I mean, he's just starting out. It's not like he's going to start out inventing stuff without any hero experience... But then again, they may forget later
Original Bulba was less a mob boss and more a Bond villain anyway. He had a gang, but it was entirely geared around getting him a mad science superweapon so he could wreak havoc.
He reminded me of Spider-Man: The Animated Series' version of The Kingpin, who was ostensibly the head of the mafia but spent most of his time in a supertech evil lair scheming up ways to use supervillains to take over the world.
We now have a teaser
for the new Darkwing episode for DuckTales (2017). It seems they are bringing the Fearsome Four into the story as well, in a Refugee from TV Land manner.
....Hell yeah.
I haven't watched much of this season (and I wasn't really watching much of season two), but for this....I'm back.
One Strip! One Strip!Heh. I just realized: The opening theme is sung from Darkwing's point of view. That's how he sees himself.
....should I be watching out for a Slowpoke picture?
One Strip! One Strip!C'mon man!
~A cloud of smoke and he appears!
A master of surprise!
Who's that cunning mind behind
That shadowy disguise!~
I mean, sounds like how Drake would talk himself up to me!
Also, the first two lines of the song:
A daring duck of mystery!
Champion of right!
Our boy is hyping himself up.
One Strip! One Strip!It's a Bragging Theme Tune, and Darkwing is a braggart who isn't taken seriously by anyone else. So yes, it's about how Darkwing sees himself.
If I remember correctly, Darkwing typically starts every episode as a bumbling Loser Protagonist up until he pulls himself together and beats the bad guys, opposed to the Invincible Hero the lyrics set him up as.
OG Darkwing suffered from Aesop Amnesia, as he basically had to undergo variants of the same 'stop being so full of yourself and focus, and listen to others while you're at it' principle almost every episode. New Darkwing appears to have much, much less baseline competence to work with so far but in trade a much better understanding of his limits (and is a humbler, better team worker).
This is probably because OG Darkwing was older and more set in his ways; there's a change for the better during the pilot thanks to Gosalyn and LP's influence but afterwards DW keeps pretty much falling into the same mistakes over and over and getting over them just to fall back right until the end. The comics somewhat remedy this by having the luxury of working with longer stories allowing character arcs.
I was thinking, is Ducktales' version of Darkwing Duck more like a Silver Age comic, rather than a Silver Age spoof? You know, something definitely good in its own way but kinda outdated in some storytelling aspects.
I came to this conclusion for two reasons. 1) Without Gosalyn and Launchpad, Darkwing show loses all emotional heart to the stories. 2) Literally never it was mentioned that it's a comedy. We only know that he takes on goofy villains like Jambalaya and he's lighthearted in comparison to Not-Nolan's take.
Well, Silver Age comics often did have emotional beats and twists, especially after Stan Lee rewrote the rules for the Silver Age comicbooks.
And we know little about the show's version of Darkwing, for all we know he had his own fictional family. We're never told if his franchise went on to the present day in comics, just that apparently there wasn't a screen incarnation between the old series and Scrooge's attempt, but then again, Batman had a long time where he was a solo no-show in between Adam West's series and the Burton movies, maybe it was like that in this universe, and the comics continued.
It's still kind of unlikely— can you imagine someone actually dressing up like Batman and fighting crime while the franchise's still active in the public awareness— but for all we know the in-universe Darkwing lore might stretch way beyond that show Drake and Launchpad favor.
Yeah, the Ducktales situation is kinda weird, but the writers did that to themselves, really. I think the idea was initially to just make it a show-within-a-show, but they kept pushing it farther and farther, first having the actor show up, then making another actor the "real" Darkwing, and now doing a sort of Real Life Imitating Art thing with him.
If only they gave that much love to Donald.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
Are you implying the show isn't doing a good job with Donald despite the effort they've put in making him so great (even saying they wanna accomplish for him what Goofy Movie did for Goofy)?
And I hear that Frank already had to calm fans down when they got mad over Darkwing not being real and spoil that Darkwing will be real so it's positive they intended it from day one but were playing the long game.

It's not like the Darkwing show had a shortage of mad scientists to adapt either. I get Dr. Slug is too awesome to ever be shown, and Sarah Bellum would need Adaptational Villainy (and even then not that much, she always was quite For Science! amoral), but even so.
Edited by AmazingSpiderHam on Oct 12th 2020 at 7:50:04 AM