Toon Tuesday : The New Scooby Doo movies

Almost definitely one of the top three incarnations of Scooby Doo, the New Scooby Doo movies were two part shows featuring guest appearances by a wide array of famous names.

From Batman & Robin, to the Harlem Globetrotters, to the Three Stooges, the show ran the gambit of fun but also did some with great celebrities like Don Knotts, Sandy Duncan and even country music star, Jerry Reed.

It was truly a fun show but even then a lot of fans asked why there wasn't more, why they didn't have more of the other Hanna-Barbera characters in the mix, like Captain Caveman and Space Ghost.  In more recent (and pretty lousy) incarnations of the shows, they did bring in more characters but it isn't even close to the magic of the originals, not at all.

There was a host of greats that could have been part of this series, although some might have taken a bit of a stretch for the, Scooby-verse, a character like H&B's version of Godzilla could have been a guest hero and it would have been more in the scope of the gangs adventures.

A character like Carl Kolchak (from Kolchak the Night Stalker) might have been a bit over the top but the character was wide open in that era for such a crossover, perhaps the character needed to crossover from Scooby Doo to a group that goes after real monsters, it could have been a great move.

The 80's was no shortage of insane possibilities for the show, the Ghostbusters is an easy one to toss out, or the gang of kids from, The Monster Squad, or even Gizmo & Billy from, Gremlins.

Today, the fools who horribly run Hanna-Barbera & The Cartoon Network do some decent films once in a while, Scooby Doo meet KISS, was a pretty good crossover, but so many others are just plain ridiculous and written for very dull intellects, no matter the age.

One of the great team ups from Hanna Barbera I always thought was an automatic winner was the Scooby gang meeting Blue Falcon & Dinomutt but they have already tried and screwed that up, bad.

Hopefully someone will come along and take the reigns at Hanna Barbera/Cartoon Network that will stop making programs/movies that just dumb down the audience and glorify stupidity rather than enlighten and entertain! 


 

Moon Knight, Marvel's missed opportunity

MOON KNIGHT

This is a missed opportunity by Marvel Comics and a potential smash hit for Marvel Studios in the MCU.

I'll be one of the first to admit that Moon Knight is a ripoff of, The Batman.  Millionaire playboy by day and vigilante at night, there I've said it, but he's still around after all these years, time to use the character right ....

With the craze over supernatural films about vampires, werewolves and other such things that go bump in the night, have Moon Knight be strictly a hunter of those things that, go bump in the night. Stop mixing him up with drug lords, cartels and terrorists, and go another route but use the classic look.

The character is due for a more specific reboot!  The "mental illness" bit just does not seem right, at all, but having one voice in his head he can't shake, one that takes him years to figure out, and turns out to be the voice of Khonshu trying to guide him.

One franchise from outside the Marvel Universe they should pick up, Carl Kolchak : The Night Stalker, it would be a great tie-in with this hero’s adventures and any of them who had run ins with monsters.

Marc Spectre is one of Carl’s two nephews, the other is Dr Cyle Kolchak a mutant with a computer like memory, the ability to “read between the lines” of historical texts to see what really happened in that era and has a sensory perception to historical artifacts.  

Cyle’s partner in adventures is the incredible, Gorilla Man, both are part of the, Agents of Atlas, a group of world adventurers whose organization was founded by Allen Quartermane himself.

Cyle is also been used as a consultant by Dr Strange, Professor Xavier, Tony Stark and many others on historical matters and aid in identifying historical artifacts and their meaning.

They need to stick with him as, The Fist Of Khonshu but tweak it so that he hunts down the creatures of the night.  His powers rise and fall with the lunar calendar, like most of what he hunts, his powers would be at their peak when the moon is fullest.  He's got some good allies and I like the idea of the aliases, perhaps a history with some secret spy agency could be developed, to explain all of his back alley connections around the world.  Unlike Bruce Wayne, who mostly trained himself, Marc Specter could have had formal training, but only hint to it, leave the overall a mystery.

A team up with Dr Strange is a given, but also team up with Spider Man, believing that The Man Wolf was one of his prey only to find that it's something else, this also allows The Man Wolf to be introduced to the MCU for later use, he's another missed opportunity character.  A team of Moon Knight, Man Wolf & Blade could make for an awesome film, he's really got a ton of potential and possibilities.

This also opens the potential for, The Midnight Sons, led by Dr. Strange and teams him up with, Ghost Rider, Blade, Manwolf, Whistlers Daughter (3rd Blade movie, one of the very few good things about it), among other darker heroes of the MCU.