Darkwing Duck #2
Darkwing Duck Vol. 2 #2 (Dynamite, March 2025) is the second chapter of the first ongoing Darkwing Duck comic series explicitly framed as a 'Year One' origin story — a creative territory the animated series famously left largely unmapped, since Drake Mallard's earliest days of crime-fighting were only ever referenced obliquely across the show's 91 episodes. The issue marks the comic-book debut of Bushroot — the plant-duck hybrid botanist who is one of the Fearsome Five's most distinctive members — within this new continuity's early-years timeline, presenting him as a villain Gosalyn encounters before her canonical animated introduction to the character. Equally significant from a craft standpoint, the story places Gosalyn Mallard and Honker Muddlefoot at the emotional center rather than Darkwing himself, using their roles in a school play to articulate the adoptive parent-child bond that is the thematic spine of the entire franchise.
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After Dynamite's first Darkwing Duck ongoing (2023, written by Amanda Deibert with art by Carlo Lauro) concluded its run, the publisher regrouped and relaunched with an entirely new creative team announced in late 2024. Writer Daniel Kibblesmith — a lifelong Disney Afternoon fan who had written Marvel's Loki and contributed to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — was paired with the art duo Ted Brandt and Ro Stein, with colors by Dearbhla Kelly and letters by Fabio Amelia. The series launched on February 12, 2025, structured as an in-universe unreliable autobiography narrated by Drake Mallard himself, a framing device that gives the team license to revisit and imaginatively revise his formative years; issue #2, titled 'Bushwhacked,' followed on March 26, 2025, as the second installment of what Dynamite branded the 'Year One' arc. Original animated series creator Tad Stones was engaged to supply variant cover art for the run, his direct involvement being a milestone for the franchise in comics form.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Dynamite Entertainment on March 26, 2025; written by Daniel Kibblesmith, art by Ted Brandt & Ro Stein, colors by Dearbhla Kelly, letters by Fabio Amelia.
- Story title is 'Bushwhacked'; it is the second chapter of the 'Year One' arc, which positions itself as a prequel set during Darkwing Duck's earliest crime-fighting years.
- Bushroot (Dr. Reginald Bushroot), the plant-duck hybrid member of the Fearsome Five, makes his debut in this new Dynamite continuity, appearing here before Gosalyn's animated introduction to the character in the TV episode 'Night of the Living Spud.'
- Honker Muddlefoot — Gosalyn's best friend and next-door neighbor — makes his first appearance in this Vol. 2 comic series, cast alongside Gosalyn as a piece of shrubbery in the school play.
- The issue contains an in-story tribute to the late voice actress Christine Cavanaugh (the original animated voice of Gosalyn Mallard) via the fictional 'Cavanaugh School for Dramatic Teens,' named in her honor.
- The narrative is structured as Drake Mallard's self-told, openly embellished autobiography, recounted to Gosalyn — an unreliable-narrator framing device established in issue #1 that runs through the series.
- Tad Stones, who created the original Darkwing Duck animated series at Disney in the early 1990s, provides variant cover art for this issue as he does across the full run.
- This is Dynamite's second Darkwing Duck ongoing series (Vol. 2); it is distinct from the prior 2023 Deibert/Lauro series and does not continue that series' storyline or the animated show's direct continuity.
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