Darkwing Duck #4

History

This second Dynamite Darkwing Duck ongoing series launched in February 2025, announced at no convention but revealed in November 2024, replacing the earlier Amanda Deibert/Carlos Lauro run that Dynamite had published beginning in 2023. Writer Daniel Kibblesmith — a longtime fan of the animated show who had previously written Marvel titles including Loki and Black Panther vs. Deadpool — pitched the series around the conceit of exploring Darkwing's formative years through an unreliable narrator framing, deliberately embracing the cartoon's own contradictory origin episodes. Interior artists Ted Brandt and Ro Stein, known for The Mighty Captain Marvel, handle all pencils, inks, and some covers, with Dearbhla Kelly on colors and Fabio Amelia on letters rounding out the core production team. Kibblesmith himself described the design goal for every issue as making it feel like a lost episode of the animated show.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Written by Daniel Kibblesmith; interior art by Ted Brandt and Ro Stein; colors by Dearbhla Kelly; letters by Fabio Amelia.
• Cover artists for issue #4 include Tad Stones (the character's original animated-series creator), Brandt & Stein, Mark Bagley, Nicoletta Baldari, and Ciro Cangialosi.
• The main story features Quackerjack and Lilliput Gooney (Lilliput) as the primary villain team-up: Quackerjack operates an arcade while Lilliput uses a shrink ray to miniaturize Darkwing Duck and Launchpad McQuack and trap them inside it.
• Steelbeak appears in the opening pages — chaining Darkwing and Launchpad to a rocket — before the main Quackerjack/Lilliput plot begins, making this issue notable for packing three classic animated-show villains into a single chapter.
• The issue continues the series-wide framing device in which Drake Mallard (Darkwing Duck), acting as an unreliable narrator, recounts his early crime-fighting career to his adopted daughter Gosalyn; the stories are explicitly presented as possibly embellished or unverifiable.
• Megavolt and Bushroot both appeared in earlier issues of this same Kibblesmith run (Megavolt in #1, Bushroot in #2), establishing a pattern of spotlighting one or two Fearsome Five members per issue.
• This series sits within Dynamite's broader 2025 Disney Afternoon publishing initiative, which simultaneously included titles featuring Darkwing's allies and antagonists across multiple companion series.
• The first six issues of the Kibblesmith/Brandt & Stein run are being collected in a hardcover trade paperback (ISBN: 9781524128920) under the title that emphasizes the 'unreliable narrator' premise.

Cast · 6 characters

Full credits

Variants (14)