Comic Book / Laff-A-Lympics

The Laff-a-Lympics comic book series is an adaptation of the cartoon of the same name. The comics were produced by Marvel Comics. All issues were written by Mark Evanier and drawn by many Hanna-Barbera staffers including Jack Manning, Roman Arambula, Owen Fitzgerald, Scott Shaw! and Pete Alvarado.

The issues (penciller/artist in parenthesis):

1. The Meet at Mount Ono (Manning) - During the events, Doggie Daddy has a problem with Augie, who sees his dad as a coward who won't scale Mount Ono in the finale.
2. Trouble at the Track Meet (Alvarado, Fitzgerald) - Snagglepuss and Mildew Wolf are replaced as commentators with Roger Rankle, a Howard Cosell expy.
3. The Miraculous Moon Meet (Fitzgerald) - A moon man kidnaps a number of members from all three teams and gets them to compete against him for the Earth.
4. Take Me Out to the Brawl Game (Manning) - The Rottens kidnap the Scooby Doobies' star hitter Captain Caveman, and to hedge their bets they use a remote controlled baseball.
5. The Day the Rottens Won (Manning) - The story of how the Rottens finally won the gold (or did they?) is recapped.
6. The Discount of Monty Cristo (Armabula) - cameos by Loopy De Loop, Magilla Gorilla and Inch High Private Eye. Hokey Wolf is framed for the theft of the Count's magical credit card.
7. The Purple Pig Puzzle (Arambula) - Gambler Lucky Starr wins the charity money from the Laff-A-Lympics games and challenges the teams to locate a ceramic pig for the charity money and a bonus cash prize.
8. The Beef of Bagdad - special guest stars Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley and Jabberjaw (Arambula, Spiegle) - An evil genie turns Babu into a giant snail. To get him back to normal, Scooby-Doo and his pals venture to Baghdad to obtain a special meat.
9. Go Rest, Old Man (Arambula) - The Rottens disrupt a Western-themed meet as a new young sheriff tries to usurp an elder sheriff.
10. Now You See Them (Arambula, Norris) - Dread Baron uses a ray gun that transports whoever he aims it at to a distant place. When Dynomutt intervenes, he is sent to the planet from where the ray gun originated, sent by two aliens who wager everything they have on the Rottens.
11. The Toys from Tomorrow - special guest stars Elroy Jetson and Jabberjaw (Arambula, Strobl) - Elroy Jetson hides from police in a time machine after getting involved with a gang; he is sent to the present where he gets involved in a Laff-A-Lympics event.
12. The Ends of the Earth - special guest star Jabberjaw; cameos by Hair Bear, Ed Huddles, the Funky Phantom and the Banana Splits (Manning, Spiegle) - The Yogis (except for Huck Hound) are kidnapped by the Rottens and sent to a far place where a Columbus-era civilization exists.
13. Look at the training camps - special guest stars Dick Dastardly and Muttley (Shaw!, Spiegle, Manning) - Yogi looks for a new cook for the Yahooeys, Captain Caveman is captured by a dog catcher, Dick Dastardly visits his brother Dread Baron. Tying all this together is the Rottens' booby-trapped package of prune yogurt.
14. (unpublished) - The Miniature Meet - special guest stars Fibber Fox and Jabberjaw (Arambula) - A college professor gets even for getting slighted from the school's budget with a ray gun that shrinks the Yahooeys and Rottens.
15. Special giant sized issue - The Man Who Stole Thursday - guest stars Professor Gismo from Ruff & Reddy, the Flintstones and cameos from a bunch of H-B characters (almost everybody) - A mysterious figure named Tempus steals Professor Gismo's chronocycle, with which he causes Thursdays to disappear from the calendar.

Tropes:

• Adaptational Villainy: Dread Baron was already a villain in the cartoon but he never tried to double-cross any of his own teammates there. In "The Meet at Mount Ono", when he finds out the Laff-a-Lympic officials placed a chest full of money at the top of the titular mount to be shared among the members of the team that wins the climbing contest, he tries to take the money for himself and isn't above endangering the life of the Rotten athlete originally chosen to represent his team during the contest.
• Adapted Out: Sooey Pig and Scooby-Dum don't appear in the comics.
• Alliterative Name: The Highland Hotel in "The Man Who Stole Thursday".
• And I'm the Queen of Sheba: Brenda tells Shaggy he can't enter the yodelling contest because his yodelling sounds like someone calling a pig. He says that if she's a judge of yodelling then he's Fred Flintstone. When Shaggy does yodel and does attract pigs:
  Brenda: You said if I was a judge of yodeling then you're Fred Flintstone!
  Shaggy: (bitterly) Yabba dabba doo.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • In "The Man Who Stole Thursday", Mr. Mastermind is charged with grand larceny, resisting arrest and doing the Pennsylvania polka in Rhode Island.
  • Using a stolen magic credit card in "The Discount of Monty Cristo", Dread Baron buys a car, jewels, gold and a pound of sugar.
  • In "The Miraculous Moon Meet!", an alien offers 50 tons of gold to whoever defeats him. Dread Baron thinks about using that gold to buy "Cars! Yachts! Airplanes! Even a pound of coffee!"
• Art Shift: "The Man Who Stole Thursday" is a long-form story drawn by different artists and the shift becomes jarring where certain continuities run. A Dan Speigle page ending with Shaggy radioing to Pixie that he and his friends have located Tempus goes to an Owen Fitzgerald page starting with Pixie retrieving Shaggy's call and the Yogis responding.
  • Issue #2, "Trouble at the Track Meet", has its first three pages penciled by Pete Alvarado (uncredited) and the rest penciled by Owen Fitzgerald.
• Baseball Episode: "Take Me Out to the Brawl Game!" features two baseball matches. The Yogi Yahooeys and the Really Rottens play against each other for the right to play against the Scooby Doobies for that story's Laff-a-Lympics trophy. The story twist is that the Rottens have the Daltons kidnap the Scoobys' star hitter, Captain Caveman, while using a remote controlled baseball during the contest.
• Beyond the Impossible: Shaggy's yodelling can attract several pigs, including a piggy bank.
• Big Eater: Dinky Dalton can't watch a baseball match without eating several hot dogs.
• Brick Joke: In "The Ends of the Earth", Huckleberry Hound asks an ice cream man (Fondoo in disguise) to make him a banana split and Fondoo literally turns him into a banana split. At the end of the story, upon a similar request, Fondoo turns Dread Baron, Mumbly, Dastardly Dalton and Daisy Mayhem into The Banana Splits.
  • The Rottens plant a booby-trapped package of prune yogurt on the Yogis at the start of issue #13. It eventually winds up back with the Rottens which, at the end, literally blows up in their collective faces.
  • In "The Discount of Monty Cristo", there's a scene displaying the scoreboard as Yogis 60, Scoobys 40, and Rottens 10. There's a note next to the Rottens' score reading "but they don't deserve it". Later, the scoreboard reads Yogis 70, Scoobys 65, and Rottens 15. The note now reads "and they still don't deserve it"
• The Cameo: Numerous Hanna-Barbera characters can be seen in the stands in some stories. In issue #12, Ed Huddles, Hair Bear and the Funky Phantom share seats in the same row, while Loopy de Loop and Inch High, Private Eye can be seen in issue #6. The Banana Splits appear at the end of issue #12. In the special issue "The Man Who Stole Thursday," Ruff and Reddy appear in a framed picture on Professor Gizmo's wall.
• Captain Ersatz: In issue #12, the Rottens have a number of the Yogis kidnapped and replaced with a gang of hard-boiled doppelgängers assuming their names.
• Clear Their Name: In "The Discount of Monty Cristo", Dread Baron and Mumbly steal a magic credit card and frame Hokey Wolf. While Hokey is in jail, his friends try to find the card. Yogi and Boo Boo eventually trick Dread Baron into revealing the card to its owner and a cop.
• Comically Missing the Point: Dinky Dalton upon being criticized over his eating habits.
  Dastardly Dalton: Dinky, you shouldn't just sit there eating hot dogs with mustard, mayonnaise and raspberry jelly!
  Dinky Dalton: You're right! Next batch, leave off the mustard!
• Disproportionate Retribution: In "The Discount of Monty Cristo", while buying a car, Dread Baron threatens to return it if the radio isn't tuned to his favorite station.
• Exact Words: People asking the Great Fondoo to make them banana splits will be turned into either the dessert or another kind of banana split.
• Fictional Holiday: Dread Baron invents National Prune Yogurt Day in issue #13 and sends an explosives-loaded package of the yogurt to the Yogis, who sends it to the Scoobies, who delivers it back to the Rottens.
• Heroic BSoD: "The Day The Rottens Won!" has Yogi go into a major one when Boo-Boo (Magic Rabbit in disguise) claims he doesn't want to be friends anymore. He crashes onto the horizontal bar during the pole jump and Grape Ape has to get him down. Yogi only snaps out of it when the real Boo-Boo is rescued.
• How We Got Here: The story "The Day the Rottens Won" starts with the Rottens having already won and other characters showing their displeasure with the fact and then the readers get to see the games being played. Then it's revealed how they cheated and the Scoobys are declared the real winners.
• Impossible Task: Yogi uses these words to describe the job of being the Yogi Yahooeys' cook.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: In "The Day the Rottens Won", Dynomutt figures out there's an impostor pretending to be Blue Falcon when he asks why Radley Crown didn't show up for the opening ceremony. The impostor, not knowing that Crown is the real Blue Falcon, asks Dynomutt how he should know.
  • At the end, Teen Angel Taffy asks Dynomutt how he knew the Blue Falcon that lost the contest for the Scoobies was an imposter. Dynomutt keeps mum.
• Ironic Echo Cut: Some athletes gave taped interviews.
  Blue Falcon: We do it for sport! Only a disreputable and vile person would be interested in the cash prize.
  Dread Baron: I am only interested in the cash prize!
• It Runs in the Family:
  • Dastardly Dalton says so when Dread Baron's brother, Dick Dastardly, says he never won any "of those Wacky Races".
  • A page in the comics describes the Creeplys as direct descendants of the Gruesomes and states that, like their ancestors, they like gloomy weather, ants at picnics and monster movies where the monster wins, and hate rock music.
• Karma Houdini: Monty Cristo hypnotizes salespeople into selling him expensive stuff for practically nothing and never receives any sort of punishment for this.
• Lazy Artist:
  • In the first issue, "The Meet at Mount Ono", the interviews with the athletes used standard H-B publicity drawings of them. The cover of the issue was also made up of publicity poses from the Hanna-Barbera studio.
  • Issue #13 had individual stories from each of the teams' training camps, each story drawn by a different artist—the Yogis by Scott Shaw!, the Scoobys by Dan Speigle, and the Rottens by Jack Manning (inks by Scott Shaw!). In the Scoobys story, Shaggy is talking on the phone to Yogi Bear about a "Prune Yogurt Day" (the single thread connecting the stories) but Dan Speigle obviously couldn't draw Yogi, so a photostat of a Dick Bickenbach drawing of Yogi from an earlier story was used.
• Literal Metaphor: Yogi says his team "doesn't know the meaning of the word defeat... Several of them don't even know the meaning of the word cabbage! Boy, are they dumb!"
• Literal-Minded: Upon reading from a cookbook that he must add a "can of tomato paste", Huckleberry Hound literally throws an unopened can into the pot.
  • In "Take Me Out to the Brawl Game," Dirty Dalton says he told Dinky to "swat the ol' horsehide." Dinky has Quick Draw McGraw over his lap spanking him.
• Ms. Fanservice: In issue #13, Teen Angel Taffy is wearing a skimpy bikini. (All three Teen Angels are seen in bikinis in issue #9 of Marvel's Scooby-Doo, but Taffy leaves very little to the imagination in this instance.)
• Mundane Made Awesome: In "The Man Who Stole Thursday", Scooby, Dynomutt and Captain Caveman confront Mastermind, who has caused the titular calamity with a giant computer bank. Captain Caveman defeats Mastermind by simply unplugging the machine.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: After Yakky Doodle saves him from a long fall, Hokey Wolf says every sheep he's known passed before his eyes.
• Mysterious Middle Initial:
  • The games played in "The Day the Rottens Won" took place at the Gerald K. Doonton memorial coliseum.
  • "Take Me Out to the Brawl Game" features the Horace W. Underburger stadium.
  • In "The Man Who Stole Thursday", Captain Caveman gives an autograph to a boy named Howard R. Flintwhiller.
• Mythology Gag: "The Man Who Stole Thursday" has Scooby-Doo and the gang searching for Tempus at a comic book convention where an attendee comments about Jerry Sloane being the only person to have drawn the book "The Blue Scarab." This is a call back to issue #24 of the Gold Key Scooby-Doo comic book "Mark of the Blue Scarab," about comic book artist Jerry Sloane being haunted by his own creation (which would be retooled as the premiere episode of Scooby & Scrappy Doo, "The Scarab Lives").
  • In issue #13, Dread Baron asks Dick Dastardly what he's been doing since Wacky Races. Dick replies, "I spent some time chasing a pigeon."
• Never Say "Die": In "The Purple Pig Puzzle" after Lucky Starr is consigned to turning over all the money (the Laff-a-Lympics event money earmarked for charity and money wagered), the other gamblers—who bet on the Yahooeys and the Scoobies—all draw guns on Starr, telling him to put "Un" in front of his name.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In "Trouble at the Track Meet!", Snagglepuss and Mildew Wolf are replaced by Roger Rankle, a caricature of Howard Cosell.
  Scooby: Roger Rankle's really rude!
  • One of the gamblers in "The Purple Pig Puzzle" is a loose caricature of Marlon Brando.
• Noodle Incident: When Daisy Mayhem brings up the fact rule 996-W is the rule against doing high-dives into tapioca pudding, Yogi is surprised: "They banned that again?"
• Not Me This Time: In the unpublished 14th issue, the Yogis are shrunk to tiny size, and Yogi accuses Dread Baron of staging another cheat. But the Baron and the rest of the Rottens have also been shrunk (the Baron thought it was a neat idea, anyway).
• Off on a Technicality: In the special story "The Man Who Stole Thursday", a criminal arrested by Dynomutt had to be released because his trial would take place on Thursday.
• Oh, Crap!: Mr. Lucky Starr in "The Purple Pig Puzzle" when he finds out that the Rottens have all the clues to the puzzle of where the ceramic purple pig is but haven't solved it yet. That's because he bet a bundle on the Rottens to win the contest.
• Oven Logic: Huck decides to turn the heat higher to cook faster. No numbers are mentioned.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In "The Day the Rottens Won", most of the Really Rottens have decided they'll no longer cheat and Dread Baron announces that they made that decision because they always get caught and disqualified whenever they cheat. It turns out to be a ruse so Dread Baron could "exclude" the Great Fondoo and Magic Rabbit from the team so nobody would wonder about their whereabouts while they sabotaged the other teams from the inside.
• Punny Name: Snooper says Mount Ono is called that "'cause that's what most folks say when find out they've gotta climb it!"
• Reverse Psychology: Yogi tricks Huckleberry Hound into becoming their team's cook by claiming that Huck isn't fit for the job.
• Riddle Me This: in "The Purple Pig Puzzle," the three teams are given clues as to the whereabouts of a ceramic purple pig with the winning team winning the charity money back (which Lucky Starr won earlier) and a cash bonus. The Rottens are the first to obtain their portions of the puzzle but they are unable to solve it. It's Snooper who figures it out—the secret is where the clues were found. (The purple pig was in Captain Caveman's club.)
• Self-Deprecation: George Jetson describing his son in "The Toys from Tomorrow".
  George: Elroy is a bright boy. He takes after his mother's side of the family.
• Shout-Out:
  • The title "The Discount of Monty Cristo" is an allusion to The Count of Monte Cristo.
  • When a guy at a comic book convention says Shaggy's regular outfit is the worst outer space alien costume he's ever seen, Shaggy tells him to "leap over a tall building in a single bound".
• Spot the Imposter: During a relay race in "The Meet at Mount Ono", the Great Fondoo creates duplicates of Huckeberry Hound so Quick Draw McGraw won't know who to pass his team's rod to. Quick Draw eventually figures out who the real Huck is by having them sing "Oh My Darling, Clementine". The real one is more off-key than the impostors.
• Surrounded by Idiots: At the end of "The Purple Pig Puzzle," the Rottens still haven't solved it in spite of having all the clues and it's costing them sleep. Magic Rabbit turns to us and quips "How did I ever get mixed up with this bunch of losers?"
• A Taste of Defeat: The Yogi Yahooeys and the Scooby Doobies are used to losing to each other but, when the Really Rottens win, they and the fans feel like it's a tragedy.
  Shaggy: I don't mind losing... but losing to the Really Rottens is awful!
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Inverted in "The Meet at Mount Ono". Doggie Daddy tries to prove to his son, Augie Doggie, that he's not too chicken to climb Mount Ono in the last event (especially since the Yogis' participant, Grape Ape, was incapacitated). Babu of the Scoobys offers to help, but Doggie Daddy refuses, saying it's something he has to do himself. And he succeeds.
• Two out of Three Ain't Bad: The cover for the first comic describes the teams as "two teams of funtastic heroes and one team of these guys! (well, two out of three isn't bad)"
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Sooey Pig (Really Rottens) and Scooby-Dum (Scooby Doobies) were left out of the comic book.
• Wrong Turn at Albuquerque: In the special story "The Man Who Stole Thursday", Tempus tries to leave the Flintstones' time for present time but arrives at the Jetsons' time instead. Tempus believes it happened because he made a wrong turn at the Spanish-American War.