Duck Dodgers (character)

Duck Dodgers is a character from four Looney Tunes short films and the Duck Dodgers TV series. He is a spoof of the classic sci-fi character Buck Rogers. He debuted in the short "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century" (a reference to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) 1953, scripted by Michael Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones for the Merrie Melodies series.

Backstory

A poor, helpless soul that was accidentally frozen for about 351 years, Duck Dodgers was later revived by Dr. I.Q. Hi in the 24½th Century (around the year 2372). Through scheming and lies, he managed to trick most of the populace into believing he was a 21st Century hero, when in reality, he was only the water-boy for a football team (incidentally, however, Commander X-2 accidentally caused Dodgers to win a championship football game, so he was not technically lying concerning that). He mainly relies on luck and the work of the Eager Young Space Cadet, but has occasionally shown fairly high levels of heroism and competence, leading to the conclusion that sometimes, he isn't as daft as previously thought.

Inspiration

Duck Dodgers is a parody of the hero Buck Rogers, created by Philip Francis Nowlan for the Armageddon 2419 AD novella first published in the August issue 1928 of Amazing Stories magazine and adapted in January the year after for the newspaper strips scripted by Nowlan and illustrated by Dick Calkins. Later, Buck Rogers was adapted for the cinema and television, among others. The space heroes were very popular in the 50s.

Abilities

Though he is rather incompetent and an idiot, Duck Dodgers is still no washout. He is durable enough to survive lasers, climb electrical fences with no signs of injury, and survive planetary explosions like it is nothing. Dodgers is also skilled with his Laser Nunchucks to the point of creating a statue of himself just by swinging them and was capable of holding his own against Queen Tyr'ahnee in combat. Dodgers is also proficient with his laser pistol and is clever at times, one example being the time he snuck into the Sergeant's quarters and changed his Grade from an F to an A without tripping an alarm. Dodgers is somewhat skilled with other weapons such as a laser sabre and a metal rod but it is nowhere near his ability with the nunchucks. On top of that, Dodgers knows how to do a spinning aerial attack, can fight robots, has snuck into places without getting detected, was able to fly his space ship through an asteroid field (With heavy damage) and shot down Commander X-2's ship, and he actually defeated Commander X-2 in a gun fight despite having the disadvantage in terms of cover.

Appearances

The classic shorts:

"Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century" (1953) (debut appearance)
"Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½^th Century" (1980)
"Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension" (1996)
"Attack of the Drones" (2004)

Tiny Toon Adventures episodes:

S1E52 "Duck Dodgers Jr." (The Return to the Acme Acres Zone's episode segment.) (1991)

Pinky and the Brain episodes:

S1E65 "Star Warners" (cameo) (1998)

Duck Dodgers episodes:

List of Duck Dodgers episodes (2003-2005)

Films:

Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)

Books:

Duck Dodgers in Outer Space

Video games:

Notes

In August 2015,DC Comics announced 25 cases variants of superheroes of DC with characters from Looney Tunes. In January 2016, Dodgers appeared in a cover variant of Batman Beyond #6 which takes place in the not too distant future.
In 2003, both Duck Dodgers and Marvin the Martian were featured on separate 1st Space Launch Squadron mission patches for that year's Mars Exploration Rover missions.^[1]
Throughout the series, he falls in love with most of the girls he sees, but they always hate him.