Deciphering An Evil Duck's Taunts

There's this bit of dialogue in Darkwing Duck #3 that I've been mulling over for awhile. First I was trying to decide what about it was catching my attention, but I figured that out last night. So this morning was about how to describe it, and trying to sort it out.

The reason Darkwing fired Launchpad as his sidekick was because Launchpad took DW's dry cleaning (his costumes and his civvies, simultaneously) to the same place arch-foe Negaduck uses. Having observed Launchpad leaving one day with those clothes, ND used that as a starting point for finding Darkwing's secret identity, so he could attack him at home. Which he did, rather impressively*. Anyway, as he's explaining how he found them, he tells Darkwing 'I never cared for the whole secret identity thing. But you wanted to try having dual lifestyles. A home. A family. Too bad you couldn't keep your worlds separate.' That was the part that caught my eye, because it suggested a familiarity between the two. The best I can describe it is, Negaduck knew Darkwing, but he didn't know him specifically.

The only thin I could think of, with regards to their origins, was an episode of the cartoon, set in the future, where a janitor (probably the ghost of Darkwing) details his origin to a couple of kids at a super-hero museum. The origin was a mash-up of Batman and Superman's as Darkwing was sent away in a rocket by his parents before their homeworld exploded, and after arriving on his current home planet, grew up in a monastery, where he learned martial arts. In that story, Negaduck is Darkwing's cousin (their dad's are brothers), also sent rocketing away from their doomed homeworld, only ND wound up on a different world, where he assembled fearsome weaponry he eventually tried to attack DW's new home, prompting him to actually become a costumed hero.

Me of the early-90s always thought that origin was supposed to be a joke, since, well, I think I figured that if he came from another world, he'd have super-powers. Which he didn't, so he couldn't be an alien talking duck (as opposed to a regular talking duck, I suppose). It would have explained the familiarity between the two, since in that story, ND knew the masked guy opposing him was his goody-goody cousin. So he'd know who he was looking for, but not necessarily what he looks like (unless his dad included recordings with pictures of what they thought DW would look like in x years) or what name he was hiding under.

I was doing most of this pondering while working, but that meant there wasn't an opportunity to check anything. Assuming it can be trusted, and in meaningless stuff like this, it's usually OK, Wikipedia says Negaduck's the evil alternate universe version of Darkwing. You'd think with my fondness for alternate universes and evil opposites I'd have remembered that**. That actually simplifies things a little more, since, as versions of the same being from different universes they ought to look alike. No more trouble with what Darkwing looks like without the mask, just look in a mirror. There would still be the issue of finding a name and address, but it would be that much easier to confirm suspicions once that was accomplished..

* Though I didn't see the flaming-chainsaw-throwers he told Quackerjack he was going to purchase. Perhaps he was saving them for the grand finale.

** Though since I read that, I've been seeing these images that my mind's insisting are from that episode, but I'm not convinced it isn't just my brain filling in gaps based on other stories where the hero lands in an evil opposite universe.