Toonman Archenemy: Moonhawk (Patreon)

Very excited about this next Toonman villain! This hear is Moonhawk, the Batman-Expy to Solman's Superman, another one of NRG's most popular fictional superheroes who's desire to be the humans' savior pushed him down a dark path.

ORIGIN

While Solman was considered the greatest fictional superhero, the fictional vigilante known as Moonhawk was considered the greatest anti-hero. Known as the avenging Bird of Prey who haunted those who preyed on the disenfranchised, utilizing his vast wealth, years of education and experience, and deadly arsenal of gadgets against a rogues gallery of some of the darkest and disturbing villains. Like Solman, Moonhawk was a widely franchised character, with his own numerous animated series created in his name beloved by millions of humans. And like the Solman, Moonhawk had often watched from within Toontopia as injustice plagued the human world. And after Toonman had freed his people from the clutches of Helvira the cartoon devil and seemingly united the cartoon and human worlds, Moonhawk was invited by Solman along with many other heroic cartoon protagonists to live up to their heroic potential and better protect both worlds.

But whereas Solman only aspired to live up to being the hero many humans had created him to be, Moonhawk wasn’t satisfied with stopping there. Having watched so much injustice on the disenfranchised within the human world for so long, Moonhawk had come to regard his human creators as being incapable of operating under their own freewill, and desired to be not a hero to humans, but as their savior from themselves, tired of living under the moral rules humans had created with him. After committing his first justifiable murder in secret, Moonhawk began gathering a following of other heroic cartoon protagonists who shared in his ideals, and launched a campaign to take over the human world. Though he appealed to Solman and Toonman’s sense of heroism to join his cause, they ultimately took Moonhawk down, only for him to escape. Moonhawk continues his crusade to save the humans from themselves by any means necessary.

Powers/Abilities

Master Combatant, Genius Intellect, Scientist and Leader

Utilizes various gadgets and weapons to take down his foes.

Leader of a faction of cartoons determined to save the humans from themselves.

Yep! Now the NRGVerse has its own fictional Batman, and it's an evil take! Bet you didn't see that coming?

I've mentioned before that I really want to explore the good and bad dynamics between cartoons and their human creators with Toonman, and I've come up with many ideas to approach it from both sides. One idea I had was that many cartoons, namely the heroic ones, have incredible powers that would make them heroes in the real world just as they would be in their shows or movies. Like Toonman and Solman they would want to protect the humans who created them, but what if they took it too far? Often when we create stories for Cartoons they are serving as a metaphor or fictionalized example of the real world, but we write for them to have it all work out. But having seen how unfair the real world is, they feel a responsibility to intervene and protect their human creators from themselves... by enslaving them. Thus, Moonhawk was born.

The idea to make this specific character a fictionalized Batman expy came from how much people loved Solman and how I wanted to build more of his lore, this meant building up some rogues and allies for him that one would find in a superman comic, including his own Batman. It was also because I was tired of seeing the overuse of the evil superman archetype, and I noticed how there aren't really a lot of evil Batman archetypes outside of DC. Seriously, I could count on the number of fingers how many evil Batman expies there are in pop culture compared to Evil superman like Homelander or Omni-Man. Moonhawk is also meant to be a foil to Solman, as they're both black superheroes but from different sides of the spectrum, kinda like how Killmonger was to Black Panther. And I believe if you are going to have an uprising of cartoon protagonists turning on their human creators, you would need someone who would be able to motivate, inspire and keep them in line without their own powers. Hence, Batman.

So Yeah, in addition to evil cartoon villains, Toonman will be dealing with heroic cartoons becoming anti-villains. Like Moonhawk, many of them will be recognizable cartoon stand-ins, but all original characters still from Aesop Animation.

Hope you guys like this new Toonman villain! Let me know what you think with a comment below!

Toonman: The Animated Ace © NRG Comics

Design by David Velasquez

Art by Danilo Cassonato