During the very first season of Scooby Doo Where Are You!, the gang met up with a mummy. It was in episode 12 which aired in late 1969 and it was called Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too!
As most Scooby-Doo episodes are, this is a pretty fun little episode with all the regular Scooby tropes you’d expect.
The show starts off with the gang at the local college’s Department of Archaeology. They are unveiling a new mummy exhibit and the gang has offered to help set up.
The gang is talking to “The Professor”, who is the white bread dude in the middle. I have to assume “The Professor” is his name as he’s never called anything else. Next to “The Professor” is…
Dr Najib who, I presume, is the Egyptian expert. I have to presume because the show never directly says just who he is. The show also implies that he actually found the mummy, who is identified as “the mummy of Ankha” at first then as just “Ankha” later. With Najib’s ascot and red fez I believe they’re trying to invoke Boris Karloff in Universal’s The Mummy.
This is Scooby Doo so we get Shaggy and Scooby eating food that’s inedible for normal humans. For example, this is a liver a la mode sandwich. With an olive garnish. Classy.
The mummy eventually disappears from his sarcophagus and the gang begin pursuit. They almost catch the mummy but he escapes through the museum’s glass door leaving only a mummy shapped outline in the glass. I love that this is how glass works in Scooby-Doo Land.
Here’s the mummy stalking the gang all mummy-like. Scooby actually picks a fight with him and changes into his Hong Kong Phooey outfit to do battle. Scoob’s a black belt?!
While being chased by the mummy, Velma has time to go to the lab and carbon date a piece of the mummy’s rags in order to reveal a clue to the mystery.
Scooby and Shaggy, on the run from the mummy, duck into an old tool shed. Shaggy doesn’t hear the mummy in pursuit so he opens the door to see if he’s still there and sees that the mummy has started to BRICK UP THE ENTRANCE TO THE SHED. Did he mix his own cement? Surely already mixed cement wasn’t just lying around? I love that he’s holding a spade too. Amazing.
The mummy chases the gang around the museum and eventually gets thrown up into the basketball hoop where Fred climbs up on a ladder and unmasks him. Scoob celebrates by finding the actual mummy hiding in some bushes. And the actual mummy looks a lot like the Boris Karloff wrapped mummy (see my AWESOME-tober-fest banner).
That’s the episode. Like I said, it’s a pretty fun episode.
Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.
, however, I found the first three books of the Landover series in 
for super cheap so I snapped it up and started reading without much thought. The basic premise is that a lawyer, disappointed with his life after his wife dies, finds an ad in a catalog to buy a magical fantasy land called Landover for $1 million. Spontaneously he decides to do it, but it doesn’t turn out to be exactly what he expects. Initially, that premise spoke “satire” to me. I fully expected a massively tongue-in-cheek parody of fantasy novels. What I got was surprising. The novel takes a while to really get started, but once it does, it’s really good. It takes the premise honestly and earnestly. It’s not a satire or a parody. It plays the entire plot straight and is a better novel for it. I liked it much more than I thought considering my expectations were completely wrong and the first 80 pages or so were kind of slow to get through. I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in the series.
– I love Peter David’s novels and for years I tried to read everything he’d written. I originally read this book back in 2005 when I randomly found it on eBay. I loved it. The story is a parody of fantasy books in general. It uses a lot of the tropes and has fun with them. Peter David is great at humorous dialogue and he doesn’t disappoint here. Essentially, it’s your traditional epic hero fantasy, except, instead of focusing on the hero, the story focuses on one of the side characters. And that side character is well aware he’s in a hero’s tale and that he’s not the hero. In fact, he prefers it. Lots of fun with the fantasy genre. Also, I’m surprised at how similar this book was to Moore’s Fool. I guess it’s sort of the same idea, except David’s idea goes a little more broad with the concept. And, honestly, I think it’s a better book.
Cavalcade of Awesome 