New month, same dog.This month's issue of the Batman/ Scooby-Doo mysteries treads the same path as the others in this latest edition, but in what way? Stay tuned dear reader.

You can’t teach a dog new tricks

The gang are still in Gotham. The setup is typical of this series with not much depth or reasoning, but I’ve learnt to accept this by now. As you can tell by the cover, this issue’s villain of the month is The Scarecrow. The character's natural slant towards the more spooky works quite well within the world of ghouls and goblins that is Scooby-Doo which is what makes this story even stranger.

We open to see Jonathan Crane committing theft. Rattled by the case as they often are, GCPD enlist the help of Mystery Inc. and Batman to help figure out this peculiar case. In classic fashion, the gang splits up in order to look for clues.

An encounter with some fear toxin and another theft later, the crew put together their clues. Batman says that with his ill gotten gains, The Scarecrow will be able to manufacture a device that is capable of synthesising hyper-specific toxins. Being able to make anybody afraid of anything certainly seems like bad news, so our heroes set out to stop him.

The strangeness of the story that I have eluded to lies in its lack of mystery. All the issues previously covered have had some sort of mystery that the readers can follow along and attempt to solve themselves. Apart from the nature of Scarecrow’s machine, which is impossible for the readers to figure out, there is no mystery. 

The mystery should be a big part in these stories because otherwise, why use Scoob and the gang? Other than this strange lack of intrigue, I find Scarecrow's use of toxin strange. Rather than conjuring up monsters and ghosts, he uses the toxin to instill other, more random fears. This does lead to a running gag of the names of the phobias, but still seems an odd choice of story direction.

Holy perspective Batman!

Puste returns to work on this book. I enjoyed his work on the last issue, but found a few odd looking sections in this one. The character designs are good, nothing groundbreaking, but the perspective and scaling often seemed off. Batman towering over others in the Batcave looked very strange.

There also seemed to be an issue with characters' movements matching what they’re saying. The specific panel that comes to mind is the last one, where we can see the gang laughing, they just seem to be staring into space. There were also a few instances of Batman’s neck looking add and overall too large or contorted. These were only minor issues and the art overall is alright.

Recommended if…

• You haven’t read the others
• There’s nothing you’d rather be doing
• A short attention span is something you have

Overall:

There really isn’t anything new I have to say here. No continuing plot to discuss and just overall thoughts of “it’s fine” seem to plague these reviews. I would love for one of these issues or this series to blow me away, but I have a feeling that’s not going to happen. Just one story arc, I beg.

Score: 6/10