LOST IN THE REALMS OF MADNESS
AN ACCOUNT BY HENRY JEKYLL M.D.
written in the third person
edited by Dennis E. Power

Being an account of the journey of Henry Jekyll M.D. of his visitation to outré dimensions and entrapment therein with some observations on the habits, culture and nature of the inhabitants of these outré realms.

    In late 1909, having ended his sojourn in New York City in the United States of America rather abruptly, (1) again thanks to the interference of Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll decided to depart for shores he hoped to more welcoming. He traveled to South America and thence to Australia. He picked Australia as his final destination because it was sparsely populated and said population were mostly convicts who would be less likely to scrutinize or ask questions should Hyde come bursting forth. If Hyde lost control then the only people injured would be criminals.

    However he soon discovered that Australia, especially in the Melbourne and Sydney areas resembled for the most part typical English cities. These were not rowdy frontier towns where lawlessness was lax. Jekyll first sailed into Melbourne and found that his upper crust, English background fit in quite nicely. For a few months anyway. Melbourne had the usual temptations of civilization, including drink, gambling and prostitution.

    He also found the Australian temperament, while still having a veneer of English detachment was also more apt to become violent. They were also more prone to casually use insults and foul language in their everyday speech. Jekyll found himself drawn to places of bad repute. In one rather seedy pub/boarding house called Magwitch's a young Australian jokingly mocked Jekyll's efforts to win over a young lady, using crudity and curses to make his point. Highly offended, Jekyll felt Hyde's personality slipping out from his control. Jekyll managed to slam the cork back on the bottle of his consciousness but by then one man was dead and his companions were sorely wounded. The rest of the patrons had fled in terror; the owner had run for the constable. Jekyll heard the owner (2) give a very exacting description of him.

    Jekyll  fled north to Sydney. He found Sydney while still a paragon of English colonialism, a rougher, more bustling city. With all the immigrants it reminded him a bit of an American city. There was a Chinatown district similar to London's  Limehouse. When he felt his Hyde begin to surface every so often, he would self prescribe a visit to an opium den. The opiate soothed away his rage and anxieties, quelling the presence of Hyde.

    During one such visit to an opium den, Jekyll blearily became aware of an elderly Chinese gentleman staring directly into his face. The Chinaman quickly lay back on his pallet and went back to his own opium pipe. Jekyll had the nagging feeling that he should know this person but could not place him.

     One evening  few days later while Jekyll was exiting  Dawkins' gaming house) whose motto on the door was "We don't pick your pocket!"), five men pushed him into an alley and threw a fishing net over him. The men were yelling at him in accented English and attempting to quiet him by hitting him. Henry Jekyll's control slipped away as rage consumed him. Edward Hyde emerged, ripping the net apart and he killed four of Jekyll's would be abductors. Hyde ran after and caught an old Chinese man that was directing the abduction. Jekyll battled for control and emerged. The older Chinese man slipped away as Jekyll and Hyde fought an internal battle.

    Jekyll noticed a ring upon one of the dead attackers. A chill went down his spine. He heard a constable's whistle and ran from the scene of the crime. Jekyll regretted not letting Hyde kill the elderly man. The elderly man was one of the henchmen of the Devil Doctor whom Jekyll and team members had run against in 1898. He had heard that the Devil Doctor had returned to Asia and had been crippled but that could have been just a rumor.

    Yet, whatever the truth the Devil Doctor's organization seemed to still be functioning. Jekyll decided to once again pull up stakes and hit the road. He traveled by rail to Brisbane. He took rooms in the better area of town, reasoning that he would be able to spot the Devil Doctor's agents more easily that way. Jekyll stayed at the Transcontinental Hotel. He was startled to see a photo of Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes behind the desk. (3) The clerk informed him that Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson had been guests at the hotel in 1888. Jekyll had not been there for two days when he spotted a tail. At least he thought it was a tail. Buying a few supplies and a horse, he headed out of Brisbane for the bush.

    Late afternoon, just outside of Ipswich, he came across a traffic accident; a wagon had overturned, seriously injuring the driver. Four men, one of whom appeared to be a young constable albeit curiously a half-caste, were attempting to lift the wagon off of the victim. Jekyll dismounted and gave them a hand. His added strength made the wagon seem much lighter. (This may have been the result of his lycanthropic strength).

    Jekyll informed the men that he was a doctor and that he would treat the man. He told the four rescuers what he supplies he would need and two of the men and the Constable went to fetch them.

    Jekyll boiled the water that the men brought and sterilized the rags.  The driver had a couple broken ribs and a compound fracture of the leg. Fortunately none of the major arteries or veins were ruptured.Dosing the patient with some of his supply of laudanum, he and the men straightened the leg, pushing the bone back into place. He stitched up the tear and they bound the leg in cloth and bark strips that the Constable had brought. Jekyll then sealed the leg with a cast of mud and clay, using sterile water as a base.

    Two of the men were passing colliers; the third was the owner of a house near to the accident. He told Jekyll that they could take the injured man to his house for the evening then in the morning, Jekyll and he could take the patient to his families holdings near Darling Downs

    The man who guested Jekyll and his patient was Johan Mengel. His wife Mary came bustling out of the house and helped Jekyll and Johan carry the unconscious man inside the home where they rested him on blankets on the floor. Jekyll was surprised that the young Constable who had followed them had not helped carry the man inside. He stood outside the door by the horses and wagon.

    As soon as the patient was settled down, Johan told the Constable he could come inside the house but not to touch anything. The Mengels gave him water and a half a loaf of bread but had him eat out by the wagon.

    Jekyll was treated to a full meal. He ate two thirds of it and asked if he could give the rest to the Constable

    Mary replied it was better than throwing it away.

    The Constable eagerly ate his plate. Johan Mengel sat outside in a straight back chair and smoke while he watched the young police officer eat. Jekyll declined tobacco.

    "Hey drongo, you're the half caste boy with the fancy moniker from the orphanage, eh?"

    "Yes, sir."

    Johan laughed, "Doc this here half-breed boy is an Emperor!" He winked at Jekyll. "Tell him your name, boy."

    "Bony, sir"

    "Tell him the whole thing, ya larrikan"

    Rolling his eyes, the Constable said, "Napoleon Bonaparte, sir" (4)

    Johan Mengel broke into hearty laughter. His laughter was interrupted by the moans of the patient. Jekyll followed Mengel inside. Bony stayed outside the house, looking in through the open window.

    "Dreamtime is here. All the time is dream time. Constant the dreaming. Doorways to the Dream. Treasures of the Gods, Gold of the Gods! Trash becomes cash! Dreamtime is here. All the time is dream time. Dreaming always." The patient muttered, sweating and moving about on his pallet in a combination of feverish pain and narcotic delirium."

   " Well, at least he knows he is dreaming". Jekyll stated with a small smile.

    "No, sir he refers to the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is the beginning of knowledge, from which came the laws of existence. For survival these laws must be observed. The Dreamtime is also a native belief about the creation of the world. Long ago the ancestor beings rose from beneath the earth. The earth was then a flat plain in darkness. The ancestor beings moved across the world, creating as they moved. Out of the nothingness they formed substance in their journeys, they created the landscape, the mountains, the rivers, the trees, waterholes, plains and sand hills. They made the people themselves, who are descendants of the Dreamtime ancestors. They made the Ant, Grasshopper, Emu, Eagle, Crow, Parrot, Wallaby, Kangaroo, Lizard, Snake, and all food plants. They made the natural elements; Water, Air and Fire. They made all the celestial bodies; the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. Then, wearied from all their activity, the mythical creatures sank back into the earth and returned to their state of sleep.

    "Sometimes their spirits turned into rocks or trees or a part of the landscape. These became sacred places, to be seen only by initiated men. These sites have special qualities.

    "The Dreaming refers to each person's connection to the Dreamtime, his life's journey.

    "It is rumored that this man's people have on their lands a site sacred to a long gone tribe. This site is one of the places where the Ancestor beings rose from and returned to the Earth. It is said that this man's family sends gifts to the Ancestor Beings and they gift them with gold."

    Johan Mengel stared at the half-caste police tracker for a second and burst into another gale of laughing. "Stuff and nonsense! I am to bed. See you in the morning Doc."

    Jekyll looked at the boy questioningly. "Do you believe this story Bony, about this man's family?"

    The half-caste police officer drew himself up straight and said, "No, sir I am an educated man, I am civilized" With that he went to sleep in the wagon. He would be gone in the morning, back to his station, no doubt.

    In the morning the patient was fully conscious if in a great deal of pain. Jekyll doused him with laudanum. The man introduced himself as Marvin Awickerman. He offered to pay Jekyll ten pounds of gold if he would take care of him until he was able to move around on his own.

    His funds nearly depleted and believing that the isolation without temptation would help keep Hyde in check, Jekyll agreed. Jekyll tied his horse to Awickerman's wagon and drove it deeper into the bush.

    Marvin's family holding was indeed near Darling, although it was an isolated and self-sufficient. There was a house and a farrier's shed next to it. There was also a large barn filled with various crates and supplies, looking like a warehouse stuck in the middle of nowhere.

    Awickerman told Jekyll that someone from his family was supposed to man the station at all times but his cousin had just taken off and left the place flat. The family's main estates were in Port Middlebay.

    Awickerman told Jekyll that if he help him fill the orders then there would be another five pounds or perhaps ten pounds of gold in it for him. Jekyll agreed. In the carpentry shop they made a crutch for Marvin Awickerman.

    Awickerman then lead him to a rocky hill near the house. Upon the face of the windswept reddish rock was an aboriginal design. It was a black circle comprised of a single line in a spiral etched into the stone and stained with pigment. Held fast in some rocks was a large wooden box filled with pieces of paper wrapped around rocks. Awickerman filled a burlap sack with the paper-covered rocks.

    Each paper had something scrawled on it in a clumsy and barely legible handwriting.  There were single items or multiple items. For example some of the items they filled were; three sticks of dynamite and four extra large rubber bands,  large steel bear trap, two springs, etc.

    Marvin Awickerman had Jekyll pull various items from the warehouse shelves. Those things that were not in stock, Marvin Awickerman either made in the carpentry or farrier shop or wrote "not in stock"

    They loaded up the cart and drove back to the hillside. Jekyll suspected that Awickerman was insane from the isolation and desolation but played along. He took cover when Awickerman tossed the rubber bands and unlit sticks of dynamite at the black spiral. The items hit the spiral, seemed to freeze in midair for an instant and then disappeared.

    A few moments later a large lump of gold came rolling out of the spiral. Awickerman picked it up and then threw the bear trap into the spiral. Another lump of gold followed. They did this until the wagon was empty except for the gold that had taken the place of the trade goods.

    Over the next three weeks, Jekyll learned something of Awickerman's family, although, he suspected that not all that he was told was the truth. Awickerman's Grandfather volunteered to emigrate to Australia, bringing with him his wife, four children and an orphan ward. He had been a ne'er-do-well businessman and accountant in England and had been thrown into debtor's prison a few times which accounted for the voluntary emigration. He felt certain that in Australia something would turn up.

    The family had squatted on this land at first, attempting to farm the dry, baked soil. Although his grandfather had been a kind, even-tempered man he had become totally frustrated with his failure as a farmer and flung a hoe at the spiral  design on the rocky bluff. Thinking it was a native curse on this land. It turned out to be the family's salvation. The hoe disappeared. Awickerman's son was hot to go after it but Awickerman stuck his head in the spiral and immediately felt nauseated, disoriented and in total darkness. He forbade anyone going in there.

    A day after the hoe had been thrown through the spiral, a piece of paper was found blowing across the ground. It had apparently come from the spiral. "Was able to use hoe as trap. Speeding bird stepped on end and wood smacked him in the face, killing him. Name remuneration."

    Awickerman asked for gold and tied the note onto a rock and tossed it in the spiral. He received a nugget about the size of a fist. Another note came through asking for another device.

    Awickerman discovered that he had a knack for creating items that the notes asked for in a carpentry shop or forge. He also began to warehouse other things requested by the notes that were not otherwise available. As the family's fortunes grew, they moved to Port Middlebay where Awickerman became a prosperous merchant and eventually a magistrate.

    Yet he felt an obligation to the mysterious writer of notes and had one of his sons or and eventually sons in laws man the station for a four month period. This duty was passed onto the grandsons as well.

    Marvin Awickerman had sent a note off to his family via a passing bushranger; he explained what had happened and the fact that he was being help by a friend.

    There was a steady flow of gold and occasionally silver through the spiral on their end. The site of so much gold brought forth Jekyll's baser instincts, he felt Hyde begin to rise. He quelled the urges and dipped into his laudanum supplies.

    One morning about four weeks after Jekyll and Awickerman had arrived at the odd station in the Australian bush, two riders entered the stockade fence. They were dressed as typical Aussie bushmen with felt hats, moleskin pants, woolen shirts and thick boots. They also carried rifles and sidearms

    Rifles drawn, they approached Awickerman and Jekyll.

    "This the bloke, Mr. M?"

    "Yes,  take him pretty far from here and make it quick and painless. He has been a good deal of help to me. Awickerman answered and then turned to Jekyll with a sorrowful expression. "You understand Doc, it is out of my hands. You know too much."

    As Jekyll flamed into rage, Hyde began to emerge but a gun butt to the head knocked both identities insensible. Hyde awoke just as the moon was rising, the illumination felt exhilarating, although it was hard to enjoy it hog-tied and slung belly first over the back of a horse. Hyde emerged with a roar, snapping his bonds and biting a chunk of flesh from the horse. The horse screamed and reared flinging Hyde and the rider to the ground.

    Hyde made short work of both of the men; despite taking a couple of gun shots. He disposed of one of the screaming horse by breaking its neck with a punch. Hyde rode the remaining frightened horse back to Awickerman station house, following the trail by scent.

    Awickerman was no where to be found nor was the gold. He searched through the house and found none of the gold. He did however find some correspondence and saw Marvin Awickerman's real name. Jekyll remembered that name from somewhere but could not place it. (5)

    He thought about torching the station but decided that the fire would be too noticeable so took some food and other supplies. He rode past the spiral carving and noticed a chunk of gold there. Jekyll dismounted to retrieve it. His vision suddenly went red as a clap of thunder burst through his ears and chest. Jekyll was dimly aware of Marvin Awickerman standing some distance away with dynamite sticks in his hands.

    Edward Hyde sprang to his feet with a curse despite the torn and burnt flesh and broken bones of his body.

    Marvin Awickerman desperately lit and tossed another stick of dynamite at Edward Hyde. Hyde felt himself flung backwards by the midair explosion. He hit the spiral carving with a sickening thud, hung suspended for a second and then fell for a timeless time.

    Disoriented and nauseated, hurting from a dozen wounds that would have killed a normal man, Hyde fell through a polychromatic mist, a region of utter madness and shifting shapes, of fluid forms and liquid landscapes. In the ever changing forms, shapes and designs that floated before his eyes there were instances where they were nearly recognizable but even attempting to shape to this disorder caused mental anguish.

After falling for what could have been hours or days, Hyde finally popped out and landed in an explosion of dust on hard ground. It was a bright summer day or so it appeared the sky were an oddly bright blue and the sun an intense yellow shade. The bright pastel colors of everything so far as he could were overly brilliant and the shapes were askew. For it was like he was trapped in a watercolor or chalk painting. There was a faint shimmer, almost a glow to everything. Even the dirt was overly bright. It felt solid yet fluid, almost spongy.

    The landscape resembled a surreal version of the barren lands he had just departed.

Hyde lay on a dirt, sparsely grassed bit of land next to a road covered with black pavement, on either side of the road were craggy, eroded cliffs. His back was leaning against a wooden post that had a metal cylinder atop of it.  Hearing a sound from the distance he saw a dust cloud moving towards him at an incredible rate of speed. The dust cloud stopped right in front of him and dissipated instantly. Standing before him was a large bird looking like a cross between a roadrunner and an ostrich. The bird was also strangely shaped and colored. From out of no where a sign appeared in a prehensile wing tip, Accelerati Incredibilulis. The bird then emitted a loud beeping sound and the dust cloud formed and moved on down the road at a great velocity.

    He then heard a sound of pinging and saw another incredible site. Closing fast on the bird  was an animal that looked like an upright humanoid wolf. He had a napkin tied around his neck, a knife and fork in either hand and was hopping down the road on a pair of giant springs attached to his feet. The bird stopped in the middle of the road and the wolf creature increased his speed. The springs caught in a crack in the road, snapping the wolf-like creature back hard enough to flatten him against the pavement. He became  a thing resembling a furry flapjack with arms and legs, still carrying a knife and fork. Like a weird furry crab it scuttled after the speeding bird.

    The combination of his injuries and the dizzying sense of dislocation made Edward Hyde faint.

    Henry Jekyll awoke lying on a four-posted bed with a feather mattress. Next to the bed was a nightstand that had upon it a lit lamp with a paisley shade and glass pitcher of water. He was in a cavern of some sort, yet the lamp was plugged into the smooth rock of the cavern wall. Dry mouthed Jekyll drank some of the water, to find it cool, yet oddly greasy and with an odd taste.

    Wandering around he found the cavern to have several rooms, all sparsely but tastefully furnished.

    He entered a library with stacks and stacks of books, in the center of the room was a large overly stuffed armchair which sat upon a Persian carpet. Next to the armchair was a tall lamp, a small table and an ash receptacle. Sitting in the armchair was the humanoid wolf, which has so shocked Edward Hyde that the memory of the event bled over into Jekyll's consciousness.

    The humanoid wolf sat with his legs crossed, reading a book. He wore wire frame glasses and smoked a cigar.

    Feeling Jekyll's presence, the humanoid wolf placed a marker in his book and placed it on the table.

    "You do not look like a rocket." spoke the humanoid wolf in a cultured almost British sounding voice. " I ordered a rocket, are you supposed to help me build one."

    Jekyll sat down hard on the cavern floor. "What are you?

    Grinning doggishly, the humanoid wolf said, "I have been called many things, Carnivorous Vulgaris,  Road Runner Digestus, Eatibus Anythingus, Famishus Famishus, Eatius Birdius, Eternaliii Famishii, etcetera, etcetera. I prefer to be called Wile E. Coyote, Genius."

    Peering at Jekyll over the rims of his glasses he remarked, "We don't have many of your kind here and I never expected to see one pop out of my mailbox."

    Jekyll soon discovered that he had landed a bizarre analog of the Southwestern United States. (6) The Coyote told him how he had started placing orders in his mailbox and would receive items inside it. The mailbox would expand to accommodate items larger than itself. Originally he had just placed the orders in the mailbox but the Retail Company had insisted that he tie the orders around rocks. Jekyll attempted to squeeze inside the mailbox and return to his world but the mailbox would not expand for him.

    The Coyote was aware as were most of the inhabitants of this place that there were other planes of existence besides their own. Of course, they believed that this was the true existence and the others were pale imitations. Coyote told Jekyll there were various theories and belief systems floating about in the Tooniverse, the two main ones were that the world was the result of Dreaming Gods, or God. Various names were attached to him or it, The Render, Georgorr and The Gardner. Others posited a Great Animator- Giver of Life and Form. (7) Coyote leaned towards the latter, although it did not explain why the other planes of existence had such odd and restrictive physical laws.

    Coyote said he had heard of rare cases where humanoids like Jekyll had came over and he had even heard of cases where people from the Tooniverse had gone over into the other planes but he did not know how or where. Wile E. Coyote said that one of his Coyote cousins claimed to be able to travel back and forth between the worlds but he was such a liar, Wile E. did not believe him.

    Jekyll helped Wile E. Coyote with one of the plots of his eternal quest to get a roadrunner as the bird was called. Most times he failed, with Jekyll's help he succeeded. As squeamish as Jekyll was about eating a possibly sentient creature, he did so because he was starving.

    They stripped the bird down to the bones, the flesh was quite odd, having the same indefinable quality as the water but it was filling and to a degree nourishing. Jekyll's body was able to digest the roadrunner although it was something with which he would never become accustomed.(8)

    After he finished eating Wile E. Coyote sat picking his teeth with a toothpick; his stomach distended to such an extent that he looked nine months pregnant. He played some Brahms on the Victrola while relaxing. The Coyote soon fell asleep. Seizing his chance Jekyll tied up the Coyote with some rope.

   Jekyll sent a note through the Coyote's mailbox that he had made certain that Awickerman and his family would never see another ounce of gold. Jekyll knew it would at least cause them some anxiety and/or hardship until the Coyote managed to free himself. He thought at first that the Coyote would starve to death as tightly trussed as Jekyll had tied him and felt a bit guilty about that. However as Jekyll had found out death was not permanent in this plane of existence (which he began to believe was a circle of hell not described by Dante) only a few hours after the bird had been picked clean to the skeleton had flesh begun to reform on it. By the end of the day, the Roadrunner had been completely regenerated; it shook itself off and disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust. As he would discover like most events in the Tooniverse, how long it took for a regeneration was not a constant, sometimes in was instantaneous with the bird forming from the outside in or top to bottom or inside out.

    Jekyll did not feel so guilty about the Coyote when he started down the road, hoping to find some sort of civilization.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde found themselves in that region of Chaos known variously as Doodleland or the Tooniverse. The inhabitants called it  that for no apparent reason than they called themselves Toons. Living in the Tooniverse was something that only the very strong-minded or those who possessed some forms of madness already could have withstood without going insane. Jekyll was in a place where time and continuity do not necessarily coincide. A place where cause and effect often bear no relationship, except of course by marriage.  Physical laws are ever changing and matter is fluid.

    Jekyll and Hyde were in Chaos, literal Chaos.(9)

    Dr. Henry Jekyll eventually made his way to a section of the Tooniverse with some analog to New York City. This was one of the more stable regions but as with every other place in the Tooniverse, it was subject to some degree of change. Inanimate objects could change design, color or even gain sentience and mobility. Jekyll heard rumors of humans like himself being trapped in the Tooniverse; he also heard tales of differing levels of the Tooniverse and differing versions of it existing side by side. He dismissed the latter as rumors.(10)

    Although there were cycles of day night and seasonal cycles, they were erratic and arbitrary. They threw his circadian rhythms out of balance. There was no time sense in the Tooniverse,  a human being in the Tooniverse was,  barring accident,  practically immortal and unaging. Yet who would want to live forever in that madness!

   Jekyll discovered that the life expectancy of a human being was not too great. Toons could suffer any number of fatal accidents and not really die, however if  a human being smoked a cigar that turned out to be dynamite or was run over by a steam roller or a train or fell from the window of a 88 1/2 floor building, they would die. The corpse would eventually break down into its components and the raw material would be absorbed into toonstuff.

Trapped in this horrifying dimension, Henry Jekyll decided to devote his scientific knowledge to allow him to fit in by becoming a Toon. He had heard rumors of Toons becoming human, albeit briefly through sexual contact with a human being. Although he could have studied how this was accomplished by actually participating in such activity, he was afraid that the release of his passions would release Edward Hyde. He also found the idea unnatural and nauseating.

    By using tissue and blood samples of humanoid Toons, Hyde began to use the materials from the Tooniverse to create a serum. However because he was using chemicals derived from toonstuff, it had an off effect. The chemical portion did in fact turn him into a Toon but into a temporary Toon version of Hyde, more monster than man.

    Some smart aleck Toon kept painting over Dr. Jekyll's name and replacing it with Dr. Jerkyl. Dr. Jekyll went to get some paint remover and had only returned in time to see his formula affect other creatures in the Tooniverse.

    Apparently two sentient Toon dogs had chased a sentient Toon cat into the laboratory. The cat had drunk some of the formula and had been transformed into a Hyde type creature. The Cat had ripped to pieces one of the dogs who ran from the lab. His partner urged him to return and face the cat. The cat had departed but a fly had drunk the formula and turned into a giant Hyde fly. It tore the Toon dog to pieces as well. (11)

    Jekyll enticed the cat to visit his lab by leaving out a saucer of milk. He then took a tissue and blood sample for a piece of fish. Jekyll made some modifications to his formula and drank some. Unfortunately it still turned him into a Toon Hyde.

    As Hyde tore through the neighborhood, the cat chased a little sentient canary bird into the lab. The canary bird drank some of the formula and became a giant yellow Hyde. The bird kept reverted back and forth. As soon as the bird reverted to his normal self the cat would chase and capture him. Whenever the bird's fear of imminent death became overpowering he would revert back to the Hyde form. The canary Hyde eventually ate the cat. The cat of course recovered in a few hours and convinced himself it had only been a dream. (12)

    Feeling that he would never achieve a break through without a test subject, Dr. Jekyll decided to get a rabbit. He carefully fed carrots to a rabbit at a nearby park for days before gaining the sentient rabbit's trust. He painted a glowing picture of the luxuries that the rabbit would have if he came to live with him. Dr. Jekyll lead the rabbit to his room, which was indeed luxurious and plied him with carrots, washed down with carrot joyjuice.

    When the rabbit had passed out Dr. Jekyll took a blood sample that he added to his formula. He tried the formula once more. It still had the same effect, however like the bird his transformations from one state to another took place rather frequently. The strange monster that kept appearing terrified the rabbit. It is only after witnessing the transformation that the rabbit  realizes that the Doctor is the monster.

    The Doctor promises not to drink anymore of the formula if the rabbit will stay. Jekyll notices that the rest of the small amount of formula he had left was gone, he asked if the rabbit drank it. Insulted the rabbit storms out of the house.(13)On his way back to his hole he transformed into a Hyde rabbit while still retaining his persona. People ran screaming from him and he could not understand it. It is only after returning to his rabbit hole and seeing himself in a mirror that he realized what has happened. He returned to Dr. Jekyll and they found an antidote for Bugs Bunny's condition.

    After his cure, Bugs Bunny would return to visit Dr. Jekyll every so often. Without proper chemicals freed of Toonstuff, Dr. Jekyll felt that his task was almost hopeless, yet he persevered having little else to help him keep what little remained of his sanity. He had come to hate his place and all of its insane inhabitants with a passion.

     It was from Bugs Bunny during one of his visits that Dr. Jekyll learned of the Tooniverse's rift into what Jekyll called the real world. The rift was known as Toon Town.

    Bugs stood in Dr. Jekyll's lab watching him work on his human into Toon formula. Noisily eating a carrot and kibitzing.

    Pointing the carrot at Jekyll he asked, "Say, Doc, why you wanna be a Toon anyways?"

    "Because I am tired of being alone, I want to fit in."

    "Okay, but I don't know why you don't just go live with humans like yourself"

    "What! You know where there are other humans?"

    "Oh, yeah, a whole world full of 'em, well, mostly."

    With an inarticulate scream Jekyll grabbed the rabbit by his furry chest and dug his fingers in hard while screaming directly into to the rabbit's face in the overblown style Jekyll had learned over the years in the Tooniverse.

    "Why didn't you tell me!"

    Bugs extracted himself from Jekyll's grip with a falsetto screech of "Hey, don't wrinkle the merchandise!"

    Composing himself, Bugs answered Jekyll's question, "I didn't tell you cuz you didn't ask."

    "How do I get there!"

    "Keep your shirt on. Jeepers, Doc keep that up and you're gonna blow a gasket. Come on I'll take you. I learned how to tunnel into other worlds my great uncle Whitey."

Bugs then tunneled into the floor of the lab, down, down, down, up, sideways, up, down, sideways… Well you get the idea, After tunneling the thorugh the entirety of the chaos realm, Bugs exited in Toon Town.

    Jekyll grabbed the Bunny by the throat and squeezed. Bugs head turned red as an apple and swelled three sizes larger. His eyes popped out of his head on springs and bounced to and fro.

    Jekyll released the Rabbit and his head and face returned to normal after a good shaking.

    "This is not the human world."

    No, Doc you walk down this road, right to that gate right there. He pointed to a large wooden gate that resembled a medieval drawbridge. A sign hung in the middle of the air pointed at the gate, "This Way Stupid!"

    Jekyll hurried down the lane and through the gate and exited into the Los Angeles of 1938. It was the real world, solid, unchanging, married to physical law and linear time. Jekyll wept but quickly quelled that emoton lest Hyde take advantage.

    He soon discovered that this was not his world but it was much closer than the Tooniverse had been. It was a human world but one in which Toons had been integrated into the history since the dawn of time. Toon Town was one of four or five areas where the Tooniverse bled into this particular universe, the others were in Arkansas, Tokyo, Germany and China. Although Toontown was the largest and it appeared to be the only one with a direct connection to the Tooniverse.

    Jekyll had to adjust to living in a world populated with humans and real materials again. Unlike the Tooniverse his wants and needs were not readily met merely by a sort of wish fulfillment. He had to find a job, a place to stay and a way to work on his research. He decided to continue with it since there was a subculture of both humans who wished to be Toons and vice versa.

    Under the name of Harry Jackal, Jekyll took a job with one of the largest employers in the United States, Acme Industries.

    Jekyll took a job in their chemical research laboratories. Shortly after beginning work, he noticed the ubiquitous presence of  the firm's owner, Marvin Acme in the form of portraits scattered through out the factories. Jekyll felt that he knew this man from somewhere. The face was extremely familiar. After staring at it for several weeks, he suddenly had insight. Take off several pounds, take off twenty-odd years and add more hair and Marvin Acme was a spitting image of Marvin Awickerman. Jekyll did not know if this Marvin Acme was just a person with an uncanny resemblance to Marvin Awickerman, this plane of existence's doppelganger or the one who exiled him in the realm of madness called the Tooniverse.

    Jekyll hired a newly formed detective agency to investigate Marvin Acme, a pair of twin brothers, Valiant and Valiant. Teddy Valiant handled Jekyll's case.

    Marvin Acme, actual name apparently Marvin B. Awickerman had arrived in Los Angeles circa 1910. Ostensibly his origins were Australian but they could find no records of him having arrived by ship, nor did the cities of Adelaide,  Sydney or Brisbane have any records on Marvin B. Awickerman.  Awickerman shortened his name first to Ackerman and then to Acme. He also rather quickly lost the Aussie accent.

    Ackerman began his career as a purveyor of novelties. He became one of the first employers in the country to utilize the then looked down upon Toons as anything but servants or manual labor. Ackerman had a genius for getting the Toons to create new items out of toonstuff and mass producing them in Toontown. He also had a great gift for designing unique combinations of toonstuff and real world material. His business expanded rapidly beyond mere novelties and into manufacturing foodstuffs, building material, weaponry, transportation, communications and many other ventures.

Acme Industries became one of the largest employers in the United States with factories abroad. In addition, Acme Studios was one of the first motion pictures studios, Marvin Acme sold his controlling interests to R.K. Maroon his junior partner and the studio became Maroon Studios.

    Marvin Acme had acquired the land rights to Toontown in the early twenties before the land boom and so held a virtual monopoly on the use and importation of toonstuff. It angered Jekyll to no end that while he had been languishing in an insane asylum called the tooniverse Marvin Acme a.k.a. Awickerman had grown rich and powerful.

    According to Teddy Valiant, Marvin Acme put on a happy go lucky, buffoonish front but it was a front, he was at heart a rather ruthless business man not above sharp practice, price fixing or undercutting competitors. If he had a flaw it was his predilection for Toon women, especially redheads. Although when the women became a nuisance, Acme would pay them off. There were a couple of Toon women who claimed Marvin Acme was the father of their children.

    Of these, one of these women later recanted and left Toontown altogether to live in the Tooniverse. If she had a kid it was born there. Jackal hired Teddy Valiant to locate this kid if possible.

    Jekyll's stay in the Tooniverse became in his mind one of continuous torture, he began to hate Marvin Acme even more than he already had for exiling him there, he also came to despise the Toons and all they represented. His chemical researches were geared towards the twin goals of destroying Marvin Acme and his source of wealth, Toontown and possibly even the Tooniverse.

        Jekyll knew rationally that Toontown probably represented the only chance he had to return to his home plane of existence but was irrational enough not to care. He first discovered that what he had learned in the Tooniverse was going to be of very little use here because Toons inside the universe rift of Toontown and those Toons in the real world were different than Toons in the Tooniverse. Passing through the dimensions somehow changed them; they acquired more concretion while still being extremely malleable. This also had its variations.

    Toons from the Tooniverse could transform themselves into any shape or size  they wished, many retained one basic shape out of preference and to conserve energy. However Toons born in Toontown were more constrained in their abilities, they had varying degrees of limitation as to size or shape.

    Toons born in the real world were locked into one malleable form, although they could alter their bodies into various shapes and sizes the body would eventually return to its original form when they had exhausted all of their energy. For example if run over by a steamroller the body would flatten to an extreme degree of flatness, width and length but would eventually flow back into its original size and shape. Then there were the hybrids, Toons with human ancestry were often locked into forms which malleable to a degree as were all Toon bodies could not really change shape or size through any effort of their own. For example say a humanoid Toon has an anvil dropped on his head, the head will flatten and possibly be driven down into the chest cavity. The head will eventually regain its previous size and shape but had the Toon tried to flatten their head merely by will power they would most likely have failed. Also the more human ancestry a Toon had often determined if they could create thought or word balloons, though most Toons suppressed these when among humans.

 All Toons however were nearly impervious to harm in the real world; their bodies retaining, however limited, their shape changing abilities, an extreme plasticity and regeneration. It was not until Jekyll isolated the common element which all Toons used as the binding agent to create their malleable bodies, albeit unknowingly. In 1940 he created a substance that would, in time,  wear away part of at Toons' body but it was missing a vital ingredient.

    Meanwhile Teddy Valiant's search for Acme's kid continued and finally bore fruit. Valiant advised Jekyll to stay away from this kid, even Valiant's Toontown contacts didn't want to have much to do with him. Ignoring this advice Jekyll as Jackal arranged a meeting in a small dive in Toontown.

    Jekyll did not know much about Acme's family history but there must have been something wrong about it. Acme's genes had helped create what could best be called an aberration among the Toons, a Toon with thirst for mayhem and a hatred for Toons and humans in general. In human terms he was psychotic.

    He called himself Dominic Starr and claimed variously that his mother had been the sister of Brenda Starr or that he was descended from the criminal Belle Starr. He was tall, thin with neon red eyes. Although half human, his hybrid nature was not readily apparent. He in fact appeared to be a Tooniverse born Toon, able to manipulate his body into almost any size and shape. Although many Toons were rather violent, since they could not do any lasting damage to each other they had very little regard about causing bodily harm to one another,  Dominic was one of the few Toons that Jekyll had met that was deliberately malicious. He sought to hurt Toons as much and often as he could, often using logic and patience for a maximum payoff of pain and agony. He was almost afraid to unleash him on the mortal world yet as it would turn out, knowing he was half human and that his father had rejected him made him easy to manipulate on an emotional level.

    Jekyll was able to draw out his self-hatred especially for being a Toon, believing it was his Toon nature that had caused his father to reject him. Jekyll told him that he thought he knew who Dominic's father was but it would take some time to find out for certain, he invited Dominic to stay with him while he conducted the search. Dominic was not the typical Toon and asked what Jekyll would get out of it, Jekyll told him money. If his father was whom Jekyll suspected there should be a rich reward. To make him more suitable for life in the mortal world Jekyll gave Dominic moral instructions. Like many psychotics he took this to heart and became a fervent believer in law, order and discipline as defined by him.

    When Jekyll thought Dominic was sufficiently acculturated to the mortal world he told him who he believed was his father. Jekyll had thought hard about how to handle this, a soft approach or a direct confrontation. He let Dominic decide.

Dominic made himself a pest at Acme Industries through repeated attempts to see Marvin Acme.  He was finally ushered in on his sixth visit. Marvin Acme at first thought that Dominic's claim was a practical joke played on him by one of his cronies, such as W.R. Hearst, C.F. Kane, R.K. Maroon or J.B. Cord. When Acme realized that Dominic was serious in his accusation, his affable demeanor immediately altered into that of a hard-nosed businessman.

    Acme demanded to know if Dominic had any proof of his allegations. When Dominic admitted he had no proof, Acme told him to leave. Acme stated bluntly that he did not have any children, especially any Toon children.

    Dominic threatened to go to the press with the story. Acme laughed in his face and told him to go right ahead. Dominic tried to sell or even tell the story to all of the leading newspapers. None would touch it. They were either Acme owned, had large Acme advertising accounts or were owned by his Acme's friends. Not even the Toontown Tattler would publish the story, although Sid Hutchling's Blush and Hush scandal rag printed a line of sinnuendo about the claim. Sid Hutchlings immediately retracted the story and took a long vacation.

   Dominic's next plan of action was to try and get a court order for Acme to take a blood test to prove his paternity. None of the Judges, even the lone Toon judge, would rule for it. Dominic vowed to one day become a judge and dispense true justice.

    When Dominic persisted in making a nuisance, Marvin Acme paid a few gorilla and elephant bullyboys of his acquaintance visit Dominic, twist him like taffy and tie him into knots. When this failed to discourage him, Dominic was arrested on a trumped up charge and thrown into the Toontown Jail for a Million Bajillion years.

    Dominic spent two years in solitary confinement, plotting his revenge. He was released early when he promised to join the army if released. During his Army physical Dominic managed to convince the human doctor that he was effeminate, had flat feet and a bad ticker. He was labeled 4-get it!

    Dr. Jekyll was surprised to hear from Dominic Starr after an absence of two years. In the interim, he had come closer to finding a way to destroy Toons and also to make the ever elusive Toon to human or vice versa formula. Dominic wished to meet Jekyll in Toontown on a matter of the utmost importance. Jekyll reluctantly entered the realm of madness once more to meet Dominic.

    Toontown was in an uproar; somebody had robbed the Toontown National Bank for a zillion simoleons a few days before. The Toontown police were out of their depth as they were when investigating crimes of any magnitude. They had hired two human detectives, well known for solving Toon based crimes. The two human detectives had found Donald Duck's Kidnapped Nephews, had cleared Goofy of Spy charges, tracked down the notorious bank robbers Rocky and Mugsy, found the missing heir of the Fudd fortune and they had uncovered a gremlin sabotage ring in defense plants.

    Teddy and Eddie Valiant were hired to investigate the robbery. Teddy Valiant spotted Jekyll as he passed by the crime scene in front of the Toontown National Bank. He nodded to acknowledge him. Jekyll nodded back.

    Dominic Starr was staying in a dilapidated, thankfully non-animated building. It had originally been a grand hotel but had fallen on hard times was currently a tenement house.

       Dominic was staying on the twenty-seventh floor that had once been a grand ballroom with a full orchestra. A few of the instruments and a grand piano lay swathed in layers of dust and cobwebs.

    The first thing that Jekyll noticed however was the dozens of cloth bags stamped with $ and the name of the First National Bank of Toontown.  Dominic sprang over to Jekyll with a giggle in his high, grating voice.

    He began to explain his plan for destroying Marvin Acme and Toontown and getting revenge on the humans that had helped them out.

    He had robbed the First National Bank of Toontown because Marvin Acme was the Chairman of the Board. Acme also banked quite a bit of his money in it. Best of all The bank's funds were not covered by the FDIC. This would strike a blow to Acme and to the Toons.

  The money would give him operating capital to acquire power so he could go against Acme by using the Toons he claimed to love but secretly hated.

    Henry Jekyll only half listened to the plan for he could hear the police moving in, the dragnet scrapped the streets and sidewalks of Toontown, and he heard the Valiant brothers directing the search.

    Dominic had unwittingly placed Jekyll in great peril. If Jekyll was connected with Dominic and with this robbery his identity of Harry Jackal would be have to be abandoned. He would loose his position at Acme Research Laboratories, and so possibly loose all chance at getting revenge upon Marvin Acme and upon the Toons.

    Since his arrival in this world, Jekyll had kept his personalities in balance or rather with himself as totally dominant by judicious use of a chemical made of real world and Tooniverse elements. It was gaining some use among human psychiatrists for their patients. Acme marketed the product under the name of Sane-Up. They also had an anti-depressant drink known as Peppi-Cola. Yet despite having drunk one earlier in the morning, Jekyll felt the fear, anxiety and rage grow within him until it became a pain in his stomach, heart and limbs.

    Jekyll lost control. Just when he thought he had forever bottled the Djinn, Edward Hyde roared back into consciousness.(14)

    If Dominic Starr was startled that thin, elderly Dr. Jekyll suddenly became a large, hulking brute he did not demonstrate the fact.

    The "good" Doctor may not know how to handle you but I certainly do," Hyde told the Toon, contemptuously biting out the world good. Hyde lashed out at Dominic who eluded his blows by forming his feet into giant springs. Dominic hopped around as Hyde smashed down walls, broke holes in the floor, punched large gaps in the ceiling. Hyde picked up the piano and flung it at Dominic. Dominic folded himself like a box accordion and the piano flew over his head,  it smashed into the large viewing window and part of the wall. The silhouette of the piano was left in the smashed window and broken wall as it fell out into the street.

    Hyde heard screams of pain from twenty-seven floors below.

    Nice changing trick, see mine!" Dominic giggled as his hands grew into two giant buzzsaw that swept towards, and after Hyde. He was immediately on the defensive and could find no opening between the weaving of the blades. Hyde threw old musical instruments, band furniture and chunks of masonry and wood at Dominic.

    Dominic rabbit punched Hyde in the back of the head a giant boxing glove on a third arm he had grown, sent out of the window and around the building to come in a window right behind Hyde. Floored was surrounded by twittering birds that flew in circles around his head. The boxing glove formed into the grasping claw of a novelty grab-it machine and picked up Hyde swinging him past the x crossed boards nailed over an elevator shaft.

    Hyde fell twenty-seven floors to land in the basement. Little flying bells now accompanied the twittering birds circling his head. Edward Hyde clawed his way up the elevator shaft. He found Dominic and most of the money gone.

    There was one sack of banknotes pinned on the outside was a scrawled message, "Have a good time on me."

    Edward Hyde thought about tracking down the obnoxious Toon and tearing him apart like taffy or using the money for some pleasures that Jekyll denied himself.  Hyde decided that if he ran across the Toon during his pleasures he would take measures then. Until that time there was food, drink and women to be had.

    Henry Jekyll awoke in a woman's bed. Not a woman exactly, a female humanoid Toon. The woman bore a great resemblance to the Toon film star Betty Boop except she had a larger, crooked nose. As Jekyll surreptitiously moved around the dingy apartment looking for clothes, he found a couple of filmstrips. They showed the woman and Edward Hyde in various stages of dress. There was dialogue provided by the woman who had released word balloons. Jekyll believed that these were snapshots that would assembled into a Tijuana bible. Luckily he did not appear in any of them. Tossing them aside, he found oversized Hyde clothing and put it on.

    Looking like a tramp, Henry Jekyll hurried out of the apartment and out of Toontown altogether.

    A newspaper, the Toontown Crier showed that he had been gone for a week. The paper discussed the funeral of Teddy Valiant who had been investigating the robbery of the Toontown National Bank when a piano had been dropped on him. His brother Eddie had suffered a broken arm and leg but would make a full recovery.

    So Teddy Valiant was dead. Another soul to be added to account of the damnable Hyde.

    Jekyll returned to his job at the Acme Research Laboratory with the story that he had been unexpectedly called out of town on a medical emergency in the family. Since he was the boss and since his work history showed no other such incidents, he was allowed to use the time as vacation.

    He finally achieved a breakthrough in discovering a substance that would literally dissolve the Toon's real world or Toontown body. A trek to the Tooniverse and getting one of the Toons to drink it however produced nothing more than puffs of smoke coming out of the ears.

   Jekyll although a scientific genius was not a great strategic planner so he was stymied as to how to use the formula to hurt Marvin Acme and the Toons. He could carry out acts of sabotage, ruining Acme's production or go about spraying Toons but those actions would end in his being caught and jailed. Besides he still wished to create the conversion formula which he considered a more humane method of getting rid of the Toons than outright extinction. He almost regretted having broken ties with Dominic Starr.

    Jekyll discovered however that those ties were not broken. In late 1942, a tall man dressed all in black, including boots, pants, suit, shirt, cape and fedora and sun glasses came to visit him at his apartment, pushing his way inside. His skin was bit blotchy and his teeth were oddly iridescent. "Harry Jackal,  Prepare to meet your Doom!" said a low-pitched gravelly voice.

    Reaching into the black suitcoat, the visitor pulled out a gun and fired it at Jekyll. A flag with bang on it popped out the barrel. High pitched laughter that hurt Jekyll's ears rose from the visitor's mouth. The black gloved hand removed the sunglasses and a rubber mask revealing the white, insanely red eyed face of Dominic Starr.

    "Dominic!" Jekyll gasped.

    "The name is Mr. Doom, you have a secret identity, so do I." giggled the Toon. He wished to know how Jackal's research was coming. Jackal did not want to tell him about the Toon solvent as of yet, believing Doom would have used it immediately.

    Jekyll told him that he was close, very close.

    Mr. Doom asked if Jekyll was stymied by a lack of research subjects, namely Toon and human subjects to test his materials on. This question proved to Jekyll despite his outward appearance and insane behavior that there was some type of intellect in that skull.

    Jekyll admitted that was part of it but getting subjects would be dangerous.

    Not it you have an in with the Chief of Police. Mr. Doom answered. He went on to explain that things were falling into place with his plan to destroy Marvin Acme and his legacy of Toon created material and his pride and joy of Toontown. He had hired Freddy Valiant, brother of the late Teddy Valiant and the increasingly sauced Eddie Valiant. Eddie had taken Freddy into the business after Teddy's death. Freddy was not as virtuous or strong willed as his brothers. He would take cases sub rosa for cash and not let his brother know about it. Freddy had a couple of weaknesses, gambling and Toon women. Both habits cost him a bundle.

    "Toon women!", sneered Jekyll.

    Noting Jekyll's disgust, Mr. Doom formed himself into a voluptuous woman for a second and winked at him.

    Giggling again he told Jekyll that Freddie not only went for Toon women he went for humanoid barnyards, that is those Toons shaped like humanoid animals.

    Jekyll felt sick but motioned for Mr. Doom to continue. Freddy began to investigate Marvin Acme's acquaintances on the off chance Marvin was up to something no exactly legal. Freddy struck pay dirt when he saw an acquaintance of his leaving Marvin Acme's home. The acquaintance was Dodger Rabbit, a cousin to both Bugs Bunny and to R. K. Maroon's new find Roger Rabbit.

    Once every three days Dodger Rabbit would leave Acme's home with a large, heavy sack. He would then go to the First National Bank of Toontown and exit with large stack of simoleons. Freddy trailed Dodger in the bank one day and saw him exchange gold bars for cash. Dodger would leave the bank and hit the casinos, hurdy gurdy parlors, juke joints and hooch mills in Toontown or Los Angeles.

    At Mr. Doom's request, Freddy Valiant strong armed Dodger Rabbit, running him through a clothes wringer until he spilled the beans.

    Dodger was stealing the money from Acme. Acme had hired Dodger to be a courier. He was supposed to be taking the gold through Toontown and into the Tooniverse to Wile E. Coyote's mail box and dropping the gold in the mailbox addressed to someplace in Australia. Since Wile E. Coyote began ordering directly from the Acme Industries catalog he no longer dropped gold in the mailbox   Bugs Bunny had been Acme's courier until recently. Tired of his endless pursuit of the roadrunner Wile E. Coyote had on at least two occasions tried to capture, kill and eat Bugs Bunny. Bugs did not want any part of that action and quit the mule job, suggesting his ne'er do well cousin, Dodger.

    Mr. Doom explained how he went to visit Dodger Rabbit but as Dominic Starr and told him that he would end in the slammer unless, he did exactly as Starr told him. Instead of wasting his money frivolously, he wished Dodger to place it in a few off shore accounts in Cuba and the Bahamas. When Dodger had accumulated several thousand dollars of Acme's money he was to go to Cuba and contact Dominic where upon they would split the money fifty-fifty.

    Dodger was afraid; feeling that quitting would alert Acme to his embezzlement. Dominic explained that extradition from Cuba was rare so even if Acme squawked there wasn't anything he could do about it.

    Dodger Rabbit had done as Dominic demanded. When he arrived in Cuba he had a bank balance of 20,000 smackeroos. He withdrew a couple hundred and opened a line of credit for two grand. He hit the tables at the Kookycabana and promptly dumped three grand. When he went to extend his line of credit he was informed that his original line of credit had been denied. He would have to make good the money. Dodger Rabbit discovered that his bank accounts had been emptied and that he had not a cent to his name.

To make matters worse the owner of the casino where he had dropped a bundle was Tom Tom Le Tuit, the Chief of Police. Tom Tom slapped Dodger in jail. Lo and behold, there was a warrant out for Dodger from the United States. Dodger had embezzled a lot of loot from Acme Industries.

    Dodger was extradited and sent to the U.S. where he had, according to Mr. Doom's statement begun serving a long sentence for embezzlement.

    Mr. Doom had long term plans that he did not bother to tell Harry Jackal, he did tell him that much of the Acme gold went into Tom Tom Le Tuit's pockets allowing him to become the Drug Kingpin of the Caribbean. Mr. Doom told Jackal that Tom Tom's connections could get Jackal any type of pharmaceutical or chemical they needed.

    Jackal shrugged, but so could Acme.

    Mr. Doom giggled and pressed a carnation spritzing Jekyll's face with water. Jekyll frowned at himself for falling for this old Toon trick for a few seconds prior to loosing consciousness, realizing on the way to darkness that the liquid was not water but chloroform.

    Jekyll came to consciousness with a throbbing headache in a dark, stuffy place. Attempting to sit up he discovered that he was restrained tightly around the arms and legs. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he realized that he was in a straitjacket in what appeared to be a padded cell. A rope was also wrapped about him. He began shouting to be released.

    When no one came and when he became frustrated and angry Jekyll began to lose control. Edward Hyde burst out of Henry Jekyll's clothing and tore the straitjacket to shreds, yet he remained bound by the rope. Cursing he kicked, rolled slithered and battered across the room managing to get one arm free of the rope. Hours later, or what appeared to hours later, he managed to get the rope off of him.

    Hyde then began to tear at the padded material of the walls, only to discover it would not tear, with some effort he could pull it out of shape but it would snap back. Pounding on it with his entire strength also had no discernable effect.

    A low-pitched gravely voice spoke over a hidden speaker. "Amazing material, toonstuff. Practically indestructible yet it can be malleable as a Toon wishes it to be. Yet you will find a way to destroy toonstuff so we can be rid of Toontown once and for all. You will also find a method to turn Toons into humans so I can be rid of this body I hate.

    "Before, I believe, you lacked incentive. You've claimed you wanted vengeance against Marvin Acme and to destroy the Toons but it was all a lot of talk. Now I on the other hand am a man of vision and of action. I will make your dreams a reality."

   " I have no idea what you are blathering on about! Hyde shouted furiously. "Come here and I will rip your head off!"

    "Come, Come, Dr. Jackal or should I call you Jekyll? Everyone knows you are Hyde and vice versa."

    Hyde screamed threats and obscenities.

I had hoped that this confrontational therapy would cure you of your affliction since we haven't the time for conventional therapy. Time for the shock treatment.

    The padded cell shimmered and the thick padding became grids of toonwire. All electrified. Hyde bounced around the room on large jagged currents of electricity like a ping pong ball in a dryer.

    Although the treatment continued for some time Hyde would not admit to being Henry Jekyll. The voice told Hyde that he could avoid the pain by going back to whatever dark recess of Jekyll's mind he had originated. The voice said that if there was the slightest inkling that Hyde was about to come out, Jekyll would be restrained and subjected to this treatment.

Edward Hyde showed the better part of valor and shrank, gradually forming into Henry Jekyll. Jekyll was aware of what had transpired and had felt much of Hyde's pain. Jekyll was given Sane-Up to keep his personalities in check. However he was a virtual prisoner of Mr. Doom and his partner Tom Tom Le Tuit.

     Jekyll was imprisoned in Le Tuit sanitarium, charmingly named Loco Grande Casa.

Tom Tom Le Tuit provided Dr. Jekyll with test subjects through the insane asylum. People would be arrested and then committed. Once committed they were, if deemed worthy, given over to Dr. Jekyll.

    Two of the Toon subjects were a pair of mice whose intellects were dramatically heightened by Dr. Jekyll's introduction of human DNA into their systems, although they also became rather unhinged by the experience. They escaped and would plague the world in years to come with many annoying but ultimately futile attempts to rule the world.

    Among the few human subjects was Freddy Valiant. His crime had been making a play for Tom Tom Le Tuit's girlfriend, the Toon film star Lupe Chihuahua. Since Lupe was a female dog, although quite humanoid in places, Jekyll did not feel much sympathy for him. Besides, Valiant wanted to become a Toon.

    The Toon conversion formula proved elusive however. Doom was becoming impatient and decided to start using the shock treatment on Jekyll as an incentive. Desperate to avoid this torture, Jekyll told Mr. Doom that he had made a breakthrough in the Toon solvent.

    Mr. Doom told Dr. Jekyll that as according to plan he was now Judge Doom. He had used some of the Bank robbery money to buy the election for Toontown's single judicial seat. Jekyll created a batch of the solvent and watched as Judge Doom picked up an Acme oversized wooden mallet that the interns used for patient motivation and it dropped into the vat. It bubbled away to streamers of colors.

    Giggling in his toonvoice, Judge Doom then dropped a live but not sentient Toon mouse into the mixture. It too, amid squeals of pain, dissolved into oily smears of color.

    Jekyll felt slightly sick when the next test was a sentient Toon, a blackbird whose crime had been trespassing in one of Tom Tom Le Tuit's farms where plants used for making narcotics were grown. Jekyll noticed that despite the struggles to survive, the Toon did not conjure anything to help him,  such as thought balloon to knock the Judge out. Jekyll reasoned that the pain of being dissolved was so great the Toons were not able concentrate on that ability.

    Judge Doom christened the solvent dip. With it he would be able to rein in the madness in Toontown, make the Toons aware of their own mortality and create fear and terror. Once Toontown was no longer such a hot property, Acme's profits would slip, Judge Doom would then be also to leverage Acme into selling Toontown or a least a portion of it, when that happened, Judge Doom would destroy Toontown and thus ruin Acme Industries.

    Jekyll thought this plan to be rife with logical holes and a bit silly but he considered the source. Of course he told Judge Doom nothing of his thoughts. Judge Doom felt generous and told Dr. Jekyll he would not have to be subjected to the shock treatment.

    Dr. Jekyll felt relief, which Judge Doom noted for he added with a toonish giggle, not more than once every two weeks.

    Dr. Jekyll observed something strange that turned out to be the key to the solution.  It was well known that in the real world and to a lesser extent in Toontown, Toons could laugh themselves to death. Their physical forms would keel over and a spirit form would drift out of the body, manifesting most often as cartoonish angels or devils. Then the Toon angels or devils would then drift out of sight in an upwards or downward direction.

    Jekyll saw a Toon laughing so hard that his spirit kept rising out of his body, yet the spirit would snap back into the body. This was something Jekyll had never heard of. The second odd thing was a Toon patient came to the sanitarium who was by all accounts and medical data deceased. However it had mobility, motor function and could vocalize despite looking like a rotting corpse. There was little cognitive ability however and it was highly suggestible.

    One of the guards, that is interns at the sanitarium told him that this was a zombie. If a Toon drank too many zombies he would become one. If the supply of the drink were stopped the Toon would eventually return to normal with no ill effects. Jekyll investigated further a zombie was comprised mainly of rum, the drink that the laugher had been drunk on had been rum and coke. Rum seemed to be a common factor but it did not make any sense. Jekyll slowly realized that it was logical only by the standards of this universe.

    Jekyll investigated the laughing to death syndrome a bit further. Toons who laughed themselves to death ended up in the Tooniverse but were usually never again able to manifest themselves in the real world, except as Toon ghosts. It as if their physical body was forever lost to them. Jekyll did not understand the mechanics but apparently when a Toon traveled outside the Tooniverse the physical laws of the universe to which they traveled imposed upon them a more physical form which was somehow unique to them.

    The extreme laughter breaks a Toon's connection to its unique shell, its physical manifestation in the real world when that is broken for some reason the lesser physical more energy form of the Toon from the Tooniverse was released and drawn to the Tooniverse. Yet dipping destroyed even the ghost form of the Toons so when underwent that process they were totally destroyed. Therefore Jekyll reasoned that even the ghost or quasi energy forms of the Toons in the Tooniverse bore some physical similarity  to those bodies that manifested in the real world.

    Part of the problem lay  with the differences in the material make up of toonstuff: raw toonstuff, Toontown toonstuff and real world toonstuff all had the same basic make-up but manifested on each level of reality differently.

    The Tooniverse was more of an energy state comprised of raw toonstuff or raw chaos, as he called, therefore in the Tooniverse Toons did not physically manifested as a solid, living tissue but rather a semi-physical body. However the bodies that Toons manifested in Toontown were more physically solid, solid enough actually to be susceptible to the Dip and for Toons to mate with humans and have offspring. In the real world Toons possessed bodies that were for all practical purposes living tissue despite being virtually indestructible and extremely malleable and ductile.  This was a crucial difference which took Jekyll a long time to discern the mechanisms involved mainly because the very concept of such interspecies relations disgusted him so much he found it a reprehensible line of research.

    Toons who mated with humans in Toontown and in the real world, despite whatever form they took remained Toons and had normal sexual responses and normal reproductive responses.(15) There was even the possibility of producing hybrid offspring. Although it was not generally discussed there were a couple of particularly nasty STD peculiar to Toon and Toon/human sexuality in Toontown and the real world: laughing crabs, ants in the pants, flesh-spots and ink-loss.

    In the Tooniverse however Toons having sex with humans became human. It was however not instantaneous and the sex had to be quite a lot over a short period of time. The effect was also relatively temporary. The practice was frowned upon by Toon society but since the human to Toon ratio in the Tooniverse was practically non-existent, there was no real danger of the conversions becoming widespread.

    Jekyll discovered the key element that converted Toons into humans during Toon/human mating in the Tooniverse was the infusion of human blood serum. In some manner he did not understand when a human and a Toon had sex in the Tooniverse, and it had to in great frequency over a short period of relative time, Toon-matter absorbed the human blood serum. This set off a chain reaction that caused the Toon to become fully human if only for a short time.  Why did the Toons become human and not say a fully living rabbit or whatever creature they appeared to be? To his great confusion, he discovered that the Toons had some elements of human DNA in their bodies, the basic stuff of the Tooniverse in fact had human DNA analogs in it. (16)

    You may of course find it hard to believe that Henry Jekyll knew anything about the DNA but nucleic acids had been identified and researched since the nineteenth century. In  In 1943, American Oswald Avery proved that DNA carries genetic information. He even suggested DNA might actually be the gene.

    Yet Jekyll's attempts to work with the human DNA analogs in toonstuff failed, he could not get it to respond the same way twice in any logical fashion. When he realized that Rum was a key factor he began to understand his problem. Rum was a key factor for its chemical base but also for what it represented. He could not use real world science or logical thinking to achieve a solution to this problem but he had to find a blend of science and Toon science. In essence he was making a combination of a chemical compound and a magic potion.

    So he wracked his brains for the alchemical knowledge he had compiled when attempting to make his original to separate himself into two persons. Using alchemical methods as his base he began to design a potion that would work for either Toon or human, which would after ingestion have completely changed a Toon into a human or vice versa by triggering a molecular chain reaction of the main component DNA. He was close, very close when Judge Doom visited him for an update in late 1946. Judge Doom was infuriated that Jekyll still had not found the correct formula for the Toon conversion program. He thrashed a nearby Toon potted plant into Toon jelly with his cane.

    "My plans are close to completion and cannot be stopped. I will soon be thanks to your failure one of the few Toons left in the world."

    Judge Doom explained how he had formed a partnership with several of the large businessmen, rivals, customers and outright enemies of Marvin Acme. Doom had convinced them that he could acquire Toontown and move it to a more centralized location so that toonstuff could be more easily exploited.  The land that was currently Acme Industries and Maroon Studios would be a clover leaf of the new interstate highway system and with this new system in place toonstuff could be more easily and less expensively transported to Acme's customers.

    Judge Doom planned to use R. K. Maroon to force Acme to give up or sell Acme studios, failing that he would kill him. Once Doom had acquired the rights to Toontown he would wipe it off the face of the earth with 5,000 gallons of heated dip, pumped at enormous velocity through a pressurized water cannon. It was only a matter of time before each and every remaining Toon was either dipped or converted to humanity.

    Jekyll asked what Doom hoped to accomplish by destroying Toontown, not that he had any real objection.

    Firstly Doom would achieve vengeance against Marvin Acme and destroy his legacy of using combined materials. Secondly the eyesore and region of madness known as Toontown would be forever expunged from Doom's consciousness. Thirdly, toonstuff would become quite rare and eventually obsolete. In a few days or weeks the bottom would drop out of the Stock Market, as businesses which relied on toonstuff would no longer be able to function. Businesses that relied on real world technology and materials would again surge to prominence and Judge Doom would ride that economic wave straight to the bank.

    Doom grabbed Jekyll by the throat in hand that had become a vise. "Do not disappoint me Doctor I need that Toon Tonic and soon!"

    Judge Doom had hoped to help distract Marvin Acme by having Dodger Rabbit broken out of jail. However the rabbit's proved only to negligible to Acme. The only Rabbit he was interested was Jessica Rabbit, Roger's humanoid Toon wife. Doom asked R. K. Maroon to make Jessica Rabbit distract Marvin Acme.

    Dodger showed up in Cuba and began pretending to Roger Rabbit as part of a ploy to make the Roger more susceptible to persuasion through blackmail. Dodger ran up debts at Tom Tom Le Tuit's casinos that the Judge promised to make good.

    Despite Judge Doom's acquisition of Maroon studios and the surrounding lands, despite his murders of Marvin Acme and R.K. Maroon and his attempt to frame Roger Rabbit for those crimes Judge Doom failed. He not only failed in his attempt to destroy Toontown and Acme, his actions lead to the Toons via Marvin Acme's will gaining control of Toontown, Acme Enterprises and the monopoly on toonstuff (17)

    Judge Doom was destroyed by some of his own Dip courtesy of Eddie Valiant and Toontown became the common property of the Toons. Valiant finally believed that justice had finally come to the Toon that had killed his brother Eddie. As fate would have it Valiant would soon meet up again with his long lost brother Freddie.

    Two weeks after Judge Doom's demise Jekyll formulated a conversion potion that worked. Toon Tonic first turned Freddy Valiant into a Toon. Jekyll discovered that there were certain minor chemical differences between a normal Toon and one created by the formula. He thought the differences insignificant.  Freddy Valiant made an even bigger play for Lupe Chihuahua. However Lupe's boyfriend Tom Tom Le Tuit did not like that so he kept buying Freddie free drinks.  They were Zombies and soon robbed Freddie of all free will and made him into a zombie.

    Kirk Enigman, a motion picture star friend's of Tom Tom Le Tuit's,  used a small hand held motion picture camera to record a bit of his vacation at Tom Tom Le Tuit's mansion. He also caught Freddy Valiant working as a poolside waiter while a zombie Toon.

    Initial reports of the new drug were favorable but did not have the massive demand that Le Tuit would have liked. While there were some humans who would like to become Toons, it appeared that most would not. The drug tested more favorable among the Toons who had some inclination to convert to humanity.

    Most Toons that lived in the real world did so  because their more substantial forms also had a greater sensory range. In the Tooniverse while they could taste, smell and had tactile sensations, they were mere shadows of what was felt in the real world. However in the real world the Toons were looked down upon as second class citizens, often regarded little more than the animals many Toons were shaped as. They often made two thirds less than a human doing the same job, often had to live in restricted housing, in some areas were not allowed to purchase liquor, etc. Then there were the Toons with human heritage who were often locked into odd or freakish bodies; Kurt Enigman was one of these. These were all contributing factors that made many Toons lean towards becoming human yet not many chose conversion. Despite how bad many Toons had it they were complacent because in their Toon forms they were did not age and were practically indestructible.

    Le Tuit and Kirk Enigman created a market for the Toon Tonic by creating panic among the Toons, by making them aware of their own mortality. Kurt Enigman convinced two of his actor acquaintances become his front people for a new company marketing a new type of gun. The two front people were Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn. The company was named Colt Cock; its main product was dip tipped bullets and fragmentation bullets with a dip core. The death toll among the Toons began to rise, as more and more were shot and killed by dip tipped bullets.

    Le Tuit and Enigman were going to let the panic rise while they created a network in the United States and the Caribbean to manufacture and distribute the Toon Tonic. Needing a prominent, legitimate partner to front the distribution of Toon Tonic in they chose David Selznick Jr., the Hollywood Producer. Enigman knew he was strapped for cash as he attempted to make his Toon/human musical version of Gone With The Wind.  To test the validity of the tonic, the head of Selznick's Studio Security, a former western Toon star known as Pepper Potts took the Tonic and became human.