Unbelievable Beast (story)

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Unbelievable Beast (story)
Description
Part of	Scooby-Doo! #88
# of pages	10
Writer	John Rozum
Penciler	Joe Staton
Inker	Scott McRae
Colorer	Heroic Age
Letterer	Nick J. Napolitano
Editor	Joan Hilty
Chronology
Previous story	Unfair Play at the Fair
Next story	The Shadow Knows

Unbelievable Beast is a story in Scooby-Doo! #88 by DC Comics.

Premise

Velma's cousin, Dexter, is arrested by the police for vandalizing the school but his story does not check out since he blames it on a unbelievably strange monster. He calls his cousin and Mystery Inc. comes out to investigate the strange story. No one really believes him, except for Velma, but Mystery Inc. discovers the real vandal, a classmate of Dexter's.

Characters

Character
Scooby-Doo
Shaggy Rogers
Fred Jones
Daphne Blake
Velma Dinkley
Dexter Dinkley

Villains

• Unbelievably Strange Monster

Suspects

Suspect	Motive/reason
Suspect	Motive/reason

Culprits

Culprit	Motive/reason
Culprit	Motive/reason

Reception

DC seems to be dumbing down Scooby-Doo, and that just misses the point. Kids became involved with Scooby-Doo because of the fairplay mysteries that were often kind of creepy and the friendship shared by Freddie, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scoob.

I do not ask for the complexity of say Raymond Chandler in Scooby-Doo mysteries, but I do want a puzzle that does not insult my intelligence. Kids would like that too. John Rozum has written some awesome issues of Scooby-Doo, but this latest collection of stories represents his worst.

The first tale visits Velma's cousin Dexter who has been framed for vandalism. Unfortunately, the clues given are telegraphed and really do not highlight the detective skills of Mystery Inc. Inspector Clouseau could have solved this one. There is some mild cogitation regarding the reason why the criminal in question would choose such an outlandish costume, but it's not really enough.