The moment I heard Warner Bros. was releasing a Scooby-Doo/Courage the Cowardly Dog crossover movie, I knew I had to watch it. I’ve loved Scooby-Doo for as long as I can remember. And watching Courage the Cowardly Dog was a foundational part of my early media exposure. So, the idea of combining these two franchises immediately grabbed my attention. And, honestly, it’s ludicrous that a crossover hadn’t been done already. Because Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog is an utterly delightful film. Sure, there’s not enough plot to fill out the runtime, and the mystery isn’t the most captivating. But the movie so openly embraces the absurdity of both franchises that it’s very easy to just go along with it and enjoy the ride. (4 out of 5 wands.)
Continue readingStraight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog
(written by Michael Ryan, directed by Cecilia Aranovich)
An original animated feature so exciting it’s scratching at the door! Comedy is unleashed when Scooby-Doo, your favorite mystery-solving mutt, teams up for the first time with Courage the Cowardly Dog. The canine colleagues sniff out a strange object in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas, the backwoods hometown of Courage and his owners, Eustace and Muriel Bagge. Soon, the mysterious discovery puts them on the trail of a giant cicada monster and her wacky winged warriors. Fred, Velma, Daphne and Shaggy know that this job is too big for a flyswatter. They’ll need the help of the doggy duo to piece together the puzzle. Can Scooby and Courage overcome their jitters and defeat the insect army before the whole world bugs out?
It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a remarkably well made Batman film. It’s even more impressive that said amazing film is a straight-to-DVD animated adaptation of a short Elseworlds graphic novel – a series of graphic novels from DC Comics that takes popular characters and places them in new situations/settings/etc. Batman: Gotham By Gaslight is an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name, originally written by Brian Augustyn and featuring art from Mike Mignola, placing Bruce Wayne/Batman squarely in the late 1800s in Gotham City, where it seems that the infamous Jack the Ripper has relocated to continue his spree of terror by murdering women. Written by James Krieg and directed by Sam Liu, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight follows the Caped Crusader as he works – from the shadows – to stop Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror before it can get any worse while dodging the ever-suspicious Gotham police. If ever there were a crime from the world’s greatest detective, this would be it. (Mild spoilers follow.) 
Thoroughly Modern Reviewer 