[CRASHING]
Another order of dastardly delinquents
deposited on your doorstep courtesy of Darkwing Duck.
He's a cloaked defender of the innocent.
He's a brooding father sworn to fight the impossible.
He is a duck man inspired by the pulp heroes of the 1930s.
When you lay out the specifics of Darkwing Duck
under the cold light of day, it really
does become a serious head scratcher.
Taking the highly beloved and long running
Donald Duck archetype and then forcing it sideways
through our great grandparents favorite radio serial,
it really does beg the question.
Who was Darkwing Duck for?
Before we dive too deep into today's episode,
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Now I must go.
The scent of crime is in the air.
Created by Tad Stones, longtime Disney animator,
Darkwing Duck was originally envisioned
as a spin-off of the highly popular Ducktales animated TV
show.
Mike Eisner, the freshly minted CEO of Disney,
liked the title of an existing Ducktales episode
"Double-O-Duck."
He encouraged the team of animators
to brainstorm what a new show with that title could be about.
Unsurprisingly, "Double-O-Duck" as it was originally planned
was to be a direct parody of James Bond.
This is logical because the Ducktales episode that
featured the name showcased Launchpad McQuack as a Bond
parody character named Bruno von Beak.
However, this was reconsidered as there
was a fear that a Bond parody show would be too limiting
for a kid's space.
When do you put business people pleasure, Poopsie.
Let's smoochy smoochy.
The character was repositioned as an homage
to the pulp heroes of the '30s.
On minor internal Disney animator naming contest
later, you get Darkwing Duck.
Drake Mallard, a pun on The Shadow's
original secret identity Kent Allard,
would star in over 100 episodes of animated fun.
The character would be joined by a trusty cadre of supporting
characters, namely Gosalyn, his daughter, Launchpad
McQuack, his pilot, biggest fan, and sidekick,
and Gizmo Duck, the recurring would-be superhero robot who
was originally intended to be a Robocop parody
but eventually slotted into something
much more of the Superman to Darkwing's Batman.
When you step back and really look at the show,
you're forced to ask yourself a simple question.
Who in their right mind would even
greenlight something like this?
Sure Ducktales was popular towards the end of the '80s
and for good reason.
There's some of the best animated characters
ever to grace the small screen, but you know what they're not?
Weirdly on the nose parodies of characters from the 1930s.
Darkwing Duck is a pastiche of the urban crusader
and pulp adventure hero archetypes of the 1920s
and '30s who had all but completely been erased
from the cultural consciousness by the time the show was
released.
What's even weirder, it's actually a really intelligently
constructed pulp story that both stands apart
from the characters it's parodying
and deconstructs them on a searingly precise level.
Pulp characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage and Green Hornet
all have certain tropes associated with
their long-running series--
supporting casts, secret identities, rogues galleries,
and usually oversized egos--
and Darkwing Duck lampoons all of these tropes expertly.
So where's the press?
I thought this was the age of media glut.
Where's the action news van when you need them?
No hero is worth their salt unless they
have compelling supporting characters.
Doc Savage has the Fabulous Five, Green Hornet has Kato,
and The Shadow has Margo Lane.
In Darkwing Duck that trope is embraced
by giving him Launchpad McQuack as a lovable sidekick
and his daughter Gosalyn, who emotionally grounds
the adventures and gives even small-stake stories
a heart and emotional core that many pulp stories lack.
Why does Darkwing Duck fight crime?
To clean up the streets and make them safer for his daughter
and earn the adoration of his one and only fan Launchpad.
On the topic of secret identities,
Drake Mallard is really a ghost.
Darkwing Duck is the true personality,
and Drake Mallard is a name that he adopts in order
to take care of his daughter and attempt
to assimilate into society.
He literally doesn't have a job.
This is a riff on Batman and his relationship
with the Bruce Wayne persona.
The same can be said for Darkwing Duck's rogues gallery.
Characters like Megavolt, Crackerjack, Bushroot,
and Liquidator are ripped directly from the Silver Age
pages of The Flash.
Their explicit purpose is to parody and comment
on the tropes of the characters that
were created during Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz's
editorial reigns at DC Comics.
And you know what.
They do it.
They really do it.
Once another trope of the long-running comic book
character shows up, Negaduck, it's hilarity
and meta commentary decades before anyone was doing it.
Negaduck's color scheme even mirrors Professor Zoom,
The Flash's archenemy.
Even Gosalyn's presence in the show, his adopted daughter who
first appears in the pilot episode,
"Darkly Dawns the Duck," goes to show you
how aware of the tropes of the genre Tad Stones and his crew
were and how they were actively working to turn it on its head.
The pilot shows dark wing duck, a media-hungry glory
hound, attempting to fight crime as an exercise
in fueling his ego.
But after encountering a young girl who truly needs his help,
he sets aside his ego and attempts
to become a better person, you know,
while still fighting crime and hoping there are still
a few cameras around.
Yes.
It's headline city.
Stones and company were literally
trying to analyze how Bruce Wayne would have turned out
if he had a child to take care of
and pull him out of his egotistical war on crime.
This is a scathing indictment of the vigilante mindset
that all of our favorite four-color superheroes
suffer from.
In many ways Darkwing Duck's commitment to its joke
is what makes it succeed.
You don't have to know anything about the tropes of pulp
characters because the show itself does such a good job
and incorporates the viewers into the idea.
Even though the show is funny and a seemingly low-stakes
adventure parody, you immediately
become invested in the characters and the world
because the show is serious about its silliness.
And in the strangest creative decision
yet, there are three different origin stories
for Darkwing Duck over the course of the show.
They're featured in the episode "Paraducks," "Clash Reunion,"
and "The Secret Origin of Darkwing Duck."
And I know, I know.
I can practically hear the people
in the comments saying but The Phantom,
The Shadow, The Rocketeer, and Dick Tracy all
got movie adaptations in the '90s,
but you know what the only other conjoining
factor of those films is?
They all flopped.
You will forget about me.
Everyone in Hollywood was chasing the Tim Burton's Batman
money all throughout the '90s, and no one succeeded.
No one.
All of those previously mentioned
live-action adaptations of pulp comic book and comic strip
characters, they all lost money in the box office.
However, you know what succeeded and was put immediately
into syndication?
Darkwing Duck.
So the final question is why did this show
work for kids when all the other attempts at staging pulp
adventures failed?
Turns out the devil is in the details.
The show is so good, the characters
are so complex and well-rounded, and the critiques
of existing genre entries are so precise that it doesn't really
matter that the show was talking about properties
from generations past.
It works on a story level to draw the viewer in and build
a world that they want to live in.
The meta commentary and deconstruction
is just icing on the cake, and the secret sauce of everything
here is that the enthusiasm that the creators had
was contagious.
Even if you don't have a pre-existing love of pulp
characters--
It's-- it's-- it's--
Beats the dickens out of me.
The deep and abiding love that these creators have is obvious.
You instantly get that this is a passion
project for everyone involved.
The reason this show was able to connect with children
of the early 1990s is that it made the hyper-specific turn
into something universal.
And that's all we have for today's episode.
What do you think?
Is there another parody of an existing genre
that's so good it actually becomes
an entry into that category?
Let us down in the comments below
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