The trusty assistant and friend to Darkwing Duck. He is also Uncle Scrooge‘s pilot.
Creation
Launchpad was created for the tv show Duck Tales, and later used as a character on the successful spin-off Darkwing duck.
His first appearance in comics was in the french comic series Picsou in February 1988. That same year, he appeared in the English comic Duck tales #1.
He now appears in the Boom! studios Darkwing Duck series, Uncle scrooge and in may he will appear in the new Ducktales series.
Major Arcs
The Duck Knight Returns
Following Darkwing’s retirement, the two separated and never talked. Drake (Darkwing) calls him,
but does not say anything. Later, Gosalyn Waddlemeyer travels to Duckburg airfield to find him. However, she gets tired and sleeps in a plane. She is startled when she accidentally pushes the control stick. After meeting Launchpad in the sky, they go rescue Darkwing from the Quackwerks Crimebots. When the fearsome five (minus one) and Darkwing, Gos and him are captured by Quackwerks, they are all surprised to find that the man behind all havoc they had to sustain for the past year is none other than Taurus Bulba!
Following Bulba’s defeat at the hands of Darkwing and Gosmo Duck, Uncle Scrooge appoints him the new CEO of Quackwerks, as it is too big to fail. He is now using his power to help support Darkwing. In fact, the job really suits him (he has started wearing suits): he just has to sit about and do nothing. Using his job as CEO, he finds Morgana McCawber for Drake.
Crisis on Infinite Darkwings
More recently, when St. Canard was being overrun by alternate Darkwings (controlled by Negaduck and Magica De Spell), Launchpad reprogrammed the Crimebots to be Herobots and save the citizens from the Darkwings of the Multiverse.
F.O.W.L. Disposition
When the Evil organization known as F.O.W.L. tries summon the even eviler force known as Duckthulhu, Launchpad and Morgana join forces to fight this force while Darkwing is dealing with F.O.W.L.’s agents. He was turned into a tentacled zombie like the rest of the residence of St. Canard, but he is rescued by Morgana before she fights Duckthulhu ad disappears in the process.
Mayoral Race
To get out of his depressed mood about Morgana being gone, Darkwing decides to run for the office of Mayor. On the campaign trail, he fights several villains, such as One-shot and Cat-Tankerous. In a turn of events, Launchpad is also running.
Family
In Duck tales, Launchpad reveals that his family has been known for its aerial
talent, even for being known as “the Flying McQuacks”. Uncle Scrooge meets launchpad’s parents, Ripcord Mcquack and Birdie, and his sister Loopie. His parents revealed that he could crash even before he could walk.
launchpad believes they are ashamed to be in the same family as him, but it turns out that they are quite proud of him.
He also had a great grandfather who was part of the civil war, who could not pull his own sword. However, after meeting up with his grandfather’s regiment who was somehow alive, he was able to to change history in a reenactment into what it should have been.
Life before Darkwing: Duck Tales
Launchpad was formally Scrooge Mcduck’s pilot. Launchpad calls him “Mr. Mc-D”, a name only he can use. He once mentioned that he and Scrooge had been in over 101 crashes together, though that number might have increased triple that before he met Darkwing.
When they first met, Scrooge wanted to have a cheep pilot to fly him to the “Thick-of-it Rain forest”. Scrooge chooses Launchpad because he only has to pay two cents (after a little smashing bardoring on Scrooge’s part. Him and his *sticky* fingers…). Launchpad reveals it is his first job. True to form, Launchpad bungles landing and both pilot and passenger and plane gets sucked into a tunnel system and narrowly misses the earth’s core. He manages to get the plane into an adjacent tunnel and, after traveling through that, fly into an underground world. He misses a boiling lake and produces his first crash. Boy was it a beauty.
After surviving their, first crash together, Scrooge and Launchpad meet a tribe of women warriors. It seems all the men had run away, perhaps for a good reason because the women apparently run away and a giant crab tries to eat them. The women return and attack the crab. It turns out the positions of men and women are switched (so the women do all the hunting and the men do all the cleaning and are the “damsels in distress”). Too tired of cleaning, they escape by pushing Launchpad’s plane into the boiling lake. They manage to evade both the woman, a giant squid, and giant bats before finally finding what they had the rain forest: the Lost City of Diamonds (which needs to find a new name).
The City ends up crumbling and the bats capture Scrooge and one of the native warrior women. Launchpad ends up rejoining the women and then men tribes and together they save Scrooge.
Double-0-Duck
Launchpad is mistaken by SHUSH agents (the enemy of FOWL which was then called Duckburg Intelligence Agency or DIA
for short) to be Bruno Von Beak, an agent of FOWL. When the mistake is discovered, J. Gander Hooter decides to recurte the mismatched crash-prone pilot to spy on the Foreign Organization of World Larceny. Bruno’s contact is a woman named “Feathers Galore”, who later becomes an alley against the evil agency’s current leader: Dr. NoGood, who falls into a vat of bubbling green stuff (which might have been vanishing potion intended for the worlds money). Launchpad later quits the spying business after that event, returning to being Scrooge’s pilot.
Alternate Versions
When the Darkwing Ducks of the Multiverse attack St. Canard during the Crisis on Infinite Darkwings, we manage to see an alternate Launchpad who looks similar to Pumbaa (who wears an aviation helmet similar to Launchpad’s). He stands next to an alternate Morgana (who looks like Timon) and a Darkwing (who looks like Simba).
Negaverse
In the Negaverse ( Negaduck‘s home), he is nasty and mean (the opposite of what he is usually).
