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Justice Ducks #1 on FOC - Message from Writer |
It's all leading to this! Readers who have been keeping up with our Disney books and made it to the end of the initial flagship DARKWING DUCK series saw the whole squad of the JUSTICE DUCKS begin to drop in for guest appearances and assemble as a team. Artist Carlo Cid Lauro returns for this new series continuing Darkwing's adventures, and is now joined by writer Roger Langridge. We have a special message from the writer, and more from this returnable title!
| A Personal Message From Writer Roger Langridge | |  For as long as I can remember, certainly before I could actually read, I have loved Disney’s Duck comics. Specifically, the Disney Duck comics written and drawn by Carl Barks, who I regard as one of the greatest cartoonists in the English language. He’s our Hergé, our Tezuka.
When I was a small child growing up in New Zealand, over fifty years ago now, my mother would sometimes take my younger brother and me on long road trips to visit her family. To keep us quiet in the back seat, she’d throw us a few Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories or Uncle Scrooge comics, which at that point in their publishing history ran Barks reprints on a regular basis. I didn’t know how to say the words I was looking at, but I could follow the stories without them, because Barks’ cartooning was so good: crystal clear visual storytelling, a metronomic rhythm, constant forward momentum, expressions that told you what the characters were thinking without a single word... and funny! Oh, how funny. After reading one I just wanted to read another. And another...
The cartoonist I would later become was born on those road trips.
 Working on Disney Duck comics of my own has always been a thing I hoped might happen one day. Several years ago, I got to work on The Muppet Show Comic Book, a property which was owned by Disney, and that opened some doors that had previously been closed to me. On a few occasions, I danced the Disney dance, drew the sample pages, came up with some ideas that I hoped might pass muster. For one reason or another, those attempts never worked out.
So I went back to making my own comics, which fortunately I never needed anybody else’s permission to do, and there the matter rested.
For a while.
Fast forward a decade or so, and editor Nate Cosby are discussing a couple of projects he’d like me to be involved with. I’m on board for them, but they’re both a ways off for various reasons. I want to stay available for them once they’re green-lit, but I need to earn some money in the meantime. I mention this to Nate and he says, “Are you at all interested in Darkwing Duck?”
Mmmmaybe?
Cards on the table, I missed the show the first time around. It ran in 1991-1992, a time when I was a baby cartoonist sharing a house with a couple of students... and no TV. Nate said the series he was offering me was The Justice Ducks, a Darkwing spinoff. I told Nate I didn’t know where to start. Nate was encouraging: “You like Silver Age superhero comics, don’t you? You like Disney Ducks? You could write this in your sleep.”
So I watched some of the relevant episodes, read the Wikipedia articles, bought a few of the comics and generally tried to get myself up to speed. And, while I didn’t think I could sleep my way through it, exactly, I started to see how it might work.
Darkwing, for instance. He’s awfully similar to my beloved Barksian Donald Duck in a lot of ways. Like Donald, he’s full of contradictions: a caring parent but a short-tempered grouch; a sense of responsibility but a huge ego. He had depth.
Yeah. This could definitely work.
 So I pitched several story ideas, got notes back, pitched more ideas, did the Disney dance... until eventually a four-issue arc about a series of alien invasions got the go-ahead. So I began writing.
I know I’ll never be Carl Barks. Talent like his comes along once or twice a century. But I do have one advantage Carl Barks never had: I got to read hundreds of Carl Barks comics as a child.
Disney must have liked what I was doing, because four issues soon became five.
(Write a new story pitch, do the Disney dance...)
Anyway, we got there. As I write this, I turned in my final draft of issue #5 a couple of days ago. I like what I’ve done. I laughed out loud at my own stupid jokes a couple of times, always a good sign. And I got a bit choked up at a scene near the end of the fifth issue. (That’s okay, isn’t it? That’s allowed?) Pretty soon, I’ll be looking at beautiful pages drawn by the wonderful Carlo Lauro, who’ll give it that rhythm, that momentum, and who’ll bring the funny.
And maybe some kid will read one of our issue of Justice Ducks on a long car journey, and maybe they’ll laugh and get a bit choked up as well. Maybe they’ll want to read another. And another...
And maybe you’ll be reading a letter from them fifty years from now.
- Roger Langridge
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