Super Duck, or Super Duck: The Cock-Eyed Wonder is an obscure Funny Animal character who started in 1943 and got his own comic book series in 1944., edited by MLJ, now known as Archie Comics. As its title indicated, it was about a superhero duck. Super Duck would eat "A-Z pills" to gain powers to stop villains. The first issue's cover showed Supes grabbing Adolf Hitler and Hirohito in his hands, which kinda set him up as a Wartime Cartoon.
The comic got quickly Retooled, however. Carl Barks's Donald Duck comics were popular at the time, so Super Duck was reimagined as a gag comic with a suburban setting. Super Duck himself became an Unlucky Everydude character, with a girlfriend, Uwanna, a nephew called Fauntleroy and many Dog Face extras. It shows even more that it is a case of Follow the Leader: Fauntleroy looked very much like Donald Duck's nephews Huey Dewey and Louie, even had Donald Duck's middle name "Fauntleroy", and the anthropormorphic dog extras looked like weird Goofy clones. Nowadays, the series is best remembered for being a very transparent knock-off.
As the series went by, its art evolved to distance itself from Donald Duck, but it was still too obviously derivative, and the series ended in 1960.
In 2020, after lying dormant for almost 60 years, a new four issue mini-series was announced, to be written by Frank Tieri and Ian Flynn. The first issue launched in April of that year, after which it seemingly entered an indefinite hiatus.
This comic provides examples of:
- Animal Superheroes: Super Duck actually started as a superhero duck with a cape, who got strength from special pills.
- Art Evolution: The comic went through this starting from the first couple of issues. At the end of its run, it tried to not look as much as Donald Duck's adventures, but it didn't help much.
- Artefact Title: Why is a comic about a loser everyman anthro duck called "Super Duck"? Because he actually started as a superhero.
- Comically Cross-Eyed: Super Duck himself, which is even part of the full title.
- Downer Ending: One of the many bad things about this series is the number of stories whose depressing endings are more painful than entertaining to read. One comic had Super Duck mortgage his house for a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme and be unable to pay it back, ending with a homeless Super Duck and Fauntleroy driving to the "poor house".
- Expy: Super Duck is obviously one to Donald, and Fauntleroy to Huey, Dewey and Louie.
- Genre Shift: From comedic superhero to suburban slice-of-life comedy.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: A notable aversion in that, despite being a Donald Duck clone, Super always wears trousers and shoes.
- Human Like Foot Anatomy: The anthro ducks have humanoid white legs/feet, in contrast to Disney's ducks who (usually) have yellow webfoot legs.
- Limited Wardrobe: During most of the comic run, Super Duck would wear the same red lederhosen.
- Ms. Fanservice: Uwanna usually looks and dresses very glamorous, and is often considered the highlight of the comic.
- Quacking Up: It's a comedy comic series about a cross-eyed loser duck.
