Exclusive: Celebrate The 25th Anniversary Of “Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man” With This Excerpt From Our Upcoming Book

Duckman is celebrating it’s 25th Anniversary (March 4th, 1994) and we decided to give you guys a sneak peek of our upcoming untitled book about the history of adult animation. This is our chapter for Duckman which will be included in the hard copy release coming soon to a store near you!

Sometimes a voice role pops up and when watching you have to say, “Yep…that’s who I’d pick”. In the case of what would eventually be USA Network’s longest running animated series in the network’s history, that notion comes true in flying colors when it comes to casting Jason Alexander as the title character in “Duckman”. Arguably the series was BoJack Horseman before there was BoJack Horseman in a lot of ways by revolving around a private detective who makes his base of operations in Los Angeles, California which provided for a bunch of really fun dynamics that the show could draw on to keep fresh for the what would eventually be a 70-episode run. For starters, Duckman being a private detective sees more than a few premises revolving around terrorism, assassinations, and espionage over the course of the show’s run but being in Hollywood the series delivered a savage parody of the extremes that comes from the City of Angels. Low hanging fruit like plastic surgery and deviations from the base show in an effort to bring alternate takes of the series set in the world of Star Trek, noir, even reality docu-series, certainly showcased way more of a flair that was the talk of Hollywood yesteryear. Last, but not least, Duckman had a solid familial cast that provided for ample fun times (two of his kids were Siamese twins) so much so that the show would garner multiple Emmy nominations and even see a cameo from Homer Simpson! (makes sense seeing as how the same studio that produced Duckman also produced The Simpsons for a lot of seasons).

Duckman also made use of one of the best guest-star casts you may have ever seen in a basic cable adult animated series. Gilbert Gottfried, Ben Stiller, Bobcat Goldthwait, and a slew of others all made a stop by Duckman, a series that was probably cut-off way too soon.