DARKWING DUCK Was Set in a Different Duckiverse than DUCKTALES, Creator Discusses Inspiration
I absolutely loved Darkwing Duck when I was growing up! That was a cartoon that my brothers and I used to watch all the time. It premiered in 1991 and ran for three seasons before it was cancelled, before the TV networks got cheap and replaced it with crappy TV.
The classic Disney series featured the voice of Jim Cummings as the dangerous hero, Christine Cavanaugh as his daughter Gosalynm and Terry McGovern as his sidekick Launchpad. The series is described as combining “the kitchiness of Silver Age comics and the gags of the Golden Age of Warner Bros. animation.”
During a recent interview with THR, Darkwing Duck creator Tad Stones talked about his show and offered some interesting insight into how it came to be and why they did some of the things they did with it.
"I told the guys, every episode you have to do at least one catch phrase, and every episode, Darkwing has to say the words, 'Let's get dangerous.’ If you are going to have a slogan you have to commit to it as a slogan."
One of the more interesting things is that even though the series was inspired by DuckTales and features some shared characters from that series, Stones says that Darkwing Duck is not a DuckTales spinoff and that it does not take place in the same universe, which kinda blows my mind!
Darkwing Duck was originally supposed to be a series that focused around Launchpad as a secret agent named Double-O Duck. This version of the character was featured in an episode of DuckTales, and that’s the character Disney executive Jefferey Katzenberg wanted. Stones pitched the series with a James Bond-style theme, but he said it “lacked heart” and Katzenberg rejected it. He was then asked to try again, and it was on his second attempt that he came up with Darkwing Duck. When talking about his inspiration behind it he said:
"It was my half remembered covers of The Flash where the Flash had a beard or was super fat or had a giant head because he had super evolved. It was all that in my brain saying, 'Ok here's my story.”
Even though Launchpad was in DuckTales, Stones explained that in Darkwing Duck he was a much more competent pilot than in DuckTales, which makes him a different version of the character.
"Because Launchpad appeared in DuckTales and we used Roboduck as the Superman character, the hero who gets all the glory as opposed to Darkwing, fans try to connect the two realities. They are two different universes in my book. We work in the alternate Duckiverse.”
I don’t care that the series took place in a different Duckiverse, it still all worked out awesomely! One of the big things that he wanted to make sure the series had was a lot of heart, and he did that with the wonderful relationship between Barking and his daughter.
"I get told at conventions how important that relationship was to people. I’ve I had people near tears saying they had a rough family life and the father-daughter energy of that show was super important to them."
One thing he surprisingly made sure the show didn’t have was continuity! They purposely ignored it, which would be such a huge frustration for today’s audience, but that was a big part of the charm of Darkwing Duck. Stones says:
"It drives fans crazy, but I was not a huge fan of continuity. I grew up with Silver Age continuity with the comics. Yeah, I know Lois Lane doesn't know Clark Kent is Superman. She suspects something. Jimmy Olsen's his pal. He went to high school with Lana Lang. The basics everybody knew. But there was really no arc or change. Every time you picked up a comic, you knew where you were starting."
As a fan who grew up on this show, it’s really cool to learn some of the inspiration behind it and what Stones’ vision for it was. There was a method to the madness of the show! To read a little bit more about what he had to say about the series click here.