And this final one is for
springrayn and her interest, Disney:
Way, way back in the nineties, during my college years, I had planned doing a fiction called Darkside Dizney. Stories inspired by the Disney afternoon cartoons
DuckTales,
TaleSpin and
Darkwing Duck. I had only finished one before getting distracted and drawn into the super-hero fiction mailing list
Superguy.
That story, “Dark Rebirth”, was what I had originally planned on rewriting as my final piece for the inspiration meme. It involved the death of Darkwing Duck, killed by his nemesis Nega-duck. Who would in turn be killed by Darkwing's adopted daughter Goslyn in her role as Quiverwing Quack. But I decided instead to do this essay, explaining why I wasn't going to do the rewrite. We'll get to why in just a moment.
The original story was meant as the prelude for my Darkside Dizney 'verse. One set several years in the future from the Disney cartoons. Twenty-something Goslyn would be a grim avenger-of-the-night type, Honker would have become the new GizmoDuck and Launchpad would have been captured by F.O.W.L and brainwashed into becoming the Black Canard, leader of the reborn Sky-Pirates.
And I had plans for updating the rest of the cast of characters from
DuckTales,
Darkwing Duck and
TaleSpin (which I had decided took place four or five decades before the other shows). Uncle Scrooge would have passed on, his company being run by Donald. The nephews and Webby would be Duck'Tagnan and the Three Mousekateers (yes ducks dressed as mice dressed as musketeers). A grandson of Sher Khan running Khan Enterprises. And so on.
But part of what I wanted to do originally with the series was make a more mature and “adult” revamp. A grimmer, and thus cooler, version of three of my favorite kids shows. And nowadays I'm simply fed up with dark, hard-core stories and grim and extreme revamps of characters. When comic shelves are flooded with stories where cloned thunder gods murder black super-heroes or where ex-wives kill the family of their friends in the stupidest reconciliation attempt ever, I don't have any desire to add anything to that. I don't even enjoy thinking that the mess DC and Marvel have made of their universes is something I once would have enjoyed. Which might explain why they sell so well. There are still plenty of comics fans who want to see Nega-duck die slowly after taking a broad-head arrow to the lung. I'm just not one of them anymore.