The concept for Darkwing Duck jelled when Tad came with up with the premise, “What if Batman had to care for a little girl?” © Disney.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Darkwing Duck — And Then Some

There was a Duck Tales episode called “Double-O Ducks,” which was Launchpad as a secret agent. It was a James Bond spoof, every show does one. Anyway, a show got pitched with that name. Jeffrey said, “I love that name, I love the idea.” This was well before Austin Powers; James Bond was not at its peak. We were like, “Who wants to do a spy parody? Like a throwback to Get Smart?'' I tried to develop it with Launchpad and Gizmoduck, but I said, “This is just a parody, it's got no sense of — family, of characters,” whatever, but I pitched it to Jeffrey who basically agreed and said, “Redo it.”

I took the obvious way and that didn't fly; now I have to create something. I got to thinking of the Green Hornet and the Shadow, all the comic book stuff that I loved, the Jules Schwartz/Silver Age era of DC Comics [the editor who revived the superhero genre in the late 1950s] — Jimmy Olsen turning into Turtle Boy, Elastic Lad. “Yeah, I'd like to do something with that.” Then when we wondered “What if Batman had to raise a little girl?” The idea finally jelled. That's what gave the show the real heart, the real dynamic. Gosalyn [Darkwing Duck's adopted daughter] was kind of inspired by my daughter, who was only about two at the time. Looking back on it I wonder how I could have based it on her, but I just remember she was such a bundle of energy and incorrigible; it was like I was seeing her future and putting this little girl on the screen.

JS: What's your daughter's name?

TS: Brenna. She's 16 now and I'm sure she would be embarrassed by hearing about it again.

Suddenly we had a show that Jeffrey liked; we're moving ahead with Double-O Ducks. They make these little cloisonné pins that have Darkwing looking very much like Donald Duck with a mask, a hat and a white coat, a cape. It turned out that “Double-O” is a copyrighted name. At the time Cubby Broccoli [the late producer of the James Bond films] owned all the rights — there is no double-O system in the British spy service, it was something that was created by Ian Fleming.

So guess what, we couldn't use that. Now we had a show with no name — we could not come up with a name. We had a contest within the studio. We said we'll give $500 to whoever comes up with the name for this. Ironically, of all people Alan Burnett came up with the name “Darkwing.” With comic books on my brain, and “Nightwing” [Robin's new name after leaving Batman's side] you'd think I would've come across that.

JS: Or “The Dark Knight.”

TS: Alan pitches “Darkwing,” and I said, “Great, that sounds dramatic, now I'm going to add on “Duck” to make it silly, and he won. Of course Alan left Disney soon after and did a little show called The Adventures of Batman with Bruce Timm. Maybe we whetted his appetite, I don't know. Anyway, that's how he got the name Darkwing Duck, and you look at him, he looks nothing like a spy, even though he would sometimes work for the spy organization SHUSH.

I also went into it in a calculated way by saying “I've got to establish all the classic traditions of a superhero. If I want him to have a slogan, I want to hear it in every episode. He would always say, “Let's get dangerous.” One that was used intermittently was “suck gas, evildoers” — unfortunately, many people misheard that. The other thing was a lot of fun was — I went to the Shadow -“`the weed of crime bears bitter fruit.”

JS: “I am the terror that flaps in the night.”

TS: Exactly.

JS: “I am the blank that blanks the blank.”

TS: It didn't start out that way. It started out with just the first line, but in one of our earliest scripts we had Launchpad trying to pretend he was Darkwing. He bursts into the scene and says, “I am the road salt that rusts the underside of your car.” We said “Boy that was fun,” then we came up with other ideas and that became the running gag, that Darkwing always said something different. It was always something bad that you wouldn't want to happen in a specific way: “I am the bubble gum that sticks to your shoe.” Those were fun, and fans on the Internet collected them all. (www-atdp.berkeley.edu/1623/students/keenahn/DWQUOTE.HTM)