User:Mythicman/Robotoon

Robotoon is an independent Australian comic book character. Billed as "The world's greatest Superhero Robotic Rabbit", he is featured in titles published by STaB Comics. Robtoon was also a major character in the multi-publisher event, OZSLAUGHT, published by Foolproof Publishing.

Creation and publication history
Like many of Shannon Browning's creations, RoboToon started off as a joke. The original sketch was done in 1989, just after Shannon had seen the films Who framed Roger Rabbit? and Robocop. After doing many sketches of both these characters, Shannon started thinking what would happen if a screwball cartoon character like Roger Rabbit was armoured and rebuilt into a character like Robocop. He then went in and did a sketch that was based on the original film poster for Robocop of a cartoon rabbbit in robotic armour, titling it RoboToon. The tag line on this image read "Part Toon. Part Machine. Complete Idiot". This drawing is still in Shannon's possession, and is the oldest piece of self-created artwork he still owns.

In 1997, Shannon submitted some art samples to now defunct Australian comics publisher, Issue One. Thier publisher asked Shannon to try and come up with a storyline he could write and draw involving one of their main characters, Cyberswine. Remembering the drawing from many years earlier, Shannon resurrected RoboToon as a possible foil for the character. The story never saw the light of day, but Shannon had created several design of RoboToon and the character that eventually would become Rumour. Shannon liked the redesign and the new characters so much that he started work on an origin story. This took the form of a series of fough, A4 pages that was almost a complete comic. Everything about the character was completely different to what the final story would become. RoboToon was a rouge security robot that had developed a consciousness and had tried to escape. Rumour - named Rimmer int that story - was the main protagonist in the story, a last ditch solution that was kept locked up in a basement. About the only thing that survived from this initial treatment was the introduction of Roland Emca, the billionaire antagonist. Shannon felt that a lot of the elements of this take on the story didn't work, the main one being there was no reassonable explanation for the fact that he was a rabbit. That vesrion of the story was scraped and most of the original pages have since been lost.