Shared Darkness

In the early 1990s, Disney made a play at repackaging several of its animation properties and characters, blending The Jungle Book’s irrepressible Baloo into his own high-flying show, along with caped crime-fighter Darkwing Duck. Paired with Ducktales and Rescue Rangers,
the shows found a welcome audience with the same sort of coveted
“tween” audience that would, years later, prove similarly instrumental
as part of the base of support for animated films like Toy Story and Shrek.

Taking a knowing pinch of Indiana Jones’ adventurism, Talespin
centers on bad-with-the-books bush-plane pilot Baloo and young orphan
bear Kit Cloudkicker, who’s befriended his genial slacker elder but
also stolen a valuable treasure from a band of pirates led by the evil
Don Karnage (still one of the great villain names of all time — why
wasn’t he a Bond baddie?). With these scoundrels but also the threat of
foreclosure looming, newcomer businesswoman Rebecca Cunningham swoops
in, rechristens their enterprise “Higher for Hire” and holds Baloo and
Kit to schedule and commitment. Several of Baloo’s old jungle
acquaintances pop up here and there, lending the show an amusing
crossover appeal. Still, while there’s plenty of fun to be had, there’s
not the greater pleasure of a delicately constructed arc, as —
excepting the four-part pilot that kicks things off — Talespin’s
half-hour shows tend to be fairly discrete and self-contained.
Highlights include “I Only Have Ice for You,” “All’s Whale That Ends
Whale,” “Bearly Alive” and “A Star Is Torn.”

Set in the superhero metropolis of St. Canard, Darkwing Duck
is a sort of Batman for the kiddie animation set. Its titular masked
crime-fighter — and his daytime alter-ego Drake Mallard — were
unassailably good, and the cast of villains hiss-worthy. Many, in fact,
hailed from the Fiendish Organization for World Larceny or, yes,
F.O.W.L. for short. Take the lamentation and brooding out of
contemporary readings of comic heroes like Batman, Daredevil and the
like and you have Darkwing Duck, who — along with adopted daughter
Rosalyn and Launchpad McQuack — labored to keep the streets safe for
all, feathered and otherwise.

Both Talespin and Darkwing Duck are packaged in
cardboard slipcases that house three slimline plastic cases, each with
one disc. Twenty-three episodes of the former series and 25 of the
latter are presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with twin Dolby digital
stereo English sound tracks, optional French language tracks and
optional English captioning as well. The images herein are fairly soft
on both releases, with some slight grain and artifacting present;
basically, this is before the advent of crystal clear digital computer
animation, and efforts of preservation are dutiful if not painstaking,
with more of eye toward placating a captive kiddie audience rather than
animation historians or hardcore aficionados. There are unfortunately
no supplemental extras on either set. Pun-riddled jokes are a big part
of each show, but Darkwing Duck gets the slight nod for its more feverish subversion of formula. B- (Shows) C+ (Discs)