Darkwing Duck #3

History

The 2025 Dynamite series was announced after the publisher's first Darkwing Duck volume — written by Amanda Deibert and illustrated by Carlos Lauro, launched January 2023 — concluded, with Dynamite restarting with a fresh creative team roughly a year later. Writer Daniel Kibblesmith, known for Marvel work including Loki and Black Panther vs. Deadpool and television writing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, pitched the series as an unreliable-narrator autobiography framed around Drake Mallard recounting embellished tales of his early career to his adopted daughter Gosalyn — a structural conceit that gave the team license to build new origin lore issue by issue. Original show creator Tad Stones, who developed Darkwing Duck at Walt Disney Television Animation in the early 1990s, contributed variant cover art across the run and served informally as a creative resource for Kibblesmith on character relationships; Stones described being 'dragged into the craziness' by Dynamite after the publisher had already launched companion titles centered on Negaduck and the Justice Ducks. Issue #3 shipped April 23, 2025, with interior art by the duo of Ted Brandt and Ro Stein, colors by Dearbhla Kelly, and letters by Fabio Amelia.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Released April 23, 2025, by Dynamite Entertainment; written by Daniel Kibblesmith with interior art by Ted Brandt and Ro Stein, colors by Dearbhla Kelly, and letters by Fabio Amelia.
• First appearance of the Venerable One, a blind master monk whose Training Temple is presented as the origin of Darkwing Duck's martial-arts proficiency — a character and location with no counterpart in the original animated series.
• First appearance of 'Vinny,' a fellow student at the Training Temple (referred to in at least one review as 'the Vulnerable One'), flagged by reviewers as a potential recurring figure in future Secret History chapters.
• Issue #3 is the first installment of the series' formal 'Secret History of Darkwing Duck' anthology strand — a recurring feature slated to appear in every third issue of the Kibblesmith run, establishing a structural template for the ongoing.
• The framing device throughout the series has Drake Mallard narrating self-aggrandizing flashback stories to Gosalyn; in this issue Gosalyn finds the current chapter boring, prompting Drake to jump to a more action-filled anecdote — Gosalyn appears only on the opening and closing pages.
• Launchpad McQuack does not appear in this issue, making it one of the few entries in the Kibblesmith run without the core supporting cast beyond Gosalyn's bookend appearances.
• Cover artists for this issue include Ted Brandt and Ro Stein, Mark Bagley, Nicoletta Baldari, Ciro Cangialosi, and original animated series creator Tad Stones — a roster carried over from the series' debut issue.
• The first six issues of the 2025 series, including this issue, were later collected in the hardcover and trade paperback Darkwing Duck Vol. 1: Year One, Part One.

Cast · 5 characters

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Variants (14)