TheVintageVamp

Dr. Memento was first drawn on July 28, 1929 in a tiny studio in California called Silentoon Studios. He was not a vampire at this point, but he was very different from what studios were expecting at the time. He was originally designed as a female character named Missy the Ma'am but lacked in the appeal that cartoon stars did in that era. Due to lack of interest from executives and the stock market crash, he was left on the cutting room floor and was never re-released due to the studio’s closure later that year.

In 1930, Silentoon was bought by a prestigious film studio, and with the upcoming release of the movie Dracula, the cutting room floor was used once again. Dracula ended up meeting Memento, who he thought was a woman, waking him from a 2 year long sleep and turning him into a vampire. Since cartoons can’t really die unless they’re forgotten in the collective unconscious, Memento would drink from inkwells lying around the studio and was close friends with Dracula, despite the fact their friendship was founded on a lust for blood (or ink) and vampirism.

Time came and went, and in 1935 he and Dracula were beginning to grow apart. With new films Dracula was being cast for and there being no demand for Memento, he asked one last favor from Dracula before going back to his reel: to put him into a deep sleep.

Then came Halloween of 2021. The pandemic was still rolling on and most of the studio workers were working from home, so the studio sat empty. Memento yawned, stretched, and realized in horror that he had slept for 86 years. While he was asleep, the world had changed so much- but he had a lot to learn. He was in the archives, but it was there that he slowly, but surely, learned what had happened since he was gone.

The cutting room he loved so much was now the editing room, and it was there that he learned how computers worked… and about re-animation. He realized that he could choose for himself how he wanted to look and present himself; if it works for people, why not for toons? After drinking all of the ink in the office copier, he got to work. He dusted off his old projector from the archive room, and used it as a power source. After playing his reel backwards and hopping into it, he came out a changed man (and toon!) It was then that Dr. Memento was born.

He never actually earned that doctorate, but he get like the title suited him. And what’s more mad-sciencey than a mad doctor?

Since his reel was made blank from the transformation, he decided to draw himself an entire studio to stream from with all the comforts of the cutting room, and then some!