Darkwing Duck #6 // Review
The terror that flaps in the night has...a daughter. She’s decided to become his sidekick. It’s...it’s not going to be easy keeping her safe AND saving the day, but it’s all in a day’s work for the sixth issue of Darkwing Duck. The funny animal hero reaches the end of his latest adventure in an issue written by Amanda Deibert with art by Carlo Lauro. The silliness of the story threatens to overcome the scope as Deibert crams a bit too much into a single issue, but it remains weird and breezy fun from beginning to end.
It’s hard to argue against Darkwing’s new sidekick. She IS actually a very clever little kid. The superhero name “Quivering Quack” could use some work...as could her overall sense of proportion. She’s just a kid throwing herself in the path of danger. It IS her classmates who are under the influence of mind control, so it would probably be a good parental idea for Darkwing to keep a close eye on his daughter. He’s going to find his hands full as Darkwing suddenly and inexplicably finds himself fighting alongside Megavolt against a greater threat. What could possibly go wrong?
Deibert delicately crams the issue with guest stars from a number of different places in the search for some kind of conclusion. She may be aware that it’s kind of absurd to try to pack seven heroes into the issue at the climax against a group of four villains right at the end of the story. It’s reminiscent of the big pre-Crisis DC mega-crossovers. To her credit, Deibert actually manages to articulate every character that she’s working with into at least one panel of the issue, so she does a much better job with an ensemble this large than many have managed in “serious” mainstream superhero comics.
Lauro throws the action at the page from a whole bunch of different angles. Landscapes and backgrounds warp in a hopelessly exaggerated fisheye effect on more than one occasion. The cel-animated look and feel of the visuals are amplified by some very appealing texture here and there in the course of the issue. It’s like an old episode of the cartoon somehow got pulled through into high-definition single-cels. The effect works quite well and makes it feel that much more amplified, though...Lauro doesn’t really have much time to explore any one mood for long enough as the issue is so hopelessly cramped with different characters.
The temptation to work with as large an ensemble as possible seems to have won out over the desire to work with something a bit more cleverly satirical and nuanced than the traditional episode of the series. It’s a series that will have had a great deal of appeal for adults who would have grown up with the cartoon. It wouldn’t be that difficult to point a series at them that also appeals to their kids, but that would have required a bit more conceptual work on the part of the creative team.
