To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Darkwing Duck, which aired its first episode on Sept. 8, 1991, The Hollywood Reporter chatted with series creator Tad Stones and got him to open up about the show’s lack of continuity and offer advice for whomever tries to reboot it.
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Even though Darkwing Duck was a spin-off of Ducktales, using Scrooge McDuck’s pilot Launchpad McQuack as a lead character and taking large chunks of its inspiration from the two episodes “Double-O-Duck” and “The Masked Mallard,” Stones says they don’t exist in the same universe.
“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,” Stones explained. “They are two different universes in my book. We work in the alternate Duckiverse.”
Stones says the show’s lack of continuity, such as Darkwing having multiple origin stories, was inspired by the comic books he grew-up reading. “It drives fans crazy, but I was not a huge fan of continuity,” he shared. “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.”
And what’s his advice on a Darkwing Duck reboot? “You want to do Darkwing for 2017 or ’18. Not for 25 years ago,” he said, “so the show should be different and should have a different life to it.”
Villains beware! Caped crime fighter Darkwing Duck (voiced by Jim Cummings) is on the job. With his loyal sidekick, Launchpad (voiced by Terry McGovern), and a whole bunch of zany high-tech gadgets, Darkwing does his best to keep the city of St. Canard safe — and that’s the easy part of his day! Darkwing must juggle the responsibilities of being a superhero and being a dad to nine-year-old Gosalyn (voiced by Christine Cavanaugh).
