I love Darkwing Duck. It was, far and away, my favorite show when I was a kid — while my peers were glued to Nickelodeon, with their Rocko’s Modern Life and their Ren and Stimpy, I was a Disney Afternoons kid, soaking up Darkwing, and Bonkers, and TailSpin, and Gargoyles. The crime-fighting capers of St. Canard’s gas-gun-toting, alliteration-adoring, pun-spouting purple-clad duck fascinated me to no end.

The show was full of references and jokes I didn’t always understand — making it endlessly rewatchable now, as an adult — but I loved the way Darkwing was an everyday, average dad by day, and a crime-busting superhero by night. I didn’t particularly pick up on the fact that the show’s a pretty clever subversion of the usual superhero archetype — Darkwing’s actually rather terrible at solving crimes, usually figuring things out through pure luck or through the help of his daughter, Gosalyn, or his sidekick, Launchpad McQuack. To me, Darkwing was a hero, a protector; I had a big hard plastic Darkwing that I kept in my bed every single night, believing he’d protect me from the burglars I was convinced were coming to kidnap me in the night. It didn’t bother me that he wasn’t cuddly. He was Darkwing.

But most of all, I loved Darkwing’s love of language — primarily his pathological propensity for punning — and the way he never failed to come up with creative insults to plug into his trademark line: “I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the [minor annoyance]… I am… DARKWING DUCK!”