Let’s Get Dangerous! Talking ‘Darkwing Duck’ With Daniel Kibblesmith

He’s a daring duck of mystery, and in February, Darkwing Duck returns in a new volume of comic adventures from Dynamite Entertainment. 

Taking the reins on telling his adventures this time around is veteran television, comedy and comics writer Daniel Kibblesmith, artists Ted Brandt and Ro Stein, colorist Dearbhla Kelly, and letterer Fabio Amelia along with a cover by original Darkwing creator Tad Stones. The debut will also feature variant covers from comics superstar Mark Bagley, as well as Nicoletta Baldari, Ciro Cangialosi, and Brandt and Stein. Taking the form of Darkwing’s autobiography, the volume will see Darkwing’s adventures through his eyes. We got an opportunity to sit down with Kibblesmith to talk about the franchise, why he loves it, and what fans have to look forward to with this new volume.

Tony Thornley: Hey Daniel! We’re going to start with a softball — what’s your history with Darkwing Duck?

Daniel Kibblesmith: I watched it instead of playing softball. This is barely a joke, I was an indoor kid, obsessed with cartoons, superheroes, and the NES, and Darkwing Duck is a towering figure in all three of these things. When the show dropped, I was instantly obsessed with it, and it helped bridge me from cartoons targeting slightly younger viewers (like DuckTales, which I was also obsessed with) into more sophisticated and ambitious superhero, comedy, and genre-blending shows to come, like Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men and The Tick. But Darkwing was always special, it had everything, comedy, warmth, incredible design sense, action, goofiness. It remains an incredibly watchable show.

Tony: Darkwing is one of several characters from the ’90s trend of comedic and slightly incompetent heroes. What about that makes the character fun to write?

Daniel: It’s that moment-to-moment whiplash between pulling off a feat of derring-do using his well-earned and very genuine hyper-competence and then immediately facing some backfire due to his overconfidence or just bad luck. He’s arrogant and self-aggrandizing, but also genuinely selfless and would do anything for his family. And he never stops moving, physically, in the sense of great, traditional animation, or spiritually, in his appetite for justice and adventure. He’s great. He gets things done and he’s proud to be the one to do it.

Tony: Darkwing has a great supporting cast — Launchpad, Goslyn, all his rogues — and world around him. How does that shape the stories you’re able to tell?

Daniel: I don’t think the stories exist without them. The Darkwing Duck pilot is really a two-part unpacking of how this guy cannot become fully actualized unless he has people in his own life that he cares about, who can keep his ego in check, who can give him a personal reason to do what he does. You get the sense that a lot of Darkwing’s superhero career has been driven by his sense of his own greatness, but ultimately you become a GOOD or COMPLETE superhero because you’re a person who recognizes a responsibility to sacrifice your own safety or wellbeing to protect others. Gosalyn and Launchpad make him a fuller person and give him people to protect. He always wanted to save “the city,” but from now on, that will always also include saving his own family.

Tony: Has the wider Disney Ducks mythos — Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, DuckTales — had an influence on your stories? And how did it shape it for you?

Daniel: This particular run is entirely Darkwing focused, but it definitely influenced it in as far as they’re all humorous, genre blending, all-ages adventure stories for the whole family, where “ducks” are the perfect iconic (in the Scott McCloud sense) stand-ins for familiar and relatable people with clear and consistent personalities. It’s good stuff. I get why we keep making more of it.

Tony: You’re taking a fun approach here — your volume is going to be framed as Goslyn writing an autobiography of her father’s adventures. What storytelling avenues does that open up?

Daniel: Slight correction, it’s Darkwing writing his own autobiography and Gosalyn and others are his reluctant audience as he recounts some of his greatest exploits. Which may or may not have actually happened. Describing himself as a “Fun-reliable Narrator,” we get to see Darkwing’s adventures in “current day” (our stories take place some time during the earlier side of his superhero career, after the arrival of Launchpad and Gosalyn), but we also get to see flashback chapters from his book, revealing crucial milestones in his reinvention of himself as a superhero. Kind of like Batman Begins, if Batman might also be making it all up.

Tony: My bad for misunderstanding, but that makes it even better! Darkwing has such a great rogues gallery, almost Batman or Spider-Man level. Is there any one of the bunch that you were most excited to include?

Daniel: I’ve been a broken record about how good they are. Spider-Man and Batman are absolutely fair comparisons — I always throw out The Flash and The Fantastic Four as having especially great Rogue’s Galleries as well. But I’d put the Darkwing villains up against any of them, the personalities, the designs, the silhouettes and color palettes (Negaduck’s especially), the power-sets that are so perfectly conceived for animation and creative non-violent problem solving, since Disney Afternoon cartoons were not especially violent, and Darkwing more often than not has to think his way to a solution. I love them all. Megavolt is my favorite. Bushroot is a softie, so I have a soft spot for him. Everyone always says Liquidator pops to the front of their brain, and I agree, he’s a very particular and memorable combination of ideas.

Tony: How has your comedy writing career prepared you for this series?

Daniel: Malcolm Gladwell is a trillionaire fraud and his books should be fed to rabbits, but, in his popularization of the totally fake 10,000 hour expertise theory, he did stumble onto a pretty catchy articulation of the idea that practice makes perfect. I am not perfect, but I have definitely written 10,000 jokes, so they’re still pretty good right now, before I get a little older, and my kid becomes a teenager, and then all my jokes will become bad. The jokes in this comic are good.

Tony: Ted Brandt and Ro Stein are already some of the best known artists out there for comedy comics. What have they brought to the table so far that’s excited or surprised you?

Daniel: Great question. I was already a huge fan of their work, so the facet of this project that really surprised me is — I’ve never seen them draw ducks! They do an incredible job of keeping everybody “on model” to the extent the audience expects from an IP comic of a nostalgic fan-favorite property. But their style and signatures are still so clear that the art is unmistakably them. It’s a perfect balance and I feel so lucky to get to tell these stories with them.

Tony: Has there been a sequence that you’ve seen from them that’s made you go “I cannot wait for fans to see this”?

Daniel: It would’ve been the opening scene of Issue #1, but I believe that’s been leaked to the press so … if you’re reading this, go find it.

Tony: Has the “unlimited budget” of comics — when it comes to the fact that you can sometimes do bigger and crazier stuff than TV or movies can — helped you and the team at all? And do you ever go into an issue thinking “let’s top that”?

Daniel: With a lot of comics I write, absolutely. With Darkwing Duck — weirdly, no. Because I’m such a big fan of the original show, its tone, its characterization, its humor, and visual setpieces, that I’m just trying to come up with new stories and gags that could slot right in with the original stuff. And the original stuff is already very ambitious and cartoony in ways that no live-action superhero show could attempt. Giant vacuum cleaners, frankenstein potato wives, exploding Krypton pastiches. I don’t feel like my job is to top it, I feel like my job is to try and make more of this thing we all love that hasn’t been around for a while.

Tony: What would you want fans to know about this book — whether it’s hype, reassurance or just excitement — before it debuts?

Daniel: One — We’re getting covers (and some behind the scenes wisdom) from the creator of Darkwing Duck, Tad Stones. Two — Everyone is so in love with this property that we’re all working at the top of our game and I think it shows. Three — Final cut-off date to pre-order from your local shop is MONDAY, JANUARY 20th. After that, you’ll be rolling the dice on it selling out when it drops WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12th. There have been a lot of great Darkwing Duck comics. I have read almost all of them (some are hard to find). But if you’ve loved them, or if you’ve never picked one up before, if you miss the character, if you want to share him with your own kids — this is the series you’ve been waiting for.

Tony: Thank you Daniel! You heard it here — Final Order Cut-Off for Darkwing Duck #1 is Monday, January 20th, and the issue is out Feburary 12th from Dynamite Entertainment!