Webcomic / Scoob and Shag

"Hey, is that a gun?"

Scoob and Shag is a Fan Webcomic about the adventures of Scooby-Doo and Shaggy Rogers.

Okay, that's the simple explanation. The longer explanation involves the titular characters, except Scooby has a gun. Things go downhill from there, in weird, funny, and horrifying ways.

What began as a simple gag-a-day comic quickly developed into a much more complex story about betrayal, identity and planets-spanning conflicts that defies easy categorization. Described by the author as both comedy and horror, the story of Scoob and Shag could perhaps best be understood as classic cartoons meets JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Updates are currently weekly. The creator also has a tumblr where they post comics and answer questions, which can be found here.

For works with similar premises, see Tails Gets Trolled, Weapon Brown and Breakfast of the Gods.

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Scoob and Shag contains examples of:

• Abandoned Laboratory: Sort of. One location definitely plays into this trope, complete with sliding airlocks, blood-covered metal hatches, and abominations creeping about, but it's actually a spaceship.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: You know all those western animated shows you love? They were all alien broadcasts the whole time, made as a sign of peace between Earth and Toone. The adoration and love the world gave the Toones, in turn, granted them the power of Ballyhoo. However, the opposite side of the coin is also true, as Antihoo is generated upon the audience's hatred of somebody. This was forcefully avoided by preventing Antihoo from reaching Toone.
• Alien Invasion: In the backstory, the Toone homeworld was devastated by a massive Martian invasion.
• Ambiguously Human: Chase and Kel, two human beings seen in "Regrets" only have 4 fingers visible despite looking completely human in contrast to the toon that kills them.
• Animated Actors: In this universe, all cartoons are TV shows staring alien Toones. How much they resemble their characters personality-wise varies.
• Arc Symbol:
  • The one on Scooby's dog tag. It's the shape of the ship on which the Toone characters escaped, and the insignia associated with Scooby's underlings while he was a commander. It is later revealed that the presumably original Shag, back when he was the Desert King, picked out the insignia when he and Scoob first joined up with Mick. Turns out he intentionally made it look like a dick as a joke.
  • Three circles in a triangular formation is representative of the Coward King arc and Mick. By the Emergency Arc, it's started to crop up on Earth, emblematic of how Mick now rules Earth and the Toones are free to do as they wish without any consequence.
• Art Evolution:
  • As the comic has shifted away from the gag-per-strip format into serious storytelling, the art quality has taken a massive leap. That's not to say that earlier art is bad, but the action and horror panels later in the story use a truly incredible amount of detail.
  • Part 2 uses a completely new art style to signify the series' now properly-established tone, and it is fantastic looking, with more involved backgrounds, great use of grayscale and detailed expressions.
• Badass Crew: As shown in #81, Mystery Inc. was this in the past. Fred's "Freeze Frame" and Daphne's "Burn In" together were even enough to quickly and decisively beat the Martian Queen.
• Body Horror: Any toon affected by Antihoo (the opposite power to Ballyhoo) becomes a twisted mockery of what they once were. Examples included Barney Rubble becoming a massive slug-like creature with a gaping maw, Goofy gaining an oversized, realistic dog head and JFK's body twisting around itself with his ribcage exploding outward.
  • After Mick takes over the Earth, Toones start going on murderous rampages. During "Regrets", Chase and Kels end up murdered by Ed; Chase has been torn in half with his legs jammed into a wall who Kels had his clothes wrapped so tightly that he suffocated to death. "Emergency" has the train conductor's head blown up with his eye on a wall and his jaw on the train window.
• Boss Corridor: Non-video game example. The corridor leading to one of the labs is covered with blood. Once inside, Scoob has his first major battle. The ominousness is lampshaded by Kermit when he's told to walk down the hall.
  Kermit: "You're fucking with us, right?"
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Fighters are shown training in martial arts and figuring out how to overcome the weaknesses of their unique abilities to prevent being Useless Without Powers.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In-universe, this is a side-effect of having too much Ballyhoo energy, as characters will begin to hear the voices of those watching them and reflexively addressing them.
• Calling Your Attacks: Characters will occasionally do this when using their Ballyhoo.
• Cerebus Retcon: Kermit's introduction has him taking out a blunt. As "The Coward King" reveals, this is because he was holding one when Velm wiped his memory, meaning it was the sole thing he had at the time.
  • Inverted during "Deal" where it's revealed that the Toone national emblem really is a dick, with the original Shag having told the higher ups it was a bone with both him and Scoob laughing about the in-joke.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The comic initially starts out as a comedy webcomic about Scoob and Shag's shenanigans. Then comic #25 introduces "Mick", and never looks back.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Upon being unmasked, the real Shaggy lets out twelve "shits" in a row.
• Conspiracy Theorist: This is briefly alluded to in "Emergency" where a strange man in a black hoodie mentions aliens being in the government and a "mouse in the white house", events that did happen, but nobody else remembers due to Velm's Format erasing everyone else's memories of the speech Mick made.
• Coughing Up Blood: A bloodstained cough is a common sign that a character is about to transform into an Antihoo monster.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: After seeing the power of Yoge's Simulcast ballyhoo and its limitations (it can only work on attacks he sees coming), Shag runs straight at him and strikes hard enough that the double's punch to his nose blinds Yoge with the blood spray, giving him the opportunity to make a devastating uppercut. Pop later mentions that Yoge was impressed enough to vouch for him joining the team after the fight.
• Disguised Horror Story: The strip initially just seems like a webcomic parodying Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, but as the comic goes on, it gets darker and shows examples of violence and Body Horror.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: In a benign example, cartoons turn out to be transmissions by an alien race. Also overlaps with Alien Arts Are Appreciated — so much so, in fact, that our appreciation gave them superpowers.
  • The trope is then played straight during "News" with Mick's speech, in which it's implied that Mick's speech has been broadcasted above the planet.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The comic was an episodic gag strip for its first thirteen installments before shifting into an ongoing story that soon saw a massive Genre Shift. The first couple of strips are never referenced again, have an extremely crude artstyle, and feature very different characterization for the protagonists, with Shag going from Butt-Monkey to Audience Surrogate and Scoob going from a Comedic Sociopath to The Stoic.
  • An early running gag was Shag constantly using increasingly nonsensical variations of his trademark "Zoinks" Catchphrase. This element was dropped early in, and in later strips he never uses the catchphrase at all.
  • Most of the characters featured are Western cartoons, but Mario, Kermit, and (a picture of) Goku were shown before the author established that theme.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: Meet a new guy and they'll be glad to talk about what their Ballyhoo does and the ways they can use it. This isn't always the case with every toon in the series, with Ms Bellum being an example of someone who can't even if they wanted to.
• Face-Revealing Turn: A mutilated Shaggy reveals himself to Scoob this way. It's just an illusion created by the Holodeck.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Humanoid Toones have four fingers in each hand, while Earthlings have five. This is especially notable in a flashback, where we see Shag walking among some non-Toons, as is brought as one of the reasons why his human friends knew something was up with him.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Unlike the other characters, Mick is the only one whose eyes have any colour to them. During the timeskip, Bugs Bunny has magenta eyes which doesn't seem to mean much until later on when Twilight first reveals herself to Dee. Twilight is coloured magenta, mentions having siblings and that they have agents in Dee's realm. During the fight with Antihoo Ms Bellum, Bugs Bunny uses an attack called Dead Air~Twilight Eulogy, effectively revealing her alignment.
  • Long before we even see Illapa, notice how the Mystery Crew are associated with the colour cyan such as in the scene where Kermit finds Velm in a field full of cyan sunflowers or whenever Scoob channels his power into Shag. A few story arcs later, Scoob calls upon one of Twilight's siblings Illapa to gain their blessing in order to defeat Ms Bellum, implying that Scoob and Shag work for them due to sharing Illapa's blue colour.
  • During Swiper and Courage's fight with Ms Bellum, a mind-controlled Pop hallucinates them both as a singular Antihoo monster instead of two separate ones. Later on, Ms Bellum becomes a fusion Antihoo monster herself.
  • In "Deal", we see a flashback of Shag and Scoob making a deal with Mick to join the Toones. Mick mentions that they can longer waste resources on petty disputes, implying a crisis of some sorts. And also, that there are much bigger threats and that the people need to rally behind a common enemy.
  • During "Emergency Part 1", we see a picture of Javi's family in the first panel, with his sister's hair resembling Mickey Mouse's ears. Later, we see a strange man ranting about aliens and a "mouse in the white house", implying that the main characters weren't the only ones who avoided Velm's Format at the end of Mick's speech. When the subway carriage opens up, there's a familiar symbol, the same one associated with The Coward King arc. The image appears again when Javi is checking his phone before it's revealed that the train conductor is dead.
  • "Emergency Part 2" has a blink and you'll miss it moment during the panel where Javi is trying to reassure the little girl that people are already on their way to help. Right behind Javi are some pin-prick eyes, implying that it might be controlling the train.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: In a meta sort of In-Universe example, some characters with high power can actually hear the beings that empower them. Since their power is derived from an audience, those beings are the viewers themselves.
• Genre Shift: Twice, in quick succession, in the early sections of Part 1.
  • Firstly, the comic begins as a collection of disconnected strips focusing on absurdist humor, without any overarching continuity. One of these strips, about Scooby and Shaggy running from the cops and fleeing into a wood, rapidly turns into a much darker horror segment reminiscent of the work of Junji Ito. This is marked by a shift from the simple lineart of the first strips to heavily shaded, visually oppressive art.
  • This horror theme remains prevalent for another segment of strips, until the whole thing is revealed to be taking place in a holodeck within a crashed starship. Afterwards, while horror elements return sporadically, the comic turns into a parody of Shōnen manga and remains like that afterwards.
  • After "News", the pages after that return full swing back into horror, showcasing the terror caused by Toones free to do as they please.
• Glowing Eyes: Glowing eyes are a side effect of characters using their Ballyhoo.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Generally averted, but the viewer isn't shown Shaggy's arm being cut off or whatever happens to the Martians during their first broadcast.
• Haunted House: The first major setting is an abandoned house in the woods, filled with twisting rooms and bizarre spooks. It's later established as actually being the Holodeck of a crashed starship.
• Historical Domain Superperson: The teenaged clone of JFK from Clone High appears in the comic with his Ballyhoo, Satellite, a telekinetic ability that can manipulate gravity.
• Holodeck: The crashed starship contains a number of holodecks used for simulating combat and environments. There's also a main deck that's what the Haunted House Scoob and Shag find themselves in in the beginning actually is.
• Homeworld Evacuation: After Toone is devastated after the war with the Martians, the surviving toons are forced to flee the planet and relocate to Earth.
• Magical Eye Streamers: Active Ballyhoo users are marked by streamers of wispy white energy trailing from their eyes, usually extending to and past the edge of the panel. On occasion, these streams are colored, which is later explained as those characters having been granted blessings by Twilight or her siblings.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The comic is largely focused on cramming as many animated celebrities in its page space as possible and having them duke it out. The cast contains characters from classic cartoons ranging from the Golden to The Millennium Age of Animation, including Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes, Popeye, Inspector Gadget, several Cartoon Network shows, and Mickey Mouse.
• Morally Superior Copy: The Shag we have been following for the run of the comic is revealed to be a clone of the original Shag, who died under still unexplained circumstances years ago, and is only the latest in a line of Shag clones that Scoob secretly commissioned. An earlier clone of Shag, who possesses Shag's powers, is a thug with a truly gruesome Ballyhoo working under an Omnicidal Maniac.
• One Person, One Power: Each character's Ballyhoo works like this, granting them a highly individualized power. Shaggy should have a Ballyhoo, but recent comics imply and later confirm that as he's the latest in a line of clones, with an earlier clone of the original Shag already has what should be his, the Ballyhoo "Jump Cut", and that the power won't pass on to our Shag until the older clone dies.
• Ontological Mystery: The comic's dive into semi-seriousness starts with this and quickly spirals into a Surreal Horror Shonen parody.
• Popularity Power: This is a tangible in-universe force; the power of a Toone's Ballyhoo is directly proportional to how much they're loved by humans. However, there's an equivalent and opposing force, The Power of Hate.
• Posthumous Character: A number of characters — such as Boo Boo, Arnold and Penny — are dead as of the present day.
• Powers Do the Fighting: It's not uncommon for fights to revolve around one character spamming their power while the opponent attempts to figure out their weakness. The more experienced and dangerous fighters are those who combine their powers with combat training.
• The Power of Hate: It turns out the toones turning into monsters isn't a disease, but rather them under the influence of the opposite side of Ballyhoo, the hatred of viewers who aren't so keen on the characters. It's essentially The Scrappy Played for Drama.
• Recap Episode: One is delivered by Swipes and Courage late into Part 1, explaining everything in the story up through to the end of "The Coward King".
• Red Baron:
  • Bugs Bunny is known and feared as "the Noise", due to the Hell Is That Noise nature of her "Dead Air" Ballyhoo, which weaponizes TV static.
  • Shag is apparently called the Desert King, due to once being in charge of a desert biker gang before working for Toone.
• Self-Deprecation: When Shag explains his situation to his human friends, Ev comments it doesn't make any sense and seems unnecessarily complicated.
• Splash of Color: The comic is almost entirely black-and-white, but certain characters with high amounts of Ballyhoo will have colored Ballyhoo energy, which the other characters can see. Mickey's color is red, Scoob's color is cyan, and Bugs's color is magenta, with Dee sharing the color later on. The ending of "The Coward King" shows that Scoob and Shag's house is surrounded by light blue flowers. Scoob's Channel turns light blue when it evolves, with the same applying to the evolved forms of Dee's Closed Caption and Bugs's Dead Air, as well as Shag's Channeled form.
  • The reason for this is because said characters are empowered by certain god-like aliens, with the magenta Twilight blessing Bugs and Dee with the aptly named "Blessing of Twilight", while the cyan Illapa blesses Scoob (and Shag by proxy, due to him being a conduit for Channel) with the "Blessing of the Storm". Mick also presumably derives his immense power from a red-colored "God", though this specific deity has not been named yet, and was only seen very briefly in one of Mick's own flashbacks thus far.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Between attacking calling and power explaining, no one seems to bother with a sneak attack.
• Theme Naming: All of the Ballyhoos introduced thus far are named after elements of television and animation. The word "ballyhoo" itself refers to blatant publicity, such as the kind gained through being the stars of cartoons, which is how the Toones acquired Ballyhoo in the first place.
  • Later on, this also applies to special techniques that use Ballyhoos.
• They Walk Among Us: Toones — and they're aliens.
• Time Skip: The story skips ahead two years after the end of Part 1, reopening after a number of explosions have gone off across the world, animation as a medium is now banned worldwide, and Shag is living in New York under the alias "Norv" and has split from the rest of the crew.
• Toon: The main characters are cartoon characters from real life, which in this universe are alien Animated Actors. For the most part they're from American cartoons, though the author has suggested characters from any media (like anime or puppets) exists, even if we don't see them.
• Wham Episode:
  • While hints of weirdness and something darker under the surface scattered the comics for a while, pages 32-35 cement the larger story with Barney and Scoob fighting for the first time, along with Scoob using the power of Ballyhoo.
  • Chapter 74 is a MASSIVE one, revealing both the identity of a newly-freed Commander One, that being Mickey Mouse himself (who has red eyes and Eye Streamers in a black and white comic), and the fake "Mick" who's been working to free him this whole time, who turns out to be another Shag.
  • The end of Part One has the crew leaving their ship, watching it explode, and then flying away to parts unknown.
  • As of Part Two, animation is a banned medium worldwide, Antihoo monsters are now appearing outside of the now-destroyed spaceship, and masked assailants are after Shag.
  • Chapter 128 has Mick announce that he now controls all the world's governments and militaries with his speech ending with footage of a tortured Velm using Format to erase everyone's memories. It's revealed that 8,068,792,641 people had watched the speech with the implications disturbing Swiper enough that Ger snaps him out of it. It's then implied that Dex has died, with Ger crying over his death.
• Wham Line: Less of what's said, but who it's said to suddenly changes the commanding order around quite a bit.
  Commander One: (Speaking directly to Shaggy: In due time...commander.
  • Though Eddy himself is a goofy character, the implications of what he says are anything but:
  Eddy: "Whatcha gonna do about it, Slim? Call the cops? Or did ya forget we own them now?"
• Whole Episode Flashback: "The Coward King" details pretty much the entire story regarding Scoob, Shag and Mick leading up to the beginning of the main story.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Cartoon characters with a lot of ballyhoo in them hear the "voices", but each character deals with them in different ways. It appears to have broken Bugs Bunny, and Mickey seems to have gotten it even worse.

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