February 1, 2002. GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Going quackers

Gay web cartoon hits Showtime

by Anthony Glassman

There was something a little off about Daffy Duck. When Bugs Bunny was saving his feathery tuchus, he was hanging all over him; the minute the situation went south, Daffy would try to sell him out.

And what about Bugs? How many times did he dress in drag in the Looney Tunes cartoons? The rabbit had more dresses than RuPaul.

Which brings things nicely to the topic at hand. Starting in October 2000, Icebox.com showed five episodes of Mike Reiss' Queer Duck, a cross between the Looney Tunes and The Boys in the Band, featuring the adventures of a fey male nurse duck.

The show drew over 28,000 hits on the web site its first day, and now it is back, brought to you by those folks at Showtime, the ones playing Queer as Folk and putting together a gay cable network with MTV.

Queer Duck centers around the life and misadventures of Queer Duck, the only character in the cartoon that wasn't directly lifted from a gay celebrity. He and his friends have all sorts of crazy, albeit incredibly brief, adventures focusing around issues like Dr. Laura, National Coming Out Day, Barbra Streisand and babysitting.

Oh, and such friends he has! There's his boyfriend Openly Gator, who sounds like Harvey Fierstein. (Two notes here. First, the thought of an alligator and a duck having sex is a little too much suspension of disbelief. Why Queer Duck was still alive after their first date is never explained. Second, the joke. Openly Gay-tor. Argh.) Next up is Bi Polar Bear, a hirsute and husky leather-clad albino who sounds like the late, lamented Paul Lynde. Finally, there is Oscar Wildcat,

who insists that coming out would destroy "Mummy."

In one episode, Queer's brother drops his son off for Queer to baby-sit the morning after a huge party. Openly emerges from the bedroom and, not seeing the child, says, "I'm remembering the party now. It was wall-towall cock."

Then, of course, he notices the child. "Er, coke, I mean we were doing coke. Coca Cola!"

After the nephew tries to watch a video called Poke-a-Man, Gator finally slips him a mickey and the child sleeps through the rest of the visit.

It's all zany and madcap like that. Better than that, however, is the fact that, unlike another web cartoon that was recently released on video, this one isn't horribly animated. Some of the motions may be a little jerky, but it's not much worse in terms of animation than Comedy Central's Dr. Katz.

The cartoon was created and written by Mike Reiss, who has won three Emmy Awards for his work on shows like The Simpsons and The Critic.

Jim J. Bullock, who got his start playing the

wacky neighbor in a completely forgettable Ted Knight sitcom, plays Queer Duck. Oh, so that's why he doesn't sound like his voice is impersonating a famous gay person: He's played

You know you are in trouble when the butchest voice in a cartoon is RuPaul singing the theme song. Seriously.

It's a really cute cartoon, albeit a bit oldfashioned. The humor seems at times more relevant to the era of The Boys in the Band than to the new millenium, but perhaps the old jokes are the best.

The cartoons debuted on Showtime's web site on January 23. It will play on the cable network itself on Tuesday nights after the 11 pm repeat of Queer as Folk, starting on January 29. Showtime's web site is http:// www.sho.com.

by a pseudo-famous gay Openly Gator and Queer Duck

person.