Darkwing Duck
Darkwing Duck titles.
Format	Animated Series, Action, Adventure, Mystery
Created by	Tad Stones
Starring	Jim Cummings Christine Cavanaugh Terry McGovern
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	91 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	22 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC Syndication
Original run	September 8, 1991 – December 5, 1992
Chronology
Preceded by	Acting Sheriff
Followed by	The Dream Is Alive: The 20th Anniversary Celebration Of Walt Disney World
Related shows	Duck Tales (1987) Quack Pack (1996)

Darkwing Duck is an American animated television series produced by The Walt Disney Company that ran from 1991-1995 and 1996-1997 on both the syndicated programming block The Disney Afternoon and Saturday mornings on ABC. It featured an eponymous superhero anthropomorphic duck with the alter ego of Drake Mallard (voiced by Jim Cummings). It is the first of two spin-offs of Ducktales.

[edit] Characters

The main characters were:

• Darkwing Duck (Jim Cummings) - Drake Mallard, average citizen by day and St. Canard's resident superhero by night.
• Gosalyn Mallard (Christine Cavanaugh) - Drake "Darkwing Duck" Mallard's 9-year-old adopted daughter. Occasional crime fighter as "Crimson Quackette" and later as "Quiverwing Quack".
• Launchpad McQuack (Terry McGovern) - Darkwing Duck's sidekick, originally from DuckTales. He refers to Darkwing as "DW" and Darkwing often calls him "LP".
• Honker Muddlefoot (Katie Leigh) - The Mallards' next door neighbour and Gosalyn's best friend.
• Herb Muddlefoot (Jim Cummings) - 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 Quakerware (the Darkwing Duck universe's version of Tupperware) as a salesman for a living.
• Binkie Muddlefoot (Susan Tolsky) - A yellow chicken housewife who is invariably overbearing yet ditzy. Competent in housework and doing her chores she is often the foil to Herb's fun.
• Tank Muddlefoot (Dana Hill) - The eldest Muddlefoot son, Tank is a bully who often makes life difficult for his younger brother, Honker.

[edit] Premise

Darkwing Duck is about the adventures of the titular superhero, aided by his sidekick and pilot Launchpad. In his secret identity of Drake Mallad, 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.

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 two speciic episodes of DuckTales, Double-O-Duck and The Masked Mallard. The original concept had Launchpad McQuack as the star. Instead, Launchpad appeared as Darkwing's sidekick in the finished product. Gizmoduck, a character from the final season of DuckTales, also appeared in a handful of crossover-themed episodes. The name "The Masked Mallard" became an epithet often used to refer to Darkwing himself.

Where most prior Disney Afternoon series featured 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 Disney comics. It was the also first Disney Afternoon cartoon to emphasize action rather than adventure, with Darkwing routinely engaging in slapstick battles with both supervillians 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 satire. Prior shows would contain elements of satire in certain episodes, but would otherwise be straight-faced adventure concepts in the tradition of Carl Barks's 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 such as the Sandman, Crimson Avenger, The Green Hornet, and most especially The Shadow. The fictional city of St. Canard and Darkwing's rogues gallery are direct parodies of Gotham City and Batman, respectively.

[edit] Episodes

Over three seasons there were a total of 91 episodes.

[edit] 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, but due to the addition of Jetix and other Disney shows to the channel, it has vanished completely from the network. Along with a number of other shows, it was removed from schedules in November 2004.

Toon Disney aired the Christmas episode featuring Bushroot on December 25, 2004. The show was last seen on Toon Disney in the United States 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 he 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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, Launchpad, Gosalyn, Honker, Negaduck, Bushroot, Megavolt, and Taurus Bulba.

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released 3-disc DVD box set entitled Darkwing Duck: Volume 1 on August 29, 2006. It includes 27 episodes, including the 2-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.^[1] Unlike DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, the episodes on the DVD's are presented in the order they aired. The sets do not contain any special features.

[edit] Reception

Darkwing Duck was named the 93rd best animated series by IGN, calling it one of the many reasons why after-school cartoons rule.^[2]

[edit] Video games

There was a Darkwing Duck video game released by Capcom on the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy. Another game was also made for the TurboGrafx-16.

[edit] "Let's get dangerous" in other languages

The show was dubbed in several different languages for international distribution. As such, the 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 of the phrase was unlikely to hold the same impact.

His other common introductory catchphrase was, "I am the terror that flaps in the night…!", usually followed by a somewhat strained metaphor^[4], similar to the declarations of Batman.

[edit] See also

• DuckTales
• List of anthropomorphic animal superheroes
• Paperinik

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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