The Boy Who Wanted 
to Be a Real Boy

Electro Boy was a little known superhero sidekick in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The reason he’s so little known is as obvious, in retrospect, as it is tragic: Electro Boy was not a real boy. He was ‘just’ a machine. A plastic box with a bunch of gears thrown in, incapable of intelligence or emotion on a human level. But that’s not the saddest part. The real tragedy is that he was capable of human intelligence and emotion, but few humans would believe it. Electro Boy was in fact the best known case of the Pinocchio Syndrome since Pinocchio himself.

From the diaries and memoires of various superheroes we know that Electro Boy has knocked on the doors of at least 23 caves, towers and other typical types of hideouts and was flat-out rejected at 17 of them -politely referred to the large sign saying ‘no salesmen, religious groups or sidekicks’.

The other six superheroes felt somewhat sorry for Electro Boy and were willing to give him a shot -if not as a true sidekick, then at least as part of their equipment. Electro Boy briefly served as a [superhero_prefix]-clock with these six superheroes. Briefly, because it soon proved impossible for any human, even the super ones, to work with him.

The problem was that Electro Boy was a 24 hour clock in the shape of a regular 12 hour clock. So when its hands indicated it was 12 o’clock, superheroes read it as six o’clock -since its little hand pointed straight down. The sad result was that the superhero would invariably arrive too late, resulting in great loss of innocent life and the destruction of many a city. After a couple of such unfortunate incidents, the superhero would mercilessly kick Electro Boy out -too lazy to learn to read the scientifically superior 24 hour clock (at least until the arrival of digital clocks).

In the end, Electro Boy somehow made his way to the deconstruction workshop, where all tired machines, devices and appliances are welcome, and begged me to end his miserable earthly life. So I’ve sent it on to a better place, free of heartless superheroes, where Electro Boy can live on happily for eternity.

*****

Deco Facts
30,227 x 22,670 pixels
272 parts
Produced by Hugo Muller GmbH & Co.