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What A Cartoon! - Darkwing Duck "Life, the Negaverse and Everything"

Let's get dangerous! It's time to take a trip back to The Disney Afternoon by digging deep into one of its most important (and entertaining) shows, Darkwing Duck! Disney's duck superhero broke new ground for their TV animation department by choosing to go a more Warner Brothers-y route with plenty of slapstick, wild takes, and utter destruction of the fourth wall. The result is a fun little series that aged incredibly well and influenced Disney to be even more experimental in the '90s and beyond. This week, Cartoons 101's Matthew Jay joins us to examine the strange history of Darkwing Duck and one of its most inventive and villain-heavy episodes ever.

What A Cartoon! - Darkwing Duck "Life, the Negaverse and Everything"

Comments

Great episode!

Wavvy Mango

Everything makes sense now!

Bob Mackey

my first true "fandom" as a kid. I remember meeting darkwing at one of my first trips to Disneyland and losing my newly bought darkwing watch to the waters of pirates! I remember being super mad that there was one episode that my parents wouldn't let me watch because Darkwing died and went to hell and they weren't having any of that...

kid presentable

Darkwing Duck was hands down my favourite Disney Afternoon show and I liked Splatter Phoenix so much that I grew up to become her

nina matsumoto

As a kid I always felt that in addition to Batman, Darkwing Duck was influenced by Spider-Man. When I see Megavolt, I am reminded of Electro. The Liquidator makes me think of Hydroman. And Fearsome Five feel like the Sinister Six to me.

Ken R

Thanks for the response.

ShyRanger

As someone who has had to watch the film multiple times recently because his kids discovered it, I can say The Fox and the Hound is not a good movie. I did see it as a kid, though I didn't own it, and thought it was fine. The movie has a solid premise, but it moves way too fast and it's really manipulative with its scenes. Todd and Copper meet in the film and the owl immediately goes into her "Best of Friends" song - I mean, come on! The songs are bad too. The animation does hold up fairly well, and some of the backgrounds are gorgeous, although the unanimated waterfall looks pretty lame. The movie would probably never be confused for a classic if Disney didn't print the word on every reissue.

Joe Hodgson

My mom always called him Dickwad Duck. I never really got into comics as a kid, but I loved the Tick, Darkwing, and Freakazoid, they had the feel of superhero shows with something more going on.

Scott Sutton

Defunctland and other theme park channels like Yesterworld are my go to Youtube channels when I'm anxious. Henry, I'd also recommend Podcast: The Ride, which is 3 childless grown men (who are UCB comedians) discussing theme park rides. They recently had Tony Baxter on the show and he told the story of pitching Splash Mountain directly to Breck Eisner.

Seth Finkelstein

As a child of 1985 I grew up on The Disney Afternoon starting with Gummi Bears. Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers was my first love but Darkwing Duck was my jam. Somewhere in my parents' attic is the entire line of action figures, the ratcatcher, and Darkwing's gas gun. Good times.

Milton Allemand

Darkwing Duck is a show that I need to get back to. I watched it some when it aired, but not religiously or with a ton of enthusiasm. Batman and X-Men kind of broke me as they convinced me that I should be watching serious cartoons now and I started to shun the silly stuff. About the only comedy series I stuck with was Ren & Stimpy. I'd gravitate back towards comedy when Cartoon Network got involved with the original What A Cartoon show, but I did miss out on a lot. Just not Bonkers, as that show seems like it was pretty bad. It should come as no surprise then that my preferred Disney Afternoon show is probably Gargoyles.

Joe Hodgson

I do hope that you all get to watch the new DuckTales series, it’s an excellent adventure show. In the new series Darkwing Duck is just a cheesy old show (kind of like Batman 66) that only Launchpad loves, and the DW theme song also pops up in the last two episodes of the first season

Great episode, guys I'm always fascinated by Disney in the late 80's/early 90's when they were experimenting with different TV shows and such and had no idea they ever considered a Rocky and Bullwinkle reboot. I'm super excited for a potential Gargoyles episode...so many great ones to choose from..."Future Tense" might be my favorite, but it's also pretty lore-heavy for someone to get into right away.

Andrew Bouvier

It's pretty famously disliked in the animation community, and production was a disaster. You can read plenty about it online.

Bob Mackey

I enjoyed TaleSpin, they did do some interesting things. Like that banned episode where Baloo reignites the cold war (not kidding). edit: Corrected the error and am unironically disgusted with myself.

docbrownn

Woah woah waoh. Did Bob say Fox & The Hound isn't a good movie. Oh man I gotta disagree so hard cause I consider that a classic. The fact that the movie is about growing up, growing apart, and society tearing friends apart is a very strong story in this movie. I'm open to different opinions, but I gotta hear more about why you dislike it Bob.

ShyRanger


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