Darkwing Duck #2 Review

Welcome back to Joe Books long-awaited revival of Darkwing Duck. Last time, Darkwing’s nemesis, Nega Duck has unexpectedly returned from his inter-dimensional exile and had hatched a plan to finally get his ultimate revenge on Darkwing Duck. To that end, Nega lured our hero into a prison built to house Darkwing’s deadliest enemies and locked him in, giving him 30 minutes to run and hide before every evil-doer he’d ever put away comes hunting for him.

We open outside the prison where a hilariously incompetent newscaster is reporting on the situation while Launchpad tries to open the impenetrable prison doors with a crowbar. Launchpad is by know means the sharpest knife in the box, but he looks like a regular Neil Degrasse Tyson compared to the idiot newscaster who thinks his name is Lunchpail McQuaid and thinks that he’s trying to get in so he can give a condemned man a sandwich.

Inside the prison itself, Nega Duck says that Darkwing Duck’s head start is officially over, even though it’s ten minutes early. What can he say, he’s a villain. Nega gets on the loudspeaker and warns Darkwing of his inevitable doom. Darkwing attempts a witty retort, but Nega reminds him that the intercom is one way and he can’t actually hear him. The first obstacle in Nega’s gauntlet is The Liquidator, the Darkwing-verse’s equivalent of the Spider-Man villain, Hydro-Man who talks like he’s doing an infomercial. While at first, Darkwing struggles against the liquid lowlife, he soon incapacitates him with some detergent. Darkwing escapes, only to land in a garbage dump that, as Darkwing remarks, resembles the trash compactor on the Death Star. Hey, Disney owns Star Wars now, so why not? But soon, Darkwing’s next obstacle makes himself known. It’s Muckduck, a monster made of living garbage. Darkwing runs for his life, straight into Amonia Pine, the evil cleaning lady. Natural, a being made of sentient garbage and a woman who’s brain chemistry has been mutated to where she is the ultimate neat-freak don’t mix well.

Elsewhere, Mortimer, one of Gosalyn’s classmates and former super villain who was left behind in the prison along with Gosalyn and Darkwing is wandering around looking for a way out when he encounters a prisoner who calls to him from the shadows. The shadowy figure recognizes Mortimer and says he wants to help him take down Nega Duck and the others. I don’t want to give anything away, but if this shadowy figure is who I think it is, I’m very excited for where this is going.

Back with our hero, after dispatching the Beagle Boys, he finds Lauchpad who broke into the prison to give Darkwing a hand. However, when Lauchpad starts acting way to smart, Darkwing sees through “Lauchpad’s” disguise and takes him out, revealing the shape-shifter, Camille Chameleon. With her cover blown, Camille shifts into an enormous tentacle monster and starts pounding Darkwing to a pulp. Using some heating pads, Darkwing disrupts her shape-shifting ability and takes her down in what may or may not be an homage to the death of Clayface from Batman the animated series.

Meanwhile, Mortimer finds Nega Duck and asks to join the group. At first Nega doesn’t take him seriously, but when he effortlessly takes down Megavolt, Nega welcomes him to the team.

Back with Darwing, our hero seems to have come across a group of mind controlled prison guards, led by the villain, Suff-Rage who may finally have our hero trapped.

Our comic ends with Nega Duck learning that Gosalyn is also in the prison, and Nega commanding his minions to bring her to him alive.

What Works: This comic is a blast, as I expected it to be, filled to the brim with witty Darkwing Duck one-liners and lots of clever self-referential humor.

I really liked the set up with the Shadowy figure and I look forward to seeing how that develops.

Finally, the concept of Darkwing trapped in a prison and running a gauntlet of his enemies is a great idea. Essentially what we have here is something akin to the Grant Morrison classic Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, only replacing dark and unsettling imagery and clever literary illusions to works like The Bible and Alice in Wonderland with 90’s style Disney Afternoon slapstick. With any other character, that idea would sound awful, but with Darkwing Duck, that works.

What Doesn’t: There’s not nearly enough Gosalyn in this comic for my taste, but that’s okay because the ending to the comic promises that she’ll have much more of a presence in issue three

Overall 5/5

This is everything I want out of a Darwking Duck comic. This revival may have been long overdue but it was well worth the wait.