Darkwing Duck

DarkWing Duck is an American animated television series produced by The Walt Disney Company that ran from 1991–1992 on both the syndicated programming block The Disney Afternoon and Saturday mornings on ABC. It featured the eponymous anthropomorphic duck superhero whose alter ego is mild-mannered single parent Drake Mallard. It is the only direct spin-off of DuckTales.^[1]

Premise

Darkwing Duck is about the adventures of the titular superhero, aided by his sidekick and pilot Launchpad MacQuack. In his secret identity of Drake Mallard, he lives in an unassuming suburban house with his adopted daughter Gosalyn, next door to the bafflingly dim-witted Muddlefoot family. Darkwing struggles to balance his egotistical craving for fame and attention against his desire to be a good father to Gosalyn and help do good in St. Canard. Most episodes put these two aspects of Darkwing's character in direct conflict, though Darkwing's better nature usually prevails.^[2]

It was the first Disney Afternoon cartoon to emphasize action rather than adventure, with Darkwing routinely engaging in slapstick battles with both supervillains and street criminals. While conflict with villains was routine in earlier Disney Afternoon, actual fight scenes were relatively rare.

Darkwing Duck was also the first Disney Afternoon property that was produced completely as a genre parody. Prior shows would contain elements of parody in certain episodes, but would otherwise be straight-faced adventure concepts in the tradition of Carl Barks' work in the Disney comics. By contrast, every episode of Darkwing Duck is laden with references to superhero, pulp adventure, or super-spy fiction. Darkwing Duck himself is a satirical character. His costume, gas gun, and flashy introductions are all reminiscent of pulp heroes and Golden Age superheroes such as The Shadow, Doc Savage, Batman, The Green Hornet, and the Julius Schwartz Flash. The fictional city of St. Canard is a direct parody of Gotham City.

Production

Darkwing Duck was initially developed as a spin-off of the very successful DuckTales series. Darkwing Duck entered production roughly one year after DuckTales ended. Darkwing Duck was inspired by a specific episode of DuckTales: "Double-O-Duck", starring Launchpad McQuack as a secret agent. Tad Stones was directed to come up with a series around the premise, as an executive liked the title Double-O Duck; Stones was initially reluctant as he felt this would have "no heart or a sense of family" but created a pitch, with GizmoDuck, a character from the final season of DuckTales, as the sidekick. (Gizmoduck would end up as a recurring guest star)

The first pitch was rejected but Stones was ordered to try again, and decided this time to take the job more seriously. Taking the idea back to basics, he left the James Bond pastiche idea behind and ended up thinking more of The Shadow; "suddenly I was engaged and enthusiastic about the idea". Double-O Duck became a separate character to Launchpad (who was kept as the sidekick) and made into an egotist 'man of mystery' and given an array of duck-headed vehicles after Batman and a motorcycle based on Judge Dredd's Lawmaster bike. Gosalyn was introduced in order to "complicate his life" and "play havoc with his ultra smooth and sophisticated self image".

When it turned out that the title "Double-O Duck" could not be used as the Ian Fleming estate owned the 'double-o' title, Disney TV Animation held a competition to come up with a replacement. Alan Burnett, who would soon after leave Disney to work on Batman: The Animated Series, contributed the name "Darkwing Duck". This name would result in a new look (Double-O Duck was to wear a white tuxedo and black domino mask). Other elements of the show, such as Darkwing's habit of coining new catchphrass every time he announced himself, would be invented during production.^[3] (As an in-joke, the episode "A Duck By Any Other Name" would have Drake suggest Double-O Duck as a new secret identity and Launchpad remark it "sounds kinda silly")

Where most prior Disney Afternoon series included at least some characters from classic Disney animation, Darkwing Duck featured a completely original cast. Even the DuckTales characters it reused had no counterpart in early Disney shorts or even the Carl Barks comics. The exception was the episode "In Like Blunt", which featured cameo appearances by the Beagle Boys, Flintheart Glomgold, and Magica De Spell.

Cast

Main characters

• Darkwing Duck / Drake Mallard (voiced by Jim Cummings) – Average citizen by day and St. Canard's resident superhero by night. He possesses a mix of courageous altruism and a gigantic ego, two drives that constantly clash during his adventures - in "Just Us Justice Ducks", he was initially mortified that he'd be getting help against the Fearsome Five. Darkwing's origins are rather fuzzy. On one hand, he frequently claims to be a superhero on the day he became Darkwing Duck after his teenage days. On the other hand, during his childhood and teenage days, Drake was a complete dork; by his high school days, however, he'd already developed an obsession with crime-fighting ("Crash Reunion"). He's been an active superhero for an unknown number of years. In his earliest days of crimefighting, he was more focused on the headlines from his career, to the extent that in "Darkly Dawns the Duck Part 2" he laments that he has no life outside his showboating and no friends to turn to. Launchpad McQuack and Gosalyn gave him a life and help keep him grounded. In the dystopian future of "Time and Punishment", losing Gosalyn causes him to become obsessive about crime-fighting and devolve into a supervillain. His two recurring catchphrases are "I am the terror that flaps in the night", followed by an improvised metaphor before he gives his name, and the battlecry of "let's get dangerous". Because of loose continuity, there's more than one origin story for why he became Darkwing Duck - starting with "Paraducks" (inspired by his own time-travelling adult self) and ending with "Crash Reunion" (a random disguise so he could defend his high school prom from Megavolt) and "A Star is Scorned".
• Launchpad McQuack (voiced by Terry McGovern) – Darkwing Duck's sidekick, originally from DuckTales. He refers to Darkwing as "DW" and Darkwing sometimes refers to him as "LP" in return. He's Darkwing's self-proclaimed biggest fan, even spending a year designing the Thunderquack just out of fanboy urges; the hero originally found him annoying but quickly came to see him a friend.
• Gosalyn Mallard (née Waddlemeyer) (voiced by Christine Cavanaugh) – Drake Mallard's nine-year-old adopted daughter. An unstoppable bundle of energy and spunk, which Darkwing has said is more of a handful than fighting evil ("Getting Antsy"). Her grandfather was a famous scientist, murdered by Taurus Bulba. She's an occasional crime fighter - "Yucky Duck", then the "Crimson Quackette", the "Quiverwing Quack", and finally "GosmoDuck" in the Boom! Studios" comics - and often getting involved in Darkwing's affairs as herself. Gosalyn being hurt or worse is one of Darkwing's few fears. This applied to the Negaverse version of Gosalyn too, as he intended to leave the alternate reality until he learnt that the local Gosalyn's guardian was Negaduck.

Muddlefoots

• Herb Muddlefoot (voiced by Jim Cummings impersonating Andy Devine) – Father of Honker Muddlefoot, next-door neighbor of Drake Mallard (Darkwing Duck). Drake finds him very irritating but they do work together well in at least one episode. Herb sells Quackerware (the Darkwing Duck universe's version of Tupperware) as a salesman for a living.
• Binkie Muddlefoot (voiced by Susan Tolsky) – A yellow canary housewife who is invariably overbearing yet ditzy. Competent in housework and doing her chores she is often the foil to Herb's fun.
• Tankard H. "Tank" Muddlefoot (voiced by late Dana Hill) – The eldest Muddlefoot son, Tank is a bully who often makes life difficult for his younger brother, Honker. His full name is revealed in the episode "Life, The Negaverse And Everything".
• Herbert "Honker" Muddlefoot Jr. (voiced by Katie Leigh) – The Mallards' next-door neighbor and Gosalyn's best friend. His full name is revealed in the episode "Jurassic Jumble". Unlike the rest of his rather dim-witted family, Honker is massively intelligent, and demonstrates a mastery of sciences more akin to a laboratory professor than an elementary school student. He is also one of the few characters to know Darkwing's true identity.

Allies

The Justice Ducks

• GizmoDuck / Fenton Crackshell (voiced by the late Hamilton Camp) - Launchpad's old friend and Darkwing's rival super hero who was originally from DuckTales.
• Morgana McCawber (voiced by Kath Soucie) - Villainess and later Darkwing's sorceress girlfriend. Though a very powerful sorceress, Morgana has some trouble using her powers, since she forgets which spell she must use on a specific occasion. She is usually accompanied by her pet bats Eek and Squeak and her pet spider Archie.
• Neptunia (voiced by Susan Silo) - A mutated humanoid fish who is the self-appointed protector of the sea.
• Stegmutt (voiced by Joey Camen) - Stegmutt is a Stegosaurus-type dinosaur who was originally a duck working as a janitor. He was turned into a humanoid dinosaur by a mad scientist named Dr. Fossil.

S.H.U.S.H.

S.H.U.S.H. (expanded name unknown) is an intelligence agency that deals with international affairs that regular authorities cannot. Darkwing Duck often works freelance for them, but he is not an official employee.

• J. Gander Hooter (voiced by Danny Mann) - An owl who is the head director of S.H.U.S.H., and whose name is a play on J. Edgar Hoover. He regards Darkwing very highly and often calls him in on cases, where he feels that a certain element of surprise, which only Darkwing is able to create, is needed.
• Vladimir Goudenov Grizzlikof (voiced by the late Ron Feinberg) - A grizzly bear and S.H.U.S.H.'s top agent. He is depicted as very strong and adheres to S.H.U.S.H. standard procedure very closely. Gryzzlikof and Darkwing have a longstanding rivalry which stems from Gryzzlikof by the book procedure to the different style of Darkwing, which relies heavily on instinct and spontaneity. Eventually the relationship changes to mutual respect.
• Dr. Sarah Bellum (voiced by Jodi Carlisle) - A S.H.U.S.H. scientist, whose name is a pun on cerebellum. She appears only in a few early episodes featuring S.H.U.S.H.
• Derek Blunt (voiced by Peter Renaday in a British accent) - A hawk who is the greatest agent in the history of S.H.U.S.H. and the only person to ever bring down master criminal Phineas Sharp. His untrue life story has been dramatized into a movie, which annoys him greatly. When Sharp returns however, Blunt is brought out of retirement by J. Gander Hooter and partnered with Darkwing — a relationship he hates, despising Darkwing's gimmicks, even though he is admired by Darkwing, who claims Blunt was his inspiration. Only appeared in the episode "In Like Blunt" (the title itself is a parody of In Like Flint). He is apparently one of the few people who has been to Darkwing's secret hideout.

Other Heroes

• Comet Guy (voiced by William Callaway) - An alien humanoid superhero with numerous superpowers (shoots fireballs, flies, water freezing, super strength, super speed). However, he is dull witted and has a weakness: the sound of a bell makes him dance, and he cannot stop dancing until he hears a whistle. A failure on his planet, Darkwing trains him to turn his weaknesses into strengths. Darkwing later learns he comes from a planet where everyone is a superhero.

Villains

The Fearsome Five

• Negaduck (voiced by Jim Cummings) - Darkwing Duck's evil doppelganger. Negaduck is virtually identical to Darkwing except that the colors of his costume are red, black, and yellow. Negaduck has no special powers or abilities but can disguise himself as Darkwing to make the hero look like a criminal. He is very ruthless and has no problem with hurting people to get what he wants: great wealth and authority over the world. He is the leader of the Fearsome Five, a group he formed with Bushroot, Liquidator, Megavolt, and Quackerjack. In "The Duck Knight Returns", he discovered Darkwing's secret identity and attacked him at home - an event that caused the superhero to retire for a year - and later teamed up with Magica De Spell to ruin Darkwing's reputation with brainwashed, alternate reality versions of the hero. An unrelated, prototype Negaduck was created (in the episode "Negaduck") by Megavolt's Tron Splitter, an evil copy of Darkwing that had been "galvanised" into a powerful and malevolent being; in the comic "Crisis of Infinite Darkwings", the Tron Splitter was used to stop the main Negaduck, reducing him to multiple microscopic particles of good and evil. Another unrelated Negaduck is an evil Darkwing from a patallel reality called the "Negaverse" which is a nightmarish reverse version of St. Canard and which he used to rule. In the Negaverse, he was the guardian of the Negaverse Gosalyn - while the two never interacted in that episode, both the Negaverse-Bushroot and Darkwing were horrified by it. He is the original leader of the Fearsome Five, all of whom are somewhat scared of him and who he openly views as losers; in his home Negaverse, their alternate selves (the Friendly Four) were an ineffectual resistance against him.
  • Negaverse Muddlefoots and Launchpad - In the Negaverse, Negaduck enforced his rule with the help of the evil versions of Herb & Binkie Muddlefoot, Honker, and Launchpad. After Darkwing trained up the Friendly Four, these minions were swiftly beaten. They only appeared in "Life, the Negaverse, and Everything."
• Dr. Reginald Bushroot (voiced by Tino Insana) - A scientist who tried to fuse animal DNA with that of plants in an attempt to give people the ability to feed themselves through photosynthesis. The experiment was a success but with a price. Bushroot was turned into a half-duck/half-plant creature who now desperately seeks a friend or girlfriend. Bushroot uses his newfound control over plants as his main weapon and views them as people. He was the show's earliest recurring supervillain.
  • Spike - Bushroot's pet/assistant, a large carnivorous plant loosely resembling a Venus Flytrap with a shaggy mop of orange hair. He behaves much in the manner of a dog, to the point that he likes playing fetch. He once helped Darkwing Duck and Launchpad escape because he was jealous that Bushroot was paying less attention to him.
  • Posey - A "vampire potato", originally intended to be a wife for Bushroot. However, due to Spike handing him the wrong ingredients, Bushroot accidentally creates a gigantic potato that feeds on the blood of non-plants. Victims of Posey become zombified couch potatoes, doing nothing but sitting in front of the TV and eating potato-based food products. She appears (and is destroyed) in the episode "Night of the Living Spud".
• The Liquidator (voiced by Jack Angel) - Bud Flud, a slimy dog salesman who was in the bottled water business, was mutated into his present state, a water based monstrosity, after falling into a vat of a competitor's water which was revealed to be laced with a corrosive chemical during a battle with Darkwing and Launchpad. He can control all water. He constantly talks in advertising-style lingo. Since he is made of water, he and Megavolt do not interact well.
  • Liquidator's Mascots - A pair of females who appear with Liquidator in his origin episode "Dry Hard". They were the mascots for Sparkling Crystal Pure Flood Water and later for the Liquidator himself. They dressed up as various items (from water bottles to lobsters) and sang catchy tunes that related to whatever the Liquidator said.
• Megavolt (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) - Elmo Sputterspark is a rat and was a high school nerd who gained the power to control electricity when one of his experiments was sabotaged. He's former high school classmate of Drake Mallard/Darkwing Duck, and his oldest villain: the two first battled at St Canard High's senior prom. Megavolt is quite psychotic and uses his control over electricity as his main weapon. His costume consists of his original jumpsuit, gloves, boots and safety goggles from the power company as well as a giant battery worn on his back to keep his power flowing on the go and a headpiece that resembles a big plug. Megavolt was the show's creators' favorite villain and therefore the most recurring. He seems to regard light-bulbs and other electric apparatus as his friends and many of his crimes involve "liberating" them. Megavolt often referred to Darkwing as either "Darkwing Dork" or "Dorkwing". He shorts out when hit with water, a weakness that Darkwing often uses when defeating him. He was the first villain to learn Darkwing's secret identity but, being mad, forgot what it was by the end of the episode. In the comic story "The Duck Knight Returns", he was forced to briefly retire from supervillainy and get an office job (where he worked next to Drake); he found he preferred prison to working at Quackworks.
• Quackerjack (voiced by Michael Bell) - A toy maker gone insane and wearing a harlequin-style jester costume, Quackerjack uses his arsenal of dangerous playthings as weaponry while he robs banks or just causes chaos for the fun of it. He is almost never without his trademark doll, Mr. Banana Brain, which can be used as an explosive. His most common toys are mechanical toy chattering teeth of various sizes. He has been known to team up with Megavolt. In the comics by BOOM! Studios, Quackerjack has become a more dangerous villain after Negaduck destroyed Banana Brain and told him he wasn't "mean enough" to be a serious villain: he's determined to show "the world he is mean enough".
  • Mr. Banana Brain - A banana-headed doll that Quackerjack seems to always have with him. Not really a character, but the closest thing he has to a recurring sidekick and frequently makes "talk" via squeaky-voiced ventriloquism. He doesn't realise Banana Brain is a toy and that he's doing its voice. The doll was possessed by the demon Paddywack in "The Haunting of Mr Banana Brain". Negaduck deliberately destroyed him in the comic "The Duck Knight Returns", and Quackerjack has tried to create replacements.

F.O.W.L.

F.O.W.L. (Fiendish Organization for World Larceny) is a terrorist organization that antagonizes Darkwing Duck on different occasions. Their foot soldiers are called Eggmen.

• The High Command - They are the commanders of F.O.W.L. . They were always hidden in the shadows and their true names were never mentioned during the Darkwing Duck series run at all. The ones that usually talked were the one with a big head and fangs and the one with a hunched back. The one wearing the oversized hat never talked. It also appears that they were anthropomorphic birds. According to Steelbeak in "Cleanliness is Next to Badliness", they fed his predecessor through several garbage grinders when he failed them. In the Boom! comics, the rise of Quackworks decimated F.O.W.L. and a disgruntled High Command compensated by trying to summon the demon Duckthulhu.
• Steelbeak (voiced by Rob Paulsen) - Acting like a 1920s gangster, Steelbeak is a suave and urbane rooster who is the chief agent of F.O.W.L.. He gets his name from the metal beak he wears in place of his original one which was apparently lost sometime before the events of the show, though it is not revealed how. This trademark beak also serves as a weapon because it can bite through almost anything.
• Ammonia Pine (voiced by Mitzi McCall) - A former cleaning lady who worked at a research lab, Ammonia accidentally inhaled the fumes of an experimental bathroom disinfectant, which had a strange effect on her and turned her into a cleaning-obsessed villain. She was later recruited by F.O.W.L. for their dastardly plans. She hates and even fears dirt. She has a sister named Ample Grime, also a F.O.W.L. agent.
• Ample Grime (voiced by Ellen Gerstell) - Ample is Ammonia's messy, dirt-loving sister. No origin story is given for why she loves messes so much. She hates and fears cleanliness as much as Ammonia hates dirt which proves to be a problem when the two are required to team up.
• Major Synapse (voiced by John Stephenson) - The typical R. Lee Ermey-type military man. He once sent an Eggmen military unit into an active volcano so it could be "captured." He steals S.H.U.S.H.'s Norma Ray, using it to turn his useless hippie underlings into superpowered malcontents. He later used it on himself turning into a giant head with a giant brain that had major telepathic abilities until his own stupidity caused his underlings "Hotshot" and "Flygirl" to be flattened by a cartoon anvil which they are last seen crawling away under. His own superbrain explodes when Darkwing Duck, Launchpad, and Gosalyn overloaded him with questions.
  • Hotshot - One of Major Synapse's hippie underlings changed by the Norma Ray. He controls both fire and ice.
  • Flygirl (voiced by Teresa Ganzel) - One of Major Synapse's hippie underlings changed by the Norma Ray. She can move things with her mind and can also fly.

Other Villains

• Taurus Bulba (voiced by Tim Curry) - Taurus Bulba is a bull who is shown to be a ruthless and extremely dangerous major super-villain in St. Canard. He's one of the few villains implied to have committed murder, specifically of Gosalyn's grandfather. Among his objectives are his desire to give St. Canard a new kind of villain: he considered the other villains too unprofessional. He was the first major villain that Darkwing fought against and defeated, although only after Bulba proved willing to destroy himself, in order to try to kill Darkwing in the process. Though he was believed to have perished in the explosion of Canard Tower, he was later revived by F.O.W.L. in "The Steerminator" in order to become their new major agent after Steelbeak reconstructed him as a cyborg, to which he refused. He came back as the chief villain in "The Duck Knight Returns" comic story, launching a secret corporate takeover of St Canard and ruling it behind the scenes for a year before he was exposed. His name appears to be a reference to Nikolai Gogol's hero Taras Bulba, and the Latin word for "bull."
  • Hammerhead Hannigan (voiced by Laurie Faso in "Darkly Dawns the Duck," Tad Stones in "In Like Blunt") - A goat who is Bulba's lead henchman. Hammerhead is a surly goat wearing a pinstriped suit who talks and acts like a stereotypical 1930s gangster. His gimmick is that he uses his head as a blunt object to headbutt his enemies. He appears to be based on the Marvel Comics villain of the same name, although a Three Stooges reference suggests he may also have been inspired by Shemp Howard's character named Hammerhead in The Invisible Woman. His choice of attack, headbutting, may also be based on actual male goat behavior as a show of aggression & dominance. Of Taurus' henchmen, Hammerhead is the only one who went on to appear in a third episode. He was shown briefly in the episode "In Like Blunt" about to beat up Phineas Sharp when the list that Phineas was going to sell was replaced with a grocery list.
  • Hoof and Mouth (voiced by Eddie Deezen) - Bulba's lackeys, a ram and a mute donkey. A lanky, bucktoothed donkey with red hair and a green fedora, Hoof is possibly the least intelligent of the three. Both he and Mouth wear bowties and are exceptionally clumsy, and often physically abused by Hammerhead. Hoof is apparently a mute because he never says a single word in either of the episodes he appears in, apart from the occasional grunt. Slightly smarter than Hoof is Mouth, a ram wearing a red bowtie and a driving cap. Their combined names are a pun on hoof-and-mouth disease. Whereas Hoof is eternally silent, Mouth, conversely, has an apparent speech impediment which makes him talk very rapidly and repeat almost everything he says. He is the smallest of the trio, yet still bigger than Darkwing as seen during his confrontation with him aboard Taurus' airship.
  • Clovis (voiced by Marcia Wallace) - Bulba's personal secretary, a blonde cow.
• Professor Moliarty (voiced by Jim Cummings) - A mush-mouthed mole who schemes to put the surface world into an eternal darkness. His name is a reference to Sherlock Holmes nemesis James Moriarty and his persona may be inspired by Marvel Comics' Mole Man.
• Splatter Phoenix (voiced by Dani Staahl in "Brush With Oblivion," Andrea Martin in "Paint Misbehavin'") - A rejected artist known for her pompous speech (in "Paint Misbehavin'", she proclaims herself a "daringly innovative pseudo anti-neo post modern deconstructionist"), her chief weapon is a brush covered with paint that can allow her to enter paintings, animate them, or even to paint wholly new (and usually surreal-looking) creatures that help her. Along with Major Synapse, she is the only villain to ever "die" in the series, as she was "erased" by turpentine. She first appears in the episode "Brush With Oblivion", in which Darkwing Duck and his sidekicks attempt to stop her from stealing the Mona Lisa's smile. This episode features a number of clever parodies of works by famous artists such as Grant Wood, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso. It is implied that she is actually aware that she herself, along with the entire universe of the TV series, is actually animated/painted by "some higher being".
• Phineas Sharp (voiced by the late Jonathan Harris) - Appearing in the episode "In Like Blunt". Phineas Sharp is a vulture who is the most evil villain in the history of S.H.U.S.H. It took super spy Derek Blunt to defeat him. He soon returns for revenge stealing a list of S.H.U.S.H.'s agents and trying to sell it off to the highest bidder. He invited a number of other villains — including Flintheart Glomgold, the Beagle Boys, Magica De Spell, Steelbeak and Ammonia Pine of F.O.W.L., and Hammerhead Hannigan, among others — to his resort to auction off the list and use the resulting billions to buy all the tea in China. His scheme was foiled by Darkwing Duck and Blunt who switched the real list with a grocery list taken off of Horatio, his short falcon assistant.
• Tuskernini (voiced by the late Kenneth Mars) - A walrus and an ego-driven but failed Hollywood film director whose schemes are built around films. He travels with a cadre of silent yet efficient penguin sidekicks. His name is a reference to famed conductor Arturo Toscanini, though the resemblance ends there.
• Lilliput Gooney (voiced by Frank Welker) - Owned the miniature golf course, Gooney Golf, and was using a strange hat to communicate with and control ants. With his tiny minions, and his trusty shrink ray, he began turning St. Canard's monuments into miniature props for his golf course. This is essentially his modus operandi, as well as collecting some cash along the way. He is defeated when he shrinks Darkwing down to the size of the germ, and the caped crusader "infects" him. Apparently symptoms of Darkwing-itus involve one's face turning green and spotted, and is accompanied by uncontrollable sneezing.
• The Bugmaster (voiced by April Winchell) - Her real name is Bianca Beakley, a former newscaster and Gosalyn's role model. To boost ratings, Bianca became a villain and started to commit crimes by controlling insects.
• Jambalaya Jake (voiced by Michael Gough) - A character of unknown humanoid species, whose minion is an alligator named Gumbo. Jake and Gumbo both come from the bayou and have a cajun accent most reminiscent of Cajuns in the New Orleans, Louisiana locale. Jake and Gumbo first appear in the episode "Can't Bayou Love", which was Disney Afternoon episode 16. Jambalaya Jake reappears later in the series in the episode "Double Darkwings" in an attempt to get even with Darkwing using his grandmother's potions.
• Beelzebub (voiced by Marty Ingels) - The Devil, first appearing in Darkwing's dream and reality in "Dead Duck" and then for a real battle in "Hot Spells".
• Darkwarrior Duck (voiced by Jim Cummings) - A Darkwing Duck from an alternate future, where Gosalyn went missing. He first grew despondent, then tougher and more obsessive over crimefighting; soon, he'd taken over the whole city with robotic servants, alienated Launchpad, and was responsible for mass incarcerations for "crimes" like being out after 8PM. It was implied he'd killed a number of people. Gosalyn had gone missing due to time-travel to the future and she was able to end this timeline by returning home - Darkwarrior had been initially ecstatic to see her but soon turned on her for being a 'villain'. However, he couldn't bring himself to hurt her. Only appeared in "Time and Punishment" in the show, but appeared again in the comic "Crisis of Infinite Darkwings".
• Mr. Rockwell - Darkwing Duck's producer in two episodes, and an egotistical, money-focused executive who abuses his aide Crosby. He's a human being, as is Crosby. In his debut in "Twitching Channels", he became wealthy after he gained the ability to pick up the events in Darkwing's home dimension and turned them into a cartoon show. In "A Star is Scorned", an out-of-continuity episode where Darkwing is both a real hero and an actor, Rockwell tried to replace Darkwing with Bushroot to save money (so he could keep it). A tuckerisation of Tad Stones.
• Weasel Lowly - A former work colleague of Herb Muddlefoot at Quackerware Products. He was fired from his job for being a disgrace to the world of burping, plastic containers. Using a machine to turn the Quackerware products into sentient beings, he sells them while disguised as Herb. The products then ransack the customers' homes, steal their valuable belongings, and hand them over to Weasel. SHUSH targets Herb as the prime suspect. With the help of Herb Muddlefoot, Darkwing is able to uncover Weasel's scam, and clear Herb's name.
• Ordinary Guy - Ordinary Guy was a human native to the planet Mertz. His name derived from the fact he was the only person on Mertz who didn't have superpowers. As Mertz's only normal human, Ordinary Guy was constantly being "rescued" by his neighbors from "dangerous" situations. He eventually grew tired of this and disappeared, prompting the heroes to seek out Comet Guy's old friend Darkwing Duck as a replacement. In reality, Ordinary Guy had taken on a supervillain persona, Not-So-Ordinary Guy, and invented a large ray gun which would steal the superpowers of all of Mertz's heroes. He then turned the device on himself, absorbing all of the stolen powers and becoming huge and muscular. In this form, he renamed himself Extraordinary Guy. Darkwing, already lacking powers, used the machine on himself and became big enough to battle Extraordinary Guy. The two fought and eventually grew so huge they stood astride Mertz itself and used surrounding planets and stars as weapons. The battle ended when Darkwing reversed the machine against Extraordinary Guy, but not himself, turning the villain back into a normal, powerless human, and returning the superpowers to their rightful owners. Ordinary Guy almost went spinning helplessly off into space, but he was rescued at the last second by Darkwing, who told him a true hero saves the villain.
• Camille Chameleon - Originally a girl that would never fit in anywhere, Camille spent her time studying biology and became obsessed with chameleons and their ability to fit in anywhere. She managed to extract the chameleon essence and implement it in herself, giving her fantastic transforming abilities and apparently a tail. Darkwing defeats Camille when Honker turns up the heat causing her metabolism to speed up. She loses control of her shapeshifting powers and assumes many different personalities until she finally breaks down and is permanently turned into an actual chameleon. She later appeared in the Boom! Studios comics, working for Magica De Spell.
• Wacko - Wacko was an alien criminal who sought to destroy the universe using seismospheres. He was a member of a species capable of altering their body structure. In his "normal" form he was small and cute, but he could cause himself to grow huge and muscular and even stretch his body out. Captured by Captain Big Nasty of the Outer Space Patrol, he was fitted with a collar that prevented him from bulking up, and also from speaking. Wacko escaped and stole the seismospheres and fled to Earth. Found by Drake and Gosalyn Mallard and Honker and Tank Muddlefoot coming home from the theater, he was adopted by Gosalyn as a pet. With her help he was able to get the restrictive collar off, and reacquire the seismospheres which had been found and kept by Tank, who mistook them for jawbreakers. Wacko then more or less kidnapped Gosalyn and Honker and held them hostage, threatening to use the seismospheres, but he was stopped by the combined forces of Darkwing Duck and Captain Big Nasty.

Comic-original villains

• Dr. Anna Matronic - Inventor of the Silly Signal, originally built to make her Muttmatics smarter, but instead, it made them act silly. She used this weapon on S.H.U.S.H. agents to make them act like twits in the storybook The Silly Canine Caper. Anna Matronic was originally intended for an actual episode of the show which was abandoned for unknown reasons; she does, however, make a cameo appearance in In Like Blunt. She is also prominently featured in a comic story published by Marvel Comics, but for some reason, instead of a female duck as she was originally designed, she appears in the comic story as a human. Her name is a pun on animatronic.
• Duckthulhu - A parody of Cthulhu. A powerful primordial entity, F.O.W.L. High Command tried to summon him in order to enslave mankind in "F.O.W.L. Dispositions". He could mutant people into tentacled monsters that were slaved to his will; even before Duckthulhu had risen, the more weak-minded citizens of St Canard had started to transform. F.O.W.L. were wrong in believing he could be controlled and Duckthulhu came close to winning before Morgana was able to stop him.
• Mortimer L. Marquand / Cat Tankerous - A super-villain who destroyed a lot of st. Canard and has a crush on Gosalyn. Mortimer L. Marquand was just an ordinary school-age boy in the city of St. Canard. He had a deep crush on "the lovely and gentle" Gosalyn (gentle?!), but she just would not notice him. However, when Mortimer saw he had a way to win her heart. He tried building his own Gizmo Duck suit (like the one Gosalyn wore at the time) to be together. His suit didn't quite take, so he scrapped that idea. Then, out of the blue, a box containing a suit with the note reading "be a better man" and his life was changed forever.

Distribution

Episodes

Over three seasons there were a total of 91 episodes.

"Hot Spells" controversy

In the third season of the show, the creators developed a Halloween-themed episode in which Gosalyn unknowingly makes a deal with the Devil that costs Darkwing his soul. This episode was never replayed on Toon Disney after its initial airing.

Opening introduction

There are seven different versions of the Darkwing Duck introduction. The first two were aired on the Disney Channel when Darkwing Duck first premiered and featured alternate animation and a different version of the familiar theme song. The third version was used on the "Darkly Dawns the Duck" VHS. The fourth version was used in syndication, and is actually the one they currently use today. The fifth is the version used on The Disney Afternoon, and is the same as the fourth version only cut for time. The sixth and seventh introductions were used on the ABC Saturday Morning airings, and contained mostly scenes from those episodes, starting with Darkwing tiptoeing up the Audubon Bay Bridge.

Broadcast history

The two-part episode "Darkly Dawns the Duck" originally aired as an hour-length TV special on September 7, 1991 as part of a larger TV special, "The Darkwing Duck Premiere and Back to School With the Mickey Mouse Club". The film served as the show's pilot. Seasons 1 and 2 were aired simultaneously in the Autumn of 1991. Season 1 on syndication as part of The Disney Afternoon block of shows. Seasons 2 and 3 aired on Saturday mornings on ABC. All episodes remained in syndicated reruns on The Disney Afternoon until 1995 and then returned to the line up from 1996 to 1997.

The series was last seen in the U.S. on Toon Disney. Along with a number of other shows, it was removed from schedules on November 2004. Toon Disney then aired the Christmas episode "It's a Wonderful Leaf" on December 25, 2004. The show was last seen on January 19, 2007 as part of the Toon Disney Wild Card Stack. Certain episodes from the show's original run rarely re-aired while the show was on Toon Disney. These episodes appear to have been removed for content reasons. The most prominent of the rarely-seen episodes is "Hot Spells", which features a Satan-like character called Beelzebub.

Darkwing Duck was one of the first American animated TV series to be officially broadcast in syndication in the former Soviet Union.^[4]

Home media

Four VHS tapes, each containing two episodes of Darkwing Duck, were released under the title Darkwing Duck: His Favorite Adventures in the United States on September 20, 1991: "Darkly Dawns the Duck". However, most countries around the world only received releases of "Darkly Dawns the Duck" and "Justice Ducks Unite!" Each video came with two "glow-in-the-Darkwing" trading cards. Featured on the cards were Darkwing Duck, Launchpad, Gosalyn, Honker, Negaduck, Bushroot, Megavolt, and Taurus Bulba.

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released three-disc DVD box set entitled Darkwing Duck: Volume 1 on August 29, 2006. It included 27 episodes, including the two-part pilot "Darkly Dawns the Duck", which was presented in edited form as opposed to the uncut version's release on VHS. The second volume, containing the next 27 episodes, was released on August 7, 2007.^[5] Unlike DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, the episodes on the DVDs are presented in the order they aired. The sets do not contain any special features.

Video games

Darkwing Duck video game released by Capcom on the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy as a platform side-scroller. Another game with the same title was also released for the TurboGrafx-16 as an action side-scroller.

Comic books

Disney Comics published a four-issue Darkwing Duck comic book mini-series in late 1991, right around the time of the show's syndicated premiere. This mini-series was an adaptation of a draft of the script for "Darkly Dawns the Duck". Like the TaleSpin comic before it, it was meant to spin off a regular comic series, but the Disney Comics implosion happening at the time prevented that plan. However, Darkwing Duck stories were regularly printed in Disney Adventures magazine between the November 1991 and January 1996 issues. Additionally, Darkwing Duck stories were also regularly featured in Marvel Comics' short-lived Disney Afternoon comic book.

BOOM! Studios

On March 13, 2010, BOOM! Studios announced that they would be releasing a four-issue Darkwing Duck miniseries, titled "The Duck Knight Returns", starting in June of that year. The series will be written by Ian Brill and drawn by James Silvani, and will be set some time after the end of the show.^[6] BOOM! later announced that due to positive fan reaction, the comic series would be extended indefinitely as an ongoing title.^[7] This first trade paperback collection of the initial four issues of the comic was released in the fall of 2010^[8]

Unlike the original show, the comic strengthened Darkwing's ties to the parent show DuckTales and began to use a number of Carl Barks characters like Magica De Spell (allied to Negaduck in the second story) and cameoing Scrooge McDuck and Gyro Gearloose. A 4-Part Crossover story with Disney's DuckTales, titled "Dangerous Currency", is also being released with parts 1 and 3 for DuckTales #5 and #6, and parts 2 and 4 for Darkwing Duck #17 and #18. The comic also made a lot of homages to other Disney shows: Magica's powered up form in #7 has emblems that reference film villains like Hades and Jafar, someone holds a sign saying "Bring Back Bonkers" in the background of #6, and #3 shows Launchpad tried to get a job with the Rescue Rangers from Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers.

The eighteenth issue, which ships in October 2011, is planned to be the end of the series.^[9] With Darkwing Duck Vol. 5 Dangerous Currency crossover being released in November 2011 and is the final printing of the series.

"Let's get dangerous!" in other languages

The show was dubbed in several different languages for international distribution. As such, Darkwing's catchphrase "Let's get dangerous!" had to be translated into a similarly catchy phrase for the target language. It often did not keep its literal sense, as a direct translation was unlikely to hold the same impact.

Reception

Darkwing Duck was named the 93rd best animated series by IGN, calling it "one of the many reasons why after-school cartoons rule".^[10]

See also

• DuckTales
• List of anthropomorphic animal superheroes
• Paperinik

References

External links

• Darkwing Duck at the Internet Movie Database
• Darkwing Duck at TV.com