Duckman
Jason Alexander as the voice of a lewd, widowed private-eye duck in the USA Network's adult cartoon, animated by Klasky Csupo. It ran 70 episodes, earned three Emmy nominations, and ended on a cliffhanger that was never resolved.
Duckman started as a comic. Cartoonist Everett Peck created the character, who according to the Lambiek Comiclopedia first appeared in Dark Horse Presents in 1988, and Dark Horse published a Duckman one-shot in 1990. The TV version was developed by Jeff Reno and Ron Osborn with Peck, and animated by Klasky Csupo, which was making Aaahh!!! Real Monsters for Nickelodeon at the same time. It was produced in association with Paramount. It premiered on the USA Network on March 5, 1994, and aired mostly on Saturday nights.
The full title was Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man. Jason Alexander voiced Eric Tiberius Duckman, a widowed, lewd, self-hating private detective raising his family in Los Angeles. Gregg Berger played Cornfed, the pig who is his business partner and only friend. Dweezil Zappa voiced Ajax, the slow-witted teenage son, and Nancy Travis played Bernice, the sister-in-law who hates him. The household also included two-headed genius twins named Charles and Mambo and a comatose mother-in-law called Grandma-ma. At the office were Fluffy and Uranus, a pair of obsessively politically correct teddy bears, and Tim Curry voiced a recurring supervillain named King Chicken. The first season featured music from Frank Zappa's catalog. Zappa had died a few months before the premiere.
Three episodes were nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program, in 1994, 1996 and 1997. The show ended on September 6, 1997, after four seasons and 70 episodes, with a cliffhanger. Duckman's supposedly dead wife walks into a wedding, and the screen reads "To be continued...?" The series ended there. Comedy Central later reran it, and IGN ranked it 48th on its 2009 list of the top 100 animated TV shows. DVD sets arrived in 2008 and 2009 with some copyrighted music removed over royalty issues, and a complete-series set followed in 2018. Peck died in 2022.
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