Stainboy

Lore & Background

In the Flash animation series, Stainboy works for the Burbank police. At the start of each episode, he is ordered to investigate and bring in social outcasts, many of whom are characters from the Oyster Boy book. The six episodes are titled 'Stare Girl', 'Toxic Boy', 'Bowling Ball Head', 'Robot Boy', 'Matchstick Girl', and 'Stainboy'.

Reader's Guide

The World of Stainboy is significant as Tim Burton's first superhero project after Batman Returns, and as an early example of Flash animation distributed online. The series consists of six very short episodes, each under five minutes. The final episode, 'The Origin of Stainboy', ends with a flashback to his early childhood at an orphanage, hinting at a larger storyline that was never continued. In November 2010, Burton began a new interactive story about Stainboy on the Twitter account 'BurtonStory', where fans could contribute via tweets and the best continuations were re-tweeted. That project ended on December 6. The series remains a cult curiosity in Burton's filmography, bridging his literary and digital works.

Did You Know?

• Stainboy first appeared in two short poems in Tim Burton's book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories.
• The Flash animation series was directed by Mike Konczewski and animated by Flinch Studio in 2000.
• Each of the six episodes is under five minutes in length.