Though he’s best known for introducing goth aesthetics to suburbia (as well as making mainstream audiences take Batman seriously again), Tim Burton got his start in the industry as an apprentice animator recruited by Disney right out of CalArts. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before Burton’s peculiar style and penchant for darker stories put him at odds with the family-friendly company, though his departure from Disney would lead to a series of successful live-action ventures that propelled him to rock-star status in Hollywood.
Unfortunately, these larger projects resulted in Burton mostly putting his two-dimensional roots aside. While the filmmaker never truly abandoned animation, producing classics like The Nightmare Before Christmas and even incorporating some of his cartoony designs into his live-action work, it was only in 2000 that he returned to directing animation. An early proponent of the then-revolutionary software behind Macromedia Flash, Burton saw this emergent technology as an opportunity to bring some of his less marketable creations to life without the need for a Disney-level budget.
That’s how we got one of the most underrated projects in Tim Burton’s career: the oddball superhero cartoon known as The World of Stainboy. With Stainboy’s brief yet memorable adventures currently celebrating their 25th anniversary, today I’d like to look back on the history of these spooky little shorts and make a case for why they’re still excellent mood-setters for the Halloween season.
Partnering with Flinch Studios (an indie studio that produced animated media for everyone from MTV to Adult Swim), Burton wanted to write and direct something directly for the then-emergent internet market – something of a revolutionary idea considering that this was half a decade before the rise of YouTube. He would proceed to work on the six-episode series in between the release of Sleepy Hollow and his then-upcoming Planet of the Apes remake, taking advantage of the fact that much of Stainboy’s worldbuilding was already complete.
After all, The World of Stainboy wasn’t actually the character’s first appearance, with the greasy little superhero having previously been a part of the colorful cast of misfits introduced in Burton’s short poetry collection The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories. Originally published in 1997, this illustrated book contains a gaggle of oddball freaks that Tim cooked up throughout the 90s while focusing on his live-action career.
This initial appearance was more of a prototype than anything else, with Stainboy’s contribution to the collection consisting of two Tweet-length poems about how his stain-powers are inconvenient. However, much like the poem that birthed Jack Skellington, this simple premise ultimately became a jumping-off point for a larger project.
In the finished series, we follow the exploits of the titular Stainboy as he works for the Burbank Police Department and hunts down fellow freaks for the good of the city’s “normal“ populace. The 3-5-minute episodes typically consist of our silent hero being violently briefed by Sgt. Glen Dale (Glenn Shadix) and then meeting some colorful characters before brutally -and often accidentally- subduing them with his mastery of greasy stains.
Despite their length (which made them a lot easier to download back in the day), these deceptively simple shorts contain all the hallmarks of a classic Tim Burton production. Our protagonist is an outcast trapped in a highly prejudiced system desperate to maintain the status quo, and the designs are all delightfully spooky. Stainboy’s position as a misfit tasked with hunting down other misfits also imbues the cartoon with a surprising amount of tragic irony, especially once we dive into the hero’s origins in the final episode.
It’s really the unhinged humor that makes this such a fun ride, with the series containing memorable gags like having Robot Boy’s body be used as a trash can in episodes that take place after his defeat, or even the way that villains are repeatedly arrested despite obviously being dead. I even appreciate the numerous background puns referencing the Acme-like “Lo-Pei“ company!
Being an early Flash animation produced on a budget, it makes sense that The World of Stainboy isn’t exactly the most visually impressive cartoon out there. Movement is unnaturally stilted, and backgrounds often look more reminiscent of free-to-play browser games than anything you’d see on Cartoon Network, but I’d argue that the show makes up for these limitations through unique designs and clever writing.
The show is also best enjoyed if you have some previous knowledge of the Oyster Boy poetry collection. Antagonists like Stare Girl and Toxic Boy were previously introduced in their own poems, and being aware of their backstories makes the whole experience much more satisfying than if you simply dive in with no previous knowledge of these surreal characters.
Unfortunately, Stainboy was a little too ahead of the curve for its own good. While the show premiered after similar edgy cartoons like Happy Tree Friends and Starship Regulars had already become popular among the early internet crowd, Stainboy and his freakish friends weren’t backed by larger companies in the vein of Mondo Media and Comcast. This may not seem like such a big issue nowadays, but this was still the pre-YouTube era, so Stainboy never really had the chance to find his audience.
Thankfully, the character would live on as one of Burton’s most beloved niche projects. Stainboy drawings and sculptures showed up in several art shows and museums celebrating the filmmaker’s work, and the hero’s most recent appearance was in 2010 when Burton created an interactive Twitter account named BurtonStory. On that account, he’d share Stainboy poetry prompts and then select the best fan-made continuations of the narrative, with countless replies making it clear that this was a fan-favorite character despite never taking off with the mainstream crowd.
With the success of both Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Netflix’s Wednesday series, suggesting that we’re in the middle of a Tim Burton renaissance, I think this is the perfect time to look back on Stainboy as the patron superhero of spooky season in the hope that Burton himself will give the character another chance at success. After all, horror-adjacent cartoon characters like Invader Zim and Courage the Cowardly Dog are more popular than ever among the goth crowd, and if fans could bring even Michael Keaton back for another go as the Ghost with the Most, maybe we could do the same for Stainboy.
