That show was the most me, and it was the most fun because it was an original show. Going back to Rescue Rangers, I remember in one of the early episodes we had Gadget walking across the ceiling, and she says “Wait up,” unstraps herself and falls off the ceiling. Alan said, “That wouldn't be her personality to do that.” I said, “Alan, we're creating this character, and if I say it's her personality, it's her personality.” He kind of, “Oh, that's right.” At first we were thinking, “She's the traditional girl.” No, she's operating on a different level, and it's quite funny that way, the ditzy but brilliant, the clueless ingénue kind of thing. She doesn't realize how pretty she is, she doesn't appreciate what a genius she is, but everyone else is going crazy over her.

Darkwing is like that. Launchpad is there not because it's a spin-off of Duck Tales, or we needed a star or he was just a leftover. We wanted Darkwing to have an assistant, because I had been through that Double-O Ducks development, and he was in my brain. I thought he was the perfect guy to play off this personality.

That show was really fun because it was totally original. I could make up all the characters and use all those silver age comic book clichés on purpose — not because we had run out of story ideas, but because that was the whole point of the show: I was going to make the evil Darkwing and call him Negaduck. People sometimes say, “Gee, the origin doesn't quite match in this episode and that episode - ”

JS: You know, that's one of the things I thought about asking, but I was afraid I'd sound too much like a fan boy.

TS: One of my things for the show was I said “If you pitch a concept for the show, think about a comic book cover — Darkwing in a beard growing old - something that in one image sums up the concept. Some of my story editors still do that: they tell their writers “pitch me the comic cover so I'll know what's inside.” That was one thing. I said, “Kids are going to tune in for the guy in the cape. Although the home life is part of our show, get him in the mask and cape. And I said, “Go for the gag — don't worry about continuity.” I was thinking closer to the old short subjects — Warners and Disney alike.

Darkwing was on a whaling ship in one episode, maybe he's in the old west, I didn't worry how he got there. In fact there's an episode called `The Secret Origins of Darkwing Duck.' We did three new origins for him, and I wanted to do another one where we had three more origins, except we ran out of episodes.

It was fun creating an original show, and in an era we may never see again — well, Cartoon Network and other places have it — where you didn't have a network to answer to, and you could just do whatever you felt was funny.

JS: Speaking of which, Megavolt is liberating light bulbs in one episode when Darkwing enters and overturns a basketful; Megavolt says, “I'm tired of you always busting my bulbs!” That was another line that made me say “Did I just hear that on the Disney Afternoon?”

TS: I didn't go after those so much, but sometimes they snuck past me. I was just about to bring up that moment. Doug Langdale was one of the guys who wrote Megavolt the best. He would come in with things like where he's knocking over jewelry stores not to steal the jewels, but to take the bulbs out of the display case. He would throw them onto the ground and go “Run! you're free my children, you're free!!” Not in a million years would I come up with that. He was just so great at hitting that character.

JS: One of the things I like about Darkwing Duck is how it struck a balance between being goofy, off-the-wall cartoon nonsense while at the same time making Darkwing believable as a hero; he's a klutz, yet he's also capable of taking on these villains.

TS: What was funny back then was how weird that was for the insular world of Disney TV. When I said I was going to have Darkwing talk to the camera, some of the development executives said “How can you do that, that breaks the reality; if he gets hit by an anvil and survives, how can you have any jeopardy?” I said, “We have jeopardy because we say it's jeopardy.” I told my writers that pretty much in every episode DW has a wrong-headed idea. As long as he has that wrong-headed idea fate will work against him. Once he figures things out and realizes `I shouldn't be jealous,' or `I shouldn't be whatever,' fate will be on his side. Between the comic book cover and that kind of dictum, the writers knew exactly what they had to do.

Some were just so much fun coming up with different ideas. We did one on the death of Darkwing.

JS: It turned out to be a dream of course, but there was a real poignancy to the story.

TS: Even though it wasn't an ABC episode, I called up their Standards and Practices person and said “Let me run something by you. I'm going to have him not wear a motorcycle helmet — he's too vain, and then he goes slam into a wall.” She said “That's great, because if he slammed into the wall and he got up and was okay we wouldn't want you to do that. The fact you show he would've died — that's a great lesson.”

That was a show where it was a whole different thing. We did our nod to Frank Miller's Dark Knight [a downbeat re-imagining of a brutal, middle aged Batman] with the idea of Darkwarrior Duck; what if Gosalyn was not in his life — how would he turn out? It was like he would go overboard and turn into this terrible thing. That was the fun of the show.