Maui Mallard and Darkwing Duck: A Missed Crossover
The third and final series of Darkwing Duck comics to date was published by Joe Books in 2016-2017. As it turned out recently, Maui Mallard could appear in one of those issues. I was able to talk to both creators of the series – artist James Silvani and comic book writer Aaron Sparrow.
It all started with Aaron's Twitter post (April 2022) where he casually shared a previously unknown fact.
In October 2019, James Silvani, independently of his colleague, posted on Facebook his work with the characters of Maui Mallard on the eve of ComicCon on... the island of Maui, where James himself now lives. First of all, I contacted him.
Hi, James. Aaron recently tweeted that you and he were going to do a Darkwing Duck comic with references to Maui Mallard. Could you tell about it?
Hi, Max. That really is a question more for Aaron. I’m not a huge gamer so I didn’t know much about Maui Mallard.
I appreciated your Maui Mallard fan art. Great job!
Glad you liked the art.
How did you find out about the character?
I don’t know. I probably saw an ad for it in a comic books somewhere.
Aside from this drawing of Maui from ComicCon, have you ever drawn this character again, or any of the other characters from his game?
Everything I've done with MM is online. I don’t have any other relationship with the character.
In any case, now we know what Maui and MudDrakes would look like if that comic did come to light. Thank you!
Not at all, Max.
In the hope of finding out at least some details, I turned to Aaron himself. Here is what he told me:
Hi, Aaron. I read on your Twitter that you were planning to do a Darkwing Duckcomic with references to Maui Mallard. I'm very interested to know more about the ideas from the game that you wanted to bring to that issue.
Hi, Max! Im afraid there’s not TOO much I can reveal aside from the overall concept. We never went to script, so a lot of particulars were never ironed out… but the overall plan was to do a “vacation” issue. Darkwing, Launchpad and Gosalyn go to a tropical island getaway (Only to find the Muddlefoots are staying in the cabana right next to them.)
Mysterious lights in the jungle at night lead Drake to investigate, and in the course of solving the mystery, several of the locals believe he is the prophesied return of the Maui Mallard. From there I’d have gone back through the game and found things we could use/reference in the story.
You might be curious to know that the mid-90s animated series Quack Pack, which was the spiritual successor to Duck Tales, also has references to Maui Mallard. One of the episodes featured Donald's cousin, Hawaiian detective Mel Mallard, who looked a lot like... Herbert Muddlefoot.
Haha that’s DEFINITELY Herb’s model 😂
Did I understand correctly from your story that Maui Mallard himself was not supposed to appear in this comic as an acting character?
We hadn’t reached the script stage for the issues; just a lot of ideas that hadn’t been hammered out. But there was definitely the possibility of Maui Mallard appearing, if Disney approved it (which is always subject to whether they want to bother to reach out to legal; it’s easier to just say «no»).
Have you considered MudDrakes appearing as locals in the comic?
We had definitely considered the MudDrakes, and wanted to use them as bad guys. Again, we had a backup plan depending on legal, or any native stereotype arguments that came up. It was 2016, the height of sensitivity about such things.
Did you talk to James about your ideas of making references to Maui in that issue?
No, it never got far enough along for us to draw anything but the new villain for that story.
Who is this villain?
It was a new character. I don’t care to discuss that. We might get to use him someday, so I’d rather keep it under wraps
Have you played this game before? What version was it?
I played the game on PC waaaaaay back in the day; hence my appreciation of it and desire to include it..
By the way, the PC version was officially released on Steam and GOG in May 2019.
Might be time to revisit it!
Thanks for your help, Aaron.
You're welcome, Max.
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© Max Nasikan. June 2022.
My previous interviews with Maui Mallard team:
1) Interview with lead artist John Fiorito (September 2020)
2) Giant interview with 12 creators of Maui (December 2020):
Part 1
Part 2
3) Interview with Eurocom programmer Jon Williams (March 2022)