Hey guys! Recently, I’ve fallen into a bit of an obsession with the old Harvey comics catalog, but specifically with the supernatural cast of characters. I think Casper the friendly ghost is such a good concept and such a nice way to represent people who feel othered by society, same for his friends. Anyways, I also love a good Sabrina the Teenage Witch comic or monster high movie, so it got me thinking, how would a shift in age impact the Casper crew.
And y’all I genuinely have SO many ideas about these characters and comics, specifically when it comes to the societies they introduce and how a slightly older cast could better deal with the subjects alluded to in the source material, such as bigotry, nihilism, toxic family relationships, etc. Also just delving deeper into lore like why hot stuff and his family live in the forest, why the fairies and devils dislike each other, how Casper became a ghost, etc. could be really fun!
Casper is still friendly as ever, but I can also see him as a bit of a sporty guy. I think it’d be funny if he’s a really good player, but his teammates can’t stand him due to his good sportsmanship. I imagine he would be pretty unpopular generally due to his sense of morality, but his friends are still ride or die for him. He is still stuck living with the ghostly trio, but he hopes to get out soon.
I honestly imagine Hot Stuff being a bit of a bully when the kids start high school. Or at least a bystander. He desperately wants to fit in, especially after how badly things went with Charma (will explain when her design drops). But in the end, he realizes his mistake once he pushes away his two best friends, and makes a promise to do better. He’s a skater boy, and wants a tattoo soooooo bad, but his aunt won’t let him get one. He thinks he’s tough, but at his core he’s a real softie.
Wendy is in a similar situation to Casper, but I imagine she’s more likely to stand up for herself and her friend. She is currently doing her best to master magic, but for good! She doesn’t want to end up like her aunts, and is very, very afraid of that happening. She’s the vice president of student council, serving alongside Pearl to make the academy a more welcoming place.
Watching the Harlan Ellison episode of Scooby Doo is so funny, I'm just imagining Ellison being like, "I need all the smart characters to constantly talk about how my books are amazing, I need to diss HP Lovecraft, and I need to have banged Velma's mom." And the showrunners were like, "hell yeah! You get thank Dinklussy Harlan!"
The 13 ghosts of scooby doo is my personal favourite next to mystery incorporated.
Currently obsessed with it after all these years. I forgot how much I loved this show. Only 13 episodes long from the year 1985, with the elusive red shirt shaggy, contained scrappy doo and I didn’t hate him, somehow lives rent free in my mind.
Honestly thinking about how fun it would be in the artstyle of mystery incorporated.
Characters are my fave part of any franchise obvi, mysteries rank second, monsters 3rd and humor 4th (tho they’re all fairly close together in my head lol)
Anyways, underrated franchise faves include the hex girls a rogue thorn, the Batman Scooby-Doo Mysteries comics, and the gold key Scooby comics.
I don’t gush about the last one nearly as much as the first two so for some background, Gold Key published the first run of Scooby-Doo comics EVER in 1970, and they’re a fun peak into the classic Scooby canon. They retell many episodes of the original series, but with what can assumedly be from early scripts, so some things are changed up from the actual episodes, which makes it worth the read anyways. AND the original stories are just as fun, and really feel like mini classic Scooby episodes!
Random shout-out to history nerd/ black american history expert Tina from the Hanna-Barbera educational film strips.
You can find these on Archive.org, thanks to the preservation efforts of user Uncommon Ephemera.
I'm actually planning on doing something based on this later on, that I want to keep a bit of a surprise for now. As well as being tempted to make animatics similar to this instead of full animations, for my Persona mods. But I havent decided that yet.