Velma, the HBO Max animated comedy about the brainy and nearsighted core member of Scooby-Doo's Mystery Inc. team, came to New York Comic Con on Thursday for a special presentation that included a first look at the show's premiere. Mindy Kaling, who provides the voice of Velma Dinkley and also serves as executive producer on the series, joined showrunner Charlie Grandy and some surprise guests to discuss the new, adult-oriented take on the teens of the much-loved Scooby-Doo franchise.

In addition to Kaling, the show stars Sam Richardson as Shaggy, Constance Wu as Daphne, Glenn Howerton as Fred, Jane Lynch, Wanda Sykes, Weird Al Yankovic, Russell Peters, Melissa Fumero, Stephen Root, Gary Cole, Ming-Na Wen, Ken Leung, Cherry Jones and more. The first season, consisting of ten episodes, will air on HBO Max in 2023.

The audience received paper Velma glasses on entrance, and eight cosplayers dressed as Velma were invited onto the stage. Each one, sporting a bright orange top and red skirt or slacks, introduced themselves and then struck their best Velma poses -- mostly pretending to search for their glasses.

Next, the premiere of the show was played on the hall's screens. The episode was full of smart adult humor, fourth-wall breaking, background animation jokes, self-aware dialogue and references to prior versions of the show.

Cast and crew were welcomed onto stage, in person and through live video feeds: Damien Holbrook, Mindy Kaling, Glenn Howerton, Constance Wu, Sam Richardson and Charlie Grandy.

"Super smart, super thick glasses, questionable haircut...I'm just so honored I get to do her voice." Asked what drew her to voicing Velma, she said, "I just couldn't resist it. Let's be honest, I sound like a fifteen-year-old girl, so I thought I could bring something fun to the character."

"These character lend themselves so well to an adult series," Kaling went on, mentioning several popular adult animated series including Harley Quinn and Rick and Morty.

Grady explained, "I've been working with Mindy forever, so I think I speak fluent Mindy. I think it would be a problem if I wrote everything myself, but I think my job was to support Mindy's vision and be as sensitive to the material as possible."

"He's written for some of my more demented characters," said Kaling.

The panel moderater noted how many different projects Richardson is in and asked what happened to the character of Shaggy to explain the difference between him and the Shaggy seen in other Scooby-Doo series. "We will earn it," Grandy promised.

Fred's voice: "It's similar to something me and my firends have done together: the extremely entitled, over-privileged kid. So I started with that, but I half expected them to stop me. But no one stopped me..." For him to sign onto the project, he said, "All I needed to know was that the people who are on that stage right now were involved."

Wu was asked what it was like to play "mean girl" Daphne. "It was amazing. To really sink into a character like that, that's what you want to do." She noted, "I don't think I'd be very good at trying to be pre-pubescent. That was just me."

Kaling talked about modern reinventions of classic characters, such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. "I think a lot of people are excited by that, and this series is for them."

"The first [TV character who represented me] might have been myself," said Wu. "I think I played it."

Grandy talked about the writers' room for Velma, saying, "We needed to find good, cool, diverse writers to fill the room... What's great now in terms of staffing is that there are so many more writers of color out there. Agencies are repping them. It's so much easier when you ask for something like, 'East Asian female writers.' So it makes staffing a show like this really doable."

Next, the panelists discussed the animation style. "We wanted to update it," said Grandy. "We didn't want it to look too much like the original. We put a lot of work into updating the character design. We looked at tons and tons of different styles of characters."

"What was it like doing a table read on Zoom?"

"I was star-struck," said Kaling. "Also, it made me competitive, because they were funny so I thought I had to be funnier, and I think that's good."

Wu said that her biggest Scooby-Doo fan moment was "getting high."

Richardson talked about his memories of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, drawing cheers from the audience.

"Scooby-Doo was scary for us," said Kaling. "But I thought the animation was beautiful, even back then. It's just a beautiful show, which is why people are drawn to the costumes."

"I get extremely uncomfortable with almost every character I play," said Howerton. "I don't know why I find this style of humor so funny, but this show makes me laugh really really hard. Whenever I play an entitled white dude, I just find it really funny."

Looking at the high school aspect of the show, Kaling said that the different teenage social castes and their mundane lives will be an important part of it in addition to the mysteries.

Kaling pointed out that a lot of the characters have sexual tension with Velma, "....which is fun. She deserves it!"... "This journey of self-discovery for her is something that really drew us to the character."

"The turnaround time is so slow in animation," said Grandy. "By the time you get it back, sometimes you go, 'Whoa, that joke died on the vine a long time ago. No one gets it anymore.' Daphne is a little more tuned into pop culture in this show than Velma is."

The panelists promised that the families of each of the teenagers, and their "complicated home lives," will also be a major factor in the show.

"It's been surprising how good the chemistry is, considering how much we're separated," said Kaling, referring to the lines being recorded individually. Wu agreed, "You know how when your voice sounds different in your own head? Whenever I hear my own voice I just think I sound like a duck. But you and everyone else just sound great!"

"There's been so many amazing actresses who played Velma," Kaling concluded. "And I'm just so honored to follow in their footsteps."

Finally, both the panelists and the audience put on their paper Velma glasses to take a group picture from the stage.