Darkwing Duck: Negaduck #6 // Review
One of the most totally evil villains from the Negaverse has solved all of the puzzles and codes. The hidden lair lies open to him. He’s going to find that it’s not quite what he expected, hough in Darkwing Duck: Negaduck #6. Writer Jeff Parker continues his dizzying adventure into a strange multiverse with artist/ colorist Ciro Cangialosi. Though it is extremely silly on a number of different levels, Parker’s overall plot DOES come across with a degree of flair and fun as the series approaches its big seventh issue next month. The series approaches its final issues with a degree of style.
Negaduck has just been allowed into a facility which appears to be populated entirely by super villains. It's a big place. And he's being shown around by someone who clearly knows what he's doing. However, as nice as the facilities are, there's something ever so slightly a miss about the place. It is going to take Negaduck a few moments to realize quite what it is that’ going on, but once he does, he’ll waste little time in getting his plans. A totally evil being from the Negaverse is sequestered in a tiny facility with some of the most potent villains in the universe. What could go wrong?
Parker is dealing with pieces that aren't necessarily all that original. But he's doing so in a way that feels fresh. The overall energy of the motion of things continues to jump forward with clever motion. There’s a clever amount of wit that animates the story around the edges of the action without weighing the page down in a style and form that would feel out of place for a character based on a half-hour animated Disney cartoon show from a few decades ago. It’s a clever line that Parker walks in framing the story.
There’s kind of a lot that needs to happen in the course of the story. There are a great many characters that need to be introduced...all of whom need to look like formidable, vaguely familiar villains without completely upstaging the title character. Cangialosi does an excellent job of keeping the expansive cast in check and keeping the title character firmly in the center of the panel. The mega-supervillain lair doesn’t feel QUITE as impressive as it should, though. The artist is far too focussed on developing the ensemble of villains to allow the atmosphere of the lair to really sink-in the way it could have done.
The series has been interesting to follow. However, there's a real line between darkness and comedy that could have been nuzzled up to just a little bit more closely in the course of this series. Parker is working on something that's very much true to the original cartoon series, but it doesn't quite have the kind of momentum. It needs to really justify its existence outside of that beyond being just a fun, little action comedy poles the story out of old cels broadcast on Cathode ray tubes back in the 1990s and transfers it faithfully to page and panel decades later.
