The Toon Gang

Freedom's most unusual “mob” element, the Toon Gang was literally brought to life by Toy Boy, using a “realizer ray” created by Quirk. The gangsters originally starred in the popular Keystone Cops cartoon. While the other cartoon characters brought to life by the realizer ray faded away after Toy Boy’s weapon was destroyed, the members of the Toon Gang are still around. It could be the strange forces lingering in Freedom, or simply Boss Moxie’s, well, moxie, keeping them around. Whatever the case, the Toon Gang remains in Freedom City and its heroes—and The Mob families—have to deal with them.
The problem for their foes is this: the Toon Gang are all three- to four-foot tall cartoon characters, virtually impossible to kill or even hurt for very long. Their idea of a “hit” involves dropping a safe or piano on somebody’s head from a fifth-story window, and their idea of “organized crime” is running protection rackets and knocking over jewelry stores and banks. Subtler concepts like money laundering and numbers schemes, much less drug running, smuggling, and vice, are completely over their disproportionate heads. The Toons aren’t especially bright, either, although their logic is so simple and direct it sometimes seems clever. The only good point is there are only five of them: Boss Moxie, his moll Roxie, and his faithful henchmen Knuckles, Lucky, and Scar.
Within a year of their arrival in Freedom City, Scar’s attempts to drive anything larger than a bumper car at Ocean Heights ended with them plowing into walls and getting captured quite often; few jails can hold Toons that want out, though. Boss Moxie approached The Foundry with his usual bluster to get a car scaled to their size, and Talos accepted the commission after securing permission to submit Scar, Lucky, and Knuckles to a battery of tests—the results of which may result in additional problems for Freedom City’s heroes. Now, the tinny sound of a miniature Model T announces the arrival of the Toon Gang, but those who laugh at the little car soon realize it can outrun most police cars and is tougher than a tank.
Boss Moxie considers himself and his gang at war with the other Mobs in Freedom, since “dey don’t show me no respect!” The truth is the Toon Gang is more of a nuisance than anything else, even if the Toons have managed to kill off some of Driogano's and Tonifanni's people. Big Al would love to rid himself of the annoying cartoon gangsters, but for the moment they’re as much a distraction for the police and heroes as they are for him. The Toons’ efforts to be taken seriously have resulted in more than fifteen mobster deaths, the most recent being five enforcers crushed to death beneath a truckload of marbles. One thing’s for sure: nobody is laughing at the Toon Gang anymore.

Structure

BOSS MOXIE

Boss Moxie is a 3’6” stocky cartoon gangster with a big fedora, a zoot suit, and a literal square jaw. Men have died for accidentally knocking off his hat, as Moxie is embarrassed that he’s only got a few strands of hair on his head in a combover. He’s always smoking a cigar and carrying a violin case containing a cartoon Tommy gun that seemingly never runs out of ammo. He sounds like a Hollywood movie gangster, and punctuates most of his sentences with the word “see”—“I’m takin’ over dis town, see? And there’s nuttin’ youse can do to stop me, see?” He still thinks and acts like a cartoon, and he’s incapable of understanding the rest of the world doesn’t follow the same rules, which is sometimes funny and sometimes terrifying.

ROXIE

Every gangster’s only as good as his moll, and Roxie is one of the best. The 3’9” blond-bombshell with an extreme hourglass figure wears an impossibly tight dress, high heels, and a white fur stole. She smokes her cigarettes in a long ivory holder, languidly wreathing her face and ice blue eyes with smoke. She has a cartoon Derringer always tucked in her right stocking despite the tightness of her dress. Roxie is smarter than most people—especially the other Toons—assume. She can wrap anyone in the gang around her little finger with a smile and a flutter of her big eyes.

KNUCKLES

Knuckles appears as a no-necked thug with perpetual 5 o’clock shadow, in a sweater and black pants, his huge arms and torso balanced on legs almost too small to support him. The largest of the Toons at 4’2” tall, Knuckles is a big, dumb bruiser who loves nothing more than hitting things. Since their arrival in this world, he’s picked up a few new moves from watching professional wrestling on TV.

LUCKY

Lucky is slick and suave (for a cartoon), always flipping a coin nonchalantly. He wears a double-breasted pinstripe suit, and his pencil-thin mustache makes his very angular face seem even more severe. He can’t resist a bet or a pretty face. He’s the planner of the Toon Gang and a sharpshooter with his cartoon handgun.

SCAR

The smallest—and therefore meanest—of the Toons, Scar is a 3’1” brute with a foul temper, pit-bull stubbornness, and a livid scar running diagonally across his face. He wears pinstriped pants with suspenders and a shirt always rolled up at the sleeves. Scar is second to Knuckles as a leg-breaker, but he’s the gang’s best wheelman.

Type

Illicit, Gang