70s driving around the country and solving weird crimes with their anthropomorphic dog. And, let’s face it, hotboxing the heck out of their flower-covered van. C’mon, it was the Seventies.

Since teaming up with Batman means keeping some sense of decorum, so Scooby-Doo and friends are on their best behavior here. They’ve even traded in their “Scooby snacks” for THC-free boxed cookies. I’m guessing Gotham City still has some regressive laws in place.

Still a team-up of Batman and Scooby Doo is a natural,* and it’s not long before they’re on the trail of a ghostly apparition known as the Crimson Cloak. Their pursuit takes them to Arkham Asylum, where a requisite jailbreak brings the Scoobies face to face with several of the members of Batman’s rogues gallery, and then onto the streets of Gotham itself as the Crimson Cloak does his nefarious best to shift the blame for his villainous deeds onto Batman, Shaggy, and the rest.

This animated adventure is a fairly even mix of Scooby gang shenanigans and Batman-style action. This Batman, a square-jawed direct descendant of his Silver Age self, is used to gonzo escapades that his grimmer incarnations would find ludicrous, so four teen sleuths and their talking dog fit right into his world. As do a green cookie-eating Martian and an intelligent chimpanzee sporting a deerstalker cap. Because what would a Brave and the Bold movie be without appearances by the Martian Manhunter and Detective Chimp?

A few other DC heroes make appearances as well, but this is still very much a Batman and Scooby-Doo movie, not a Justice League adventure with a special appearance by “those meddling kids.” All in all, it works very well. There are villains to defeat, mysteries to solve, and at least one criminal to dramatically unmask. And also Scooby sna… er, cookies to devour, because the Martian Manhunter has a voracious sweet tooth.

I wouldn’t say that Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold is the best thing to ever come out of the associated Batman cartoon series, but it is a good time and it was fun to see this version of the Caped Crusader swing into action one more time. Whether you’re a fan of this version of Batman or of the Scooby-Doo cartoons, you’re probably going to have fun with this one.

Just be sure to keep a jar of Scooby snacks close by. And maybe a box of cookies, if you have a Martian friend.

*And had occurred before, back in 1972. I haven’t seen that one, so I have no idea if Scooby snacks were involved.

Intermission!

• The “Marion Net?” C’mon, Fred. You’re better than this.
• I’ll answer the question on everyone’s mind: Yes, Aquaman is in this. Outrageous!
• Batman gets to ride in the Mystery Machine. You can tell by the look on his face that he’s thinking, “What is that smell…?”
• But then he’s hanging on for dear life, because for some reason Scooby Doo is behind the wheel.
• So, Detective Chimp. He’s another product of Silver Age weirdness, and originally a (non-talking) backup feature in the Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog comic book. He disappeared at the end of the 1950’s but started popping up again a few decades later. Evidently his real name is Bobo T. Chimpanzee, because of course it is.
• Matthew Lillard voices Shaggy, and of course does so to perfection [ed. Well, he was Shaggy in the live-action movies!]. Did you know Shaggy’s last name is Rogers? I wonder if he has an uncle named Steve…