Hundreds of years ago, humanoids from an unidentified planet sought a
world to use as an asylum for their outcast insane members, and settled
on a planet located in the Keystone Quadrant, out by the stars of Sirus
Major. There the psychiatrists created robots to care for their
patients' particular brands of insanity. For years they studied the
functions and dysfunctions of the mind, writing their observations in
the starship Gideon's logbook until their funding was cut off and they
were ordered back to their homeworld. As they left, they erected a
forcefield-generating
Galacian Wall around the star system to keep their uncured patients safe from the normal society that loathed them.
For generations the robots faithfully watched over their charges, whose
children were born insane themselves, or affected by their insane
environment. The
Loonies,
as they came to be known, created a religion worshiping the ancient
Shrinks as gods, with straight-jacketed priests called the Good Humor
Men venerating the logbook as their Bible, housing it in the Admissions
Ward and performing rites to attain the Final Cure. Gaining sentence
(due in part to radiation from a nearby star going nova), the supremely
logical robots sought a way out from directly caring for their illogical
charges. They played around with the genetics of the various companion
animals left by the Shrinks and created a race of animal people to care
for the Loonies while the robots retreated to their own side of the
planet and began to work on a giant humanoid starship, and started to
deduce how to shut down the Wall from the inside. Over time the planet
came to be known as
Halfworld,
divided between the robots' industrial half, and the verdant half
occupied by the others, with the robots building toys designed by the
animals to keep the Loonies entertained, and making other machines and
weapons for the animals' use only, and giving many animals requested
cybernetic enhancements. Over time the animals created their own
advanced society somewhat apart from the Loonies, with the major
industry toymaking for the Loonies' amusements, and the Loonies paying
for services rendered with animal cracker currencies.
In recent years, the Incredible
Hulk (Bruce Banner) was transported to Halfworld via energies released during the destruction of the energy creature
Galaxy Master. The Hulk met Quadrant guardian Rocket Raccoon and his partner
Wal Rus,
who tried unsuccessfully to figure out how the strange green human got
through the Galacian Wall. When the head of Inter-Stel Mechanics,
Judson Jakes, had the mercenary
Black Bunny Brigade steal the
Gideon's Bible and held his ward, the otter
Lylla, as a hostage, Rocket enlisted the Hulk's aid to rescue both the Bible and his girlfriend. They invaded Jake's orbital
Spacewheel spacestation and rescued both the book and Lylla, but not before Jake's chief scientist/toymaker, the tortoise
Uncle Pyko, sent the Hulk back to
Earth to prevent the Hulk's presence from destroying the political status quo among the various Halfworld animal factions.
The saurian
Lord Dyvyne,
head of Dyvynities,Inc., forcibly took over Inter-Stel Mechanics,
forcing Jackes and Pyko from Spacewheel, and hiring the Black Bunny
Brigade away from Jakes. Relocating to Halfworlds's equator, Jakes
reincorporated as
Mayhem Mekaniks, where he had Pyko created more members of his mechanical Psycho-Circus (a.k.a.
Killer Clowns) and the cybermetric bat-like
Drakillars,
and plotted to find a way to marry Lylla to gain permanent control of
her late parents' fortune and the toy company they had founded. Desiring
to be the top toymaker, Jakes had one of his mechanical Killer Clowns
assassinated Lord Dyvyne's chief toysmith, igniting a trade war. Rocket
went after Jakes to stop the war, but then Dyvyne had Lylla kidnapped to
force a marriage between them to gain control of her fortune, forcing
Rocket and her uncle Wal to rescue her instead. They tracked Lylla to
the Loony shrine Asylum, where Brigade leader
Blackjack O'Hare
had taken her to seek her fortune for himself, putting him on the outs
with his employer. When the Killer Clowns vacuumed up the Black Bunny
Brigade, O'Hare was forced to rescue Rocket and himself from the wrath
of lord Dyvyne's misty creature
Red Breath. luring the pursuing Clowns on their vacuum sleds to vacuum up the erasing Red Breath, destroying both sets of assassins.
Now finding both toy moguls allied against them, Rocket, Wal Rus,
Lylla, and O'Hare fled to the robotic side of Half World, where they
found Uncle Pyko; he had "borrowed" and deciphered Halfworld's Bible,
learning the truth of Halfworld's origins, and left Jakes to pursue his
own agendas of becoming the Quadrant's chief toysmith for the pure joy
of creating toys. Escaping from the treacherous O'Hare and his cronies,
Pyko led the other three to the Assembly Line to meet the head robot,
where Rocket handed over the Bible to the robots to uses psychiatric
knowledge to create the Wonder Toy, a helmet designed to correct the
imbalances in the Loonies' minds, curing them. Jakes and Lord Dyvyne
combined forces for one last attack on Rocket and Pyko to keep them from
distributing the Toys and destroying their markets forever. The Killer
Clowns and Lord Dyvyne's simian samurais almost succeeded in slaying
them until reinforcements - the robots, a repentant O'Hare, and the
now-cured Loonies - arrived to turn the tide of battle against Jakes and
Dyvyne, who were deliberately thrown from their Drakillar perch onto
the ground below, apparently killing them. While some animals elected to
stay and help the former Loonies rebuild their world, Wal, Lylla,
O'Hare and many other animals joined almost all the robots aboard the
humanoid Ship with Rocket as its captain, seeking adventures among the
stars.
Note: 10,000-15,000 years in the future, Rocket Raccoon, now called
Rocky Raccoon, met Ithican Prince Wayfinder on the planet Hailailae,
also known as
Witchworld,
where he aided the offworld Prince by instructing him about the dangers
of Witchworld, and helped him battle the animal men of the sorceress
Kirke.
How Rocket survived the intervening millennia, or if he was somehow
transported there through space/time to the planet remains unrevealed.
