Voice Acting Career
Welker's first voice role came in 1969, as Fred Jones in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. As of 2012, Welker is the voice of both Fred Jones and Scooby-Doo. Welker is so closely connected with the character Fred, that any time the character appears in a cartoon (with the exception of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo), Welker provides the voice. His next major character voice was for Marvin White in the 1973 Hanna Barbera series Super Friends. He also provided the voice for Marvin's dog, Wonder Dog (which was inspired by Scooby-Doo). Welker would continue to provide voices for many other cartoon characters for the Hanna Barbera Company for several years.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Welker became a very busy actor, providing the voice for many popular cartoon characters in multiple shows including the villainous Doctor Claw in Inspector Gadget, Mister Mxyzptlk and both Darkseid and Kalibak in Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show, various G.I. Joe heroes and villains, Ray Stantz and Slimer in The Real Ghostbusters, the villainous Dr. Jeremiah Surd in The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, and Hefty Smurf in The Smurfs. He also voices various characters on The Simpsons such as Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II. He provided the voice of Fall Apart Rabbit in the 1993 Disney series "Bonkers" and other various voices for the show, as well as the voices of Mr. Plotz, Runt and other various characters in "Animaniacs". He also provides the voice (both speaking and non-speaking) of Nibbler in Futurama. He has voiced several characters for Family Guy, including Fred Jones.
Welker performed as voice double for Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and provided voices for The Thing in 1986's The Golden Child, Sil in Species, and Malebolgia in 1997's Spawn. He has also created the vocal effects for different animals in films including the monkey Abu in Aladdin, its two sequels and the TV series Aladdin, Arnold the Pig in the TV film Return to Green Acres, he was also the voice of Totoro from the English version of the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro, and a variety of animals from Tiny Toon Adventures
In 2005, Welker became the new voice of Garfield, succeeding the original actor Lorenzo Music, who died in 2001 (Welker and Music had previously worked together in The Real Ghostbusters and the original Garfield and Friends). Welker voiced Garfield in Garfield Gets Real, Garfield's Fun Fest, Garfield's Pet Force, and also in the new series The Garfield Show.
Welker has also provided voices for many video game characters including Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and The Shadow Blot in Epic Mickey.
Welker provided the voice of Batman in a Scooby-Doo crossover segment of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode, "Bat-mite presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!".
Some of his most recent work is for the live action film Mr. Popper's Penguins. He also voiced Gargamel's cat Azrael for the 2011 live action film The Smurfs. However, Frank did not reprise his role as Hefty Smurf. He is also due to voice Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in the upcoming Disney video game Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two.
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