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BOOM!’s DARKWING DUCK!
Hey folks, Ambush Bug here with a special interview with the creative team from BOOM! Studios hit KABOOM! series, DARKWING DUCK. I had a chance to talk with writer Ian Brill, artist James Silvani, and colorist Andrew Dalhouse. Here’s what the three of them had to say about bringing to life one of the coolest cartoons from my childhood.AMBUSH BUG (BUG): So can you each introduce yourself and tell me what you do on the comic?
IAN BRILL (IB): My name is Ian Brill, I write the series.
ANDREW DALHOUSE (AD): I’m Andrew Dalhouse and I’m a colorist.
JAMES SILVANI (JS): I’m James Silvani, artist.
BUG: So for the few people who don’t know who and what DARKWING DUCK is, can you guys talk a little about the concept behind the story?
IB: Darkwing Duck is the Batman and Shadow thrown into the Disney universe.
BUG: I was a big fan of the series when I was a kid. I loved the series and it seems like bringing it back has been a really popular thing. I have run previews on AICN about it and it’s by far one of the most talked about projects at Boom on our site. The Talkbackers seem to love that project. Were you guys familiar with the cartoon before it came out?IB: Yeah, I mean I watched it all of the time after school as a kid and I know everyone else here did. Andrew, I know you specifically wanted to be on this project, because you were such a fan.
AD: Yeah, I called them and was like “I heard rumors you guys were doing DARKWING DUCK. I have to do DARKWING DUCK. I don’t care what the pay is, I have to be on at least the first arc of this book and Nega Duck has to be in at least the first arc, because I have to color Nega Duck at some point.” Doing the book, I actually fell in love with Quakerjack, because James’s rendition of him is so awesome. He’s like my favorite character now out of the Darkwing Duck universe.
BUG: How about you, James?
JS: I was a little older than the target audience at the time it came out, but I was working with a bunch of cartoonists in a licensing poll of artists and everyday at about 3:00 it would be BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, DUCK TALES, and DARKWING DUCK. That was the afternoon and I thought, “Okay, this is the nice perfect blend between BATMAN and DUCKTALES,” so it was a favorite.BUG: I’ve seen the art and it’s pretty fantastic. It’s reminiscent of the series. How do you adapt something like DARKWING DUCK, where everyone knows the style of the character and the cartoon? How do you adapt that into a comic book form?
JS: When I see a licensed comic, I want to see the character that it was taken from. I don’t want any variations or interpretations or things like that. That being said, we are doing a comic book and I would like to put that comic sensibility in there, so I can make the characters look like the way they are supposed to look, like luckily we had the model sheets and such to go on, but maybe put it in a little more grown up atmosphere, so the buildings aren’t the wacky Tune Town buildings, they are buildings you might see in a BATMAN or something a little grittier and grimier like that, so it’s a comic book I want to see visually. I mean I’m a comic art guy first and I do what entertains me.
BUG: As far as the coloring is concerned, did you go back to the cartoons to see the coloring or did you take it in a different direction?
AD: I did the cartoon, but I also wanted to modernize it, like how a lot of the modern cartoons now where the characters are traditional cell animation while the backgrounds and vehicles are more three dimensional and I took that aspect to modernize it, but still keep the animation feel to it of the cartoon.BUG: Is there a different type of coloring that goes into making it look like a cartoon? I’m not sure about a lot of the technical stuff.
AD: With the characters it’s basically two tones, it’s the shadow and a highlight and with the backgrounds it’s everything else, shadows, highlights, midtones, and the whole nine yards with the lighting special effects. I just wanted to make the backgrounds pop to give it the modern comic book flair and leave the characters in the cell style to keep it the traditional comic look with a cartoon feel to it.
BUG: I know originally it was announced as a miniseries, right? Then it changed into an ongoing series. Was that just because of how everyone seemed to be so excited about it?
IB: Yeah, I mean we saw a strong reaction online. We had strong presale orders and that just meant that we got more issues to tell our stories. I have an incredible amount of gratitude for the fans for that.
JS: In that same sense, most of my artwork I did was behind the scenes. I’ve had a blog. I’ve had a new twitter account going like that, but when I got on as DARKWING DUCK artist, everything went through the roof and that’s when it let me know “hey, I think we’ve got something here” and then they announced the ongoing before the first issue went on sale and I was like “Okay, it’s time to get busy.”
BUG: Yeah, I was surprised when I saw the ad for it and it wasn’t but like three weeks later that all of a sudden I get this other email saying that it’s going to be ongoing and not just a miniseries, so that’s got to be a great feeling. What was it like getting that response before it was even released?BUG: So as far as the reactions so far, how long are you guys planning on being on the title? Do you have a set amount of arcs that you have working on right now? What’s the plan?
IB: It’s an ongoing series, so it keeps going as long as people keep buying it and I’ve got story ideas for a long time. I can at least think of a year and a half of storylines, so…
BUG: How about the rest of you guys?JS: Until my hand falls off. I’m having so much fun working on this book. It’s the fun of superheroes without having to worry about anatomy, so it’s the best of both worlds on this comic.
AD: I’ll be doing it until James’s hands fall off. If you’ve seen it, the detail he puts in that book is insane and I cry and I’m happy at the same time when I get new line art from him, because I have to color that insaneness.
IB: I just want to say that we are so lucky that Andrew does this book month after month, because Andrew is also coloring IRREDEEMABLE for us and is I think one of the top colorists in comics and does so much amazing work and the fact that…every month I feel not only super lucky with James drawing it and also Deron Bennett lettering it and then also with Andrew coloring it in. I think those three guys…they are the ones that bring this book to the next level.
BUG: I totally agree. Colorists…you see the superstar writers and the superstar artists and things like that, but you often don’t hear a lot about the coloring, but it’s such an important factor. Just to be a full time colorist to all of these different books, that’s got to be a pretty hard workload for you. How do you deal with all of the different books?
AD: It is a hard workload and I get up at 6:00 and I stop working at 6:00, so I work 6:00AM to 6:00PM. (Laughs) That’s the only way I can get all of this stuff done and still make it look good and keep the quality as high as it is.
BUG: Do you guys have anything else going on at Boom! right now or any other projects that you’d want to talk about?IB: I’m writing CHIP & DALE: RESCUE RANGERS.
AD: I’m doing IRREDEEMABLE and I’m doing FALLING SKIES at Dark Horse and I did the LARFLEEZE Christmas Special at DC.
BUG: How about you, James?
JS: When I’m not working on DARKWING DUCK I’m sleeping, eating, and that’s pretty much it. My life is DARKWING DUCK twenty four seven.
BUG: It’s such a fun comic and it’s good that Boom! has been able to do these. They’re not even children oriented. They are told in a sophisticated way and just from you guys contributing to that, that’s really great. It shows that there is such a diversity in comics and you don’t see that enough I don’t think.
AD: Kids today are a lot more mature than they were 20 years ago. The stuff we would read twenty years ago as kids wouldn’t hold my nephew’s attention, so something like this DARKWING would be able to hold his attention. He would find it fun and he would get the jokes and stuff like that, so it is more geared towards the kids of today than the kids of 20 years ago and that’s why we like it, because we have matured and so has this book and that’s why we still like it.
BUG: That’s got to be kind of tough handling that balance with the more sophisticated stories, but still capture the childlike qualities. How do you do that balance?
IB: It’s all about…I take head from the way Pixar does it. I think the way Russell T. Davis made DR. WHO a family…you can have something that has the intensity of genre storytelling and if you have the appealing characters, if you have the humor…I think it can appeal to everybody.AD: James does awesome facial expressions, like there’s this one page where Darkwing gassed a bunch of dogs and it was this dog and his eyes were rolling into his head and smoke was coming out of his mouth and I cracked up laughing when I saw that panel. A lot of it is the way he does his facial expressions that helps to keep it in that realm and still make it mature.
BUG: That’s got to be tough with just a duckbill, just making facial expressions out of a duck’s bill.
JS: You have no idea… (Laughs) The fun thing about DARKWING is it was always meant to be parade. It was a parody of superheroes and bless the folks at Disney for giving us a lot of leeway with what we do on the books, so we could throw in facial expressions, pop culture references, and all of this stuff that you would never see in another Disney book, so I’m glad we have that freedom to do what we want, yet still keep it with a beloved Disney property like that.
BUG: Well it’s a great book. It seems like it’s a pretty big success for you guys, so congratulations all around. Thanks. Look for DARKWING DUCK monthly from BOOM! Studios’ KABOOM!
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole/wordslinger/reviewer/co-editor of AICN Comics for over nine years. Support a Bug by checking out his comics (click on the covers to purchase)!
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Special thanks to Muldoon for transcription.
Proofs, co-edits & common sense provided by Sleazy G
