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Darkwing Duck: Introduction

Can we just take a minute to appreciate how deeply weird DuckTales is? How would you even explain that show to someone who’d never heard of it?

“Richie Rich if he was an old duck?” That’s not even a premise, that’s a meaningless Mad Lib. And yet, DuckTales was a massive, massive deal. It ran for one hundred episodes, kickstarted the modern era of high quality TV animation and spawned a veritable multimedia empire. What gives? How did a show with such a weird, clunky premise achieve that kind of success? I think it comes down to a few different factors:

  1. Carl Barks was given a job drawing funny little Donald Duck cartoons and decided to use that opportunity to write the Great American Novel. His duck universe cartoons were used as the basis of DuckTales and that’s some damn strong source material.
  2. Mark Mueller’s theme song is so insanely catchy that I can just type “Ducktales!” and your brain has already gone “Woo hoo!”
  3. Scrooge McDuck is basically the Doctor.

Here’s what I mean. The reason Doctor Who has lasted so long is that it’s an inexhaustible premise. There is an alien with a box that can go anywhere in time and space. You will never run out of stories to tell with that setup. In the same way, Scrooge McDuck has something almost as powerful as a Tardis: A metric shit-ton of money.

And this is why the show was able to run for 100 episodes. Scrooge is so rich he can basically buy his way in to any genre you can think of. Over the run they did space-opera, western, time travel, romance, pulp adventure, giant mech battles, horror. That’s the beauty of Scrooge McDuck; he’s a strongly defined character who nonetheless can slot into almost any kind of story. Case in point: the time they made him a superhero.

Right, so in Season 3 Scrooge gets so sick of the lying or “fake” news media making people think that the gold-loving billionaire is a bad guy so he decides to become a vigilante and wooooooow this hits different in 2021. Anyway, in order to improve his public image he becomes a superhero called the Masked Mallard.

Stop sniggering in the back, please.

Okay, fast forward a year after DuckTales ended and Disney are prepping a new reboot of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show only to discover that they don’t actually own the rights to Rocky and Bullwinkle.

“That story makes no sense.”
“Back in the nineties there were still things Disney didn’t own. It was nuts.”

So a hasty, last minute replacement had to be found and they decided on expanding the Masked Mallard concept into its own TV show. The Mallard was re-worked into “Darkwing Duck”, a fedora wearing, cloaked, nocturnal crime-fighter clearly modelled on…

“Don’t say Batman, don’t say Batman, don’t say Batman…”
“The Shadow.”
“Never doubted you.”

And so, as the first stop on our look at Disney cartoon animation for Shortstember, I’ll be doing mini reviews of four episodes of this childhood classic. Let’s get dangerous.

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #59: Raya and the Last Dragon

Before we get into the review, I want to address something. Certain commenters (who shall, by virtue of me being the bigger mouse, remain nameless) stated in my last review that I have been “negative” and “harsh” on the Disney canon of late.

Let’s call this out for what it is: VICTIM BLAMING.

It’s a pernicious practice, and I will not tolerate it particularly if I’m the victim. Have I been harsh on Disney recently? Scathing? Even cruel? Yes. But who threw the first punch?

Exactly.

Raya is a historically significant film and definitely represents a demarcation point in the history of the canon. This is, after all, the first canon movie to go straight to streaming (although it did receive a restricted theatrical run). It also, to me, represents the irrevocable “shrinking” of movies. There are no big releases any more, there are no big unifying cultural moments. A few years ago I remember walking home one night and hearing a group of girls on the other side of the road spontaneously bursting into a chorus of “Let it Go” but it kinda feels like that kind of culturally ubiquitous megahit can’t happen any more. There’s too much content. We’re all watching different things. A movie being released in the cinema was kind of an imprimatur of significance, but the cinema might not have survived the decade even without Covid shoving it into a shallow grave. Gloria Swanson was right, she was just off by half a century.

Sorry, this is all frightfully maudlin. I guess for me Raya is less a movie and more a totem of a strange and tragic moment in history.

Also, I don’t really want to talk about it because it sucks and apparently that’s a dangerous opinion. Lindsay Ellis talked shit about this movie and I’m pretty sure she’s dead now or in witness protection or something.

Anyway. Raya and the Last Dragon. Thank you Covid, for sparing me the price of a cinema ticket. I don’t care what they say, ya ain’t all bad.

(more…)

CrimeReads Article, Chicago Review of Books Review and Cory Doctorow

Hi all! Here’s some more links (I swear I will be posting an actual movie review soon).

Here‘s an article I wrote for CrimeReads.com about George Smiley, a huge influence on my own character Nikolai South.

Here is a really nice, in-depth review from the Chicago Review of Books for When the Sparrow Falls.

And as a reminder, I’ll be having an in-depth conversation with author and journalist Cory Doctorow about the themes and world of the book on July 10th 2PM, Pacific Time. He’s a fascinating guy, it should be a fascinating talk and you can reserve your tickets HERE.

John Scalzi event and Audiobook sample!

When the Sparrow Falls is finally on sale in the states and we had the book launch last night, very kindly hosted by Kelly of Fountain Bookstore in Virginia with an assist from legendary sci-fi author John Scalzi. The event was recorded and you can watch it HERE.

Also! The audiobook will soon be available and you can listen to an excerpt HERE. Jake Fairbrother did an absolutely phenomenal job of bringing Nikolai South to life and it sounds so, so good.

Upcoming events!

Hey did you know I have a book coming out at the end of the month? (I know, I know, I need to be less shy and retiring about these things). Anyway, I have some really exciting virtual events lined up to launch this sucker.

29th June

Oh yes, THAT John Scalzi. We’ll be in discussion in an event hosted by Fountain Bookstore in Virginia. I wanted to call it “Gettin’ Palsy with Scalzi” but they said no and that’s fine.

Join us at 6pm Eastern Time, Thursday June 29th. Admission is free and you can book your tickets HERE.

10th July

Oh yes, THAT Cory Doctorow. Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego will be hosting this one at 2pm Pacific Time, Saturday 10th of July and you can reserve a place HERE.

27th July

And lastly but by no means leastly, my friends Trilby Black, Daniel M. Bensen and I all have books coming out at the same time so we’re having a joint launch hosted by Magers and Quinn bookstore in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Jul 27th at 5:00 PM IST and you can book tickets HERE. Tickets for this event will be $5 and attendees will receive virtual event access and a $5 off code for use at magersandquinn.com. Attendees also have a chance to win prizes during the event! Follow @magersandquinn or the authors on social media and share our posts about the event, and you’ll be entered to win fabulous prizes!