Toyman
53 years ago - Winslow Schott is born in England, the son of Archemedes Schott and heir to the Schott Toy Company.
43 years ago - 10-year-old Winslow begins designing toys using his advanced robotics skills.
28 years ago - 25-year-old Winslow takes over the Schott Toy Company after the death of his father. He is known as a genius recluse.
21 years ago - 32-year-old Winslow begins being seen with his "wife', actually a robot of his own design.
15 years ago - 38-year-old Winslow has a public breakdown when Lexcorp acquires Schott Toys to utilize its robotics patents, blaming Lex Luthor for the death of his "wife".
12 years ago - 41-year-old Winslow begins staging violent attacks against Lex Luthor with his weaponized toys as the Toyman. He is stopped by Superman and placed in a prison for the insane.
8 years ago - 45-year-old Winslow is released from prison and completely disappears.
6 years ago - 47-year-old Winslow kidnaps a series of children in Metropolis, holding the city hostage until Superman finds him, discovering that it is actually a rogue robot double.
1 year ago - 52-year-old Winslow joins the Legion of Doom, still revealing himself only though his marionette animatrons.
Toyman is a good example of the type of bad guy Superman wound up contending with for many of the early decades of his career; a weirdo white guy in a suit. In a lot of ways, this was the challenge that many of the adaptations of Superman face, because how hard is it really to imagine that this character is any kind of challenge?
In fact, that's actually become what's made Toyman such an interesting character. It's such an enduring concept precisely because he is so ineffective on the surface and demands that the writers put in the effort to MAKE him a believable threat. Whether this means making him a skinny jester using stylized weapons, or a creepy kidnapping sociopath largely depends on the decade you're writing him in, but we're left with a real web of a character to untangle into one cohesive vision.
In fact, that's actually become what's made Toyman such an interesting character. It's such an enduring concept precisely because he is so ineffective on the surface and demands that the writers put in the effort to MAKE him a believable threat. Whether this means making him a skinny jester using stylized weapons, or a creepy kidnapping sociopath largely depends on the decade you're writing him in, but we're left with a real web of a character to untangle into one cohesive vision.
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Toyman's Comic HistoryToyman dates all the way back to the 40s, where he was literally a curly-haired fat guy who bounced on Superman's head with a pogo stick. It's a pretty ludacris setup, but that was the name of the game back in the early days of comics. As comics evolved, you started to see his toys attack Superman from far away more often, using remote control planes or tanks, that sort of thing. As the character evolved over the decades (most notably in the 70's where you saw a new person, Jack Nimball, become the jester-costume-wearing Toyman that joined the Legion of Doom in the Superfriends cartoon), he seemed to have more in common with the Gotham City bad guys; a crazy guy with a bizarre schtick.
Like a lot of classically weird baddies, the character shifted gears thanks to the 90's Animated Series. They leaned into the Gotham City stylings by giving him a creepy doll mask, but also by redirecting him. He was no longer a generic criminal, but rather a failed genius that was vengefully obsessed with Bruno Manheim. The comics dipped into the idea of making him a murderous sociopath (90's comics are kind of predictable that way), but we also saw a new, more heroic, youthful Toyman in the pages of Batman/Superman: Public Enemies and an attempt to depict the Legion of Doom Toyman actually presented as an automaton driven by the classic Schott version of the character. |
Our Toyman's Story & AppearanceSo how do we make a single character out of all of this? As usual, a lot of the innovation of the animated series is very helpful; the idea of him being a vengeance-obsessed genius inventor in his first appearance, although we abandoned the doll-mask and just let him be the classic bow-tied willy-wonka-esque character, who is clearly already creepy enough.
As we move forward, we lean heavily into the idea that Toyman is always at his most threatening when he is outside of the reach of the hero. He's often depicted as creating robotic family members (this is played up even more in the toyman allegory character 'Doll-Maker' from Mark Millar's terrifyingly graphic comic 'Wanted') so we actually really like the mid 90's one-off depiction of the black-cloaked sociopath version of Toyman who was explained away as being a rogue automaton. Moving forward from that moment... The notion that Winslow becomes a complete recluse who only interacts with the world as a marionette automaton is actually a really cool way to let the character play to his strengths, and make him a unique force among the DC baddies. When he then joins the Legion of Doom, we get him looking exactly the way he did in the classic cartoon, just scarier because we know it's actually an android. |
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Toyman's FutureThis is a character you could ONLY get in comics, but I think that by executing the character's development this way, he becomes a legitimate threat and unique challenge for the heroes.
He's a classic Legion of Doom villain, so we needed to include him in that team. They're going to threaten the Justice League, but now that Toyman is deliberately not an actual person, he can easily have a vast variety of uses, either as a giant marionette, or an army of them... he can have a self-destruct... there are so many terrifying ways a good writer can use this because it's not just that he's deploying toys against the good guys, he is now one himself. And of course, all of this implies that Winslow himself is secured away somewhere in front of a wall of controls and monitors... probably covered with junk food. How's that for an allegory for modern toys? |