Toonman Villain: The Onion Man (Patreon)

Our Next Toonman villain plays on Toonman's kryptonite weakness to Onions. This here is the Onion Man, a former farmer and child killer brought back from the dead as a monster every harvest. His very being is toxic to Toonman!!

ORIGIN

Amongst the many supervillains and monsters Toonman would come to face in his career as a superhero, none was more deadly to him nor as evil as “The Onion Man”. Originally regarded as a ghost story originating from the Farmlands outside of Vaudeville told to children in order to make them eat their vegetables, the families of Vaudeville soon discovered to their horror that the Onion Man was real. A literal onion humanoid with the dark chlorokinetic ability to grow and mutate all vegetables to monstrous means, the Onion Man’s very presence was toxic to Toonman due to his severe kryptonite allergies to onions, and his dark farmland powers ensured that any other superhero who came to Toonman’s aid would have as much difficulty dealing with the monster. It was for this reason that many of Toonman’s enemies sought to bring the monster to Earth as a means of an edge over the Animated Ace.

But who or what exactly was the Onion Man, and how did it come to be? With the eventual aid of Empress and Mother Nature, Toonman was able to trace the legends back to a series of child murders in the Vaudeville farmlands in the early 70s. The Onion Man had once been a seemingly kindly farmer who in actuality was a predator who murdered the children who were lured into his onion fields. When the parents discovered the truth, they rioted and attacked the farmer, killing him in cold blood and burning his corpse in his fields under a harvest moon. But so wicked was the farmer’s soul that Travail, the modern god of Death and Pollution, saw a worthy vessel to use in conquest of Earth, and revived the farmer into a necrorc that would reappear every harvest to seek his revenge and provide more corpses for Travail’s army.

Powers/Abilities:

• Undead Necrorc with superhuman strength, durability, and healing factor.
• Vegetable Manipulation - able to chlorokinetically control and manipulate vegetables for various dark means.
• Onion physiology - The Onion Man’s very presence is toxic to Toonman.

So, I'm not sure if we ever stated this before, but one of Toonman's unique weakness is that he has a severe kryptonite allergy to onions. This idea came to us on how in a lot of classic cartoons, there was a running gag of characters asking to "Hold the Onions" when they order food. Not sure why, but it was funny. And it gave us a unique idea to apply this to Toonman to serve as a more plausible and easily accessible kryptonite that his enemies could weaponize against him.

And naturally, with a kryptonite weakness came the inspiration to create a villain for Toonman whose power derived from Toonman weakness, like Metallo to Superman, which is a classic favorite Superman villain of ours. The question was how? We didn't want to flat out copy Metallo (nor could we cause robots can't be powered by vegetables), and the problem with most kryptonite villains is that theirs a question of why the heroes doesn't just send some other hero to stop them in their place. Also, onions are exactly as translatable to characters like say Pumpkins with Jack-O-Lanterns.

After much thought, we decided to create essentially an onion monster, and to make him less laughable we made him a child-murder akin to Freddy Kruger, something that haunts Toonman and Vaudeville everyone harvest. And to make him more of a threat to other heroes, we gave him limited chlorokinetic abilities. Designing him was the toughest part, but our artist David Velásquez really nailed it when we just told him to have fun with the design.

Let us know what you think of this new Toonman villain with a comment below!

Toonman: The Animated Ace © NRG Comics

Art and Design by David Velásquez