The Secret World of Scooby-Doo

"Zoinks! I'm like freakin' out here, Scoob!"

It all began with a simple question: What was up with those Scooby Snacks anyway?

My friends and I made it a habit in my younger years to hang out and goof on classic cartoons a la Hanna Barbera and Looney Tunes. Immature and odd yes, but I imagine young men like ourselves grew up to make many of the fine shows you see today on Adult Swim.

Sooner or later though I started finding a number of unusual things about one of my personal favorites, Scooby-Doo (favorite as in I have arcane knowledge of the show like Shaggy's real name being Norville Rogers, the show's original title being The Mysteries Five and the gang having entirely different names, Shaggy's inspiration coming from one Maynard G. Krebbs of Dobie Gillis fame, Scooby's name coming from a Frank Sinatra song, and so on). After a few years I had developed an elaborate conspiracy theory about the cartoon and would foist it upon my friends whenever possible. I know it has become fashionable in recent years to make the "Scooby and Shaggy were stoners" jokes, but I was talking about this as far back as the very early 90s.

What unusual things were there about that most beloved of 70s cartoons? Well, why were they alway finding monsters? Why did they ALWAYS split up? Where did Fred and Daphne (and sometimes Velma) go? Was Velma really a woman in "comfortable shoes"? What was in those Scooby Snacks and why were Shaggy and Scoob perpetually having the munchies? And was Scooby-Dum a total burnout or what?

My theory purported the possibility of Freddie Jones being tied to a shadowy organization that needed to "take care" of certain individuals or situations. He controlled the group with his second in command, Velma. They would set up a complicated frame-up for their victim that probably utilized hypnotism or brainwashing in some form, and the drug-adled Shaggy and Scooby (the drugs of course being administered via the famed Scooby Snacks) as the unwitting "witnesses" to the crime, which would all be orchestrated after they split up to "look for clues". Sometimes Fred and Daphne (and sometimes Velma) would also sneak off for fetishistic sex which I won't go into other than to say it would explain what the scarves were for.

And Scrappy-Doo? A diminutive sleeper agent intent on busting the Gang, but who eventually found himself pulled into their seedy world of sex, drugs, and monsters.

And all this in 1992 my friends! Heh. Again, there have been many jokes on the cartoon that touched on these themes (the "Pass the Dutchie" joke in the live-action movies, the Gang getting busted for possession on Harvey Birdman, Jay and Silent Bob hooking up and smoking down with Mystery, Inc. in one of their movies, etc.), but of them all the one that's come closest is the bizarro version of the Scooby Gang seen in the Season Two episode of the Venture Bros., "Viva Los Muertos!". In this episode the Gang was depicted as a Patty Hearst-type of radical cult with the Shaggy character being completely off his nut thinking his dog was giving him secret messages.

All that said, I do love Scooby-Doo and this is as much an homage as a parody. The cel part of this drawing is my artwork with the original background being one I found on the awesome Secret Fun Blog!