New DuckTales Animated Series

I can’t remember if Launchpad is in the whale/sea monster episode - I don’t think so, though.

I think he’s in the Pharoah episode though, so there would be some Donald and Lauchpad screentime there.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 18th 2020 at 6:30:07 AM

Can you remember their interactions/dynamic?

Unfortunately, I didn't watch enough of the ep to see too much of it, but they apparently didn't get along at first, but then kinda became Fire-Forged Friends.

Kinda funny considering Launchpad essentially existed to fill Donald's spot. As a note, this was also his debut episode as well.

I was recently browsing the Disney wiki and found out there was a crossover comic between Darkwing Duck and Ducktales called "Dangerous Currency." In that comic, the triplets end up transforming into Disney monsters: Huey becomes Chernobog, Dewey becomes Monstro, and Louie becomes Dragon Maleficent.

I doubt it'll happen, but I kind of hope this Ducktales series has some reference to those transformations; I think Louie looks especially awesome as a dragon.

That was in the recent Boom Studios comics series for both Ducktales and Darkwing wasn't it?

Until this series, that was the only full on crossover between the two beyond guest appearances by Gizmo Duck, and of course Launchpad being a regular.

That does look pretty cool.

Also Honker as Willie the Giant.

That crossover was weird (there's a reason why the later runs of the comic put it into discontinuity) but iirc it did have an amazing bit where Fenton and Donald team up for a stint.

The crossover is also unpopular because it made some very sloppy writing errors (for instance, Fenton's mom does not know he is Gizmoduck in the crossover).

Don't forget the "Negaduck sucks he has no friends."

Like, I get what they were trying to say (that Negaduck never winning roots at least part from how his super Jerkass behavior as Darkwing's dark mirror means he can't really keep a team together without using fear or depend on longterm allies) but it was done so poorly.

Edited by Maljen on Jan 19th 2020 at 3:52:02 AM

Huh, I'm reading The Seven Cities of Cibola, and for whatever reason, the colourist decided to give the Beagles white clothes instead of their normal orange ones. I thought orange was the standard colour even back then?

I have to say, the ending to the famous Indiana Jones inspirator is a bit of a cheat. Everything caves in, the Ducks make it out somehow, and everyone has convenient memory loss about what happened. I guess Barks didn't really have a good idea about how to end this one.

Edited by Redmess on Jan 21st 2020 at 2:34:55 PM

Won't go into the details, but watching more old school duck tales again.

Beakly jumps into shark infested waters to save scrooge while declaring they are now Beakly infested waters.

Damn. Old school Beakly might actually take her modern self in a fist fight. Woman's got endless gall.

Told you.

Beakley and Webby didn't get the limelight very often, but when they did, it was a treat.

Makes me wonder if there is a forgotten "Beakley is a secret spy" meme for the old show. That would explain where the new Beakley's characterization came from.

Edited by Redmess on Jan 26th 2020 at 12:35:47 PM

Man, some of these Barks characters look strange. "The Mysterious Stone Ray" has a bird with dog ears as the villain.

Perhaps at some point Barks considered that since dog-people and duck-people are both human stand-ins, there have to be people of mixed race who are part dog, part duck?

So over on reddit, posters brought up the interesting point that Lunaris' character suffered from how he was really more of an adversary for the twins (Donald and Della) but he ended up being treated as just a Scrooge villain for him (with his sidekicks) to overcome. With Della never really trading words with him after the reveal while Donald gets stuck on an island the whole war.

I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds a bit like Scrooge is being shoehorned into the hero role instead of Donald and Della from the way you describe it?

Well, it's not entirely unheard of. Scrooge does tend to take over stories he appears in. Sometimes it makes you forget that Donald and the boys are very competent adventurers themselves, even without Scrooge around. There seems to be an implicit expectation these days among comic writers that, once a treasure is involved, Scrooge must be a part of the adventure.

But treasure wasn't even involved this time. It's more like for some reason Lunaris assumed that Scrooge is Earth's most competent defender.

To be fair, he's not wrong.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ducktales/comments/ev6fkg/fowl_behavior/

The post in thread:

Edited by Maljen on Jan 30th 2020 at 6:16:44 AM

But as Redmess said, Donald (and the boys by now) is also on Scrooge's skill level, so why does the show not share the spotlight around?

Also, that reddit post Maljen found is an excellent one. Not every major villain needs to be relegated to someone only Scrooge can defeat. Especially when their personal relationship to him is next to nothing, or completely zilch at that.

Edited by BrightLight on Jan 31st 2020 at 6:01:45 AM

I think that is a consequence of the writers not being too familiar with the comics. To the writers, Donald is just the comic relief butt monkey from the cartoons.

And I can't stress this enough: Donald isn't nearly as unlucky in the comics than he is in the cartoons. The misfortune in the comics tends to be economical, with the occasional slapstick, but other characters are just as susceptible to slapstick as Donald with Barks and Rosa, most notably Scrooge himself.

Also, when Scrooge is around, the misfortune tends to centre on him, not Donald. Donald usually fills the role of assistant/hero who saves Scrooge's fortune. Scrooge tends to be much more hapless and wrong-headed, especially with Barks. The dynamic is just different in the comics than it is in Ducktales.

The writers of this show write Scrooge as The Ace and Donald as a Butt-Monkey despite his strength and determination. Even if they're somewhat familiar with the comics, they're going for a characterization closer to the cartoons.

Yes, I'm sure they made a token effort to read some comics and got some plot ideas from there, but they didn't really get into the nitty gritty of what makes Barks' and Rosa's Donald Duck tick.

The irony being that, especially for Barks, these two roles tend to be reversed.

Another thing I noted while reading through some old comics: everyone knows about that one comic that inspired Indiana Jones, but when you actually sit down and read it, not all that much action actually happens on the page with regards to that stone. The whole stone-destroying-the-seven-cities scene happens in just one panel. The odd thing is though, that I remember it as being much more spectacular than it was actually depicted.

I think if I had to pick a comic that is more in the spirit of Indiana Jones, rather than being a inspirator, I would pick something like Rosa's "The Treasure of the Ten Avatars". It has extensive traps that would feel right at home in an Indy plot, and the inevitable destruction of Shambala takes a full couple of pages to unfold. It feels much more like what we would think of as an Indiana Jones story than the aforementioned "The Seven Cities of Gold". Also, Alexander the Great employed living armour as soldiers. Who knew?

I'm also reading "Attack of the Hideous Space Varmints" by Rosa, which could plausibly have inspired some Ducktales plot points. Most notably, Scrooge has a spare moon rocket sitting around on a farm, just in case. Rosa is being a lot more realistic about space travel than Ducktales (we can excuse the hyperdrive and anti-gravity engine as alien tech, at least). No magic bubblegum here! Funniest of all, though, is that the aliens in question are space yokels.

Edited by Redmess on Jan 30th 2020 at 8:45:31 PM

Case in point, the reveal of Della having abandoned her sons to go on a galactic road trip.

In the comics, that was used to develop HD&L and have them admit that Donald is their real parent.

In the show, that plot development is nothing more than a cheap moment of fanservice to fool viewers into thinking that the show has nailed the guts of the comic when in reality it's doing a disservice to the source material that it's adapting from.

Did the boys ever acknowledge Donald as their true parent in the show?

No. Despite several possible key opportunities to do so.

Also, Scrooge's age.

In the Barks and Rosa canon, giving Scrooge a birthdate was part of some very intricate worldbuilding to ground the stories and help audiences relate to Scrooge and the other characters. It also helped in setting up the comic stories as a Period Piece.

In the show, which is most definitely not a period piece by the way, Scrooge's birthdate is just used for lame immersion-breaking gags and annoying flaunting of how "badass" he is.

The easter egg fanservice is consequently cheapened as a result.

Edited by BrightLight on Feb 1st 2020 at 4:14:12 AM

I'll point out that while Donald was often a butt of jokes in the classic shorts, he was much nastier, more antagonistic, just more unpleasant. He can suffer there since he either has it coming or at least unsympathetic enough that we can laugh at him when he gets hurt or sent flying by Chip and Dale.

Edited by Maljen on Jan 31st 2020 at 2:04:11 AM