What does one call a boy raised in tough neighborhoods by an unstable family who now preaches obedience to the law and service to the community above all else? What does one call a high school dropout who now, at age 22, has aspirations of attending school for electric and mechanical engineering? What does one call a man that wears an intimidating mask and a suit of body armor who now wants desperately to be seen as the good guy?

“I’ve been called everything from Jason to Freddy to Scorpion to vigilante to freaking psycho. The list goes on. It doesn’t matter, though,” that man said. “The funniest thing about wearing the mask is they can’t see your face. And they can’t see you smiling at them, either.”

So what, then, does he prefer to be called? Madison, meet Electron. 

Madison’s only known superhero. 

According to Electron, the concept for his costume came to him in his sleep.

“I had a dream about a white guy with a yellow bar right on the left eye. It didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything; it just kind of stood there,” he said. The dream occurred shortly after he’d heard a news item about a man in Milwaukee who dressed in costume and patrolled neighborhoods, calling himself The Watchman. In February of this year, those circuits were crossed and Electron was born.

His costume is at once impressively frightening yet clearly homemade. The fiberglass mask, which covers his entire face save for two black mesh eyes and a vertical slit of a mouth, has been spray-painted white and emblazoned with his yellow insignia. The body armor on his upper torso was bought online and originally intended for mountain bikers. A Maglite, zip ties and a road flare are carefully fitted into a utility belt around his waist. On his feet are black skate shoes with yellow accents.

Electron, who arrived at the interview in costume and did not reveal his identity, has two main duties, both self-assigned. The first, which makes up the bulk of his work in Madison, is hand-delivering food to the homeless “pretty much whenever I can get money” from donations or from his own paychecks. Electron described his employment situation as “between jobs.”

“I buy water and food,” he said. “Usually from Taco Bell, because that’s $20 for 20 burritos. Maybe some chips or granola bars. I try to stay as healthy as I possibly can as well as [buy] as much as I possibly can.”

The other role Electron takes on is what he called “neighborhood patrol.”

“Usually we walk around; we just check out things,” he said, speaking in the plural to reference others he works with, all of whom are based out of Milwaukee. Although they don’t seek out trouble, Electron claims they can often find it just by remaining vigilant. Once, he said, while on patrol near Library Mall with a man using the name Charade, “We found a heroin syringe by the Union down there. Called it in, and a couple police came down and disposed of it.”

Electron often patrols the downtown area near State Street.

“I’ll specifically patrol [that area] because of the bars,” he said, “looking for college kids getting into their cars or starting fights with each other, who knows. Drunk driving is a pretty big one for me.”

Part of something larger 

Charade and The Watchman are both members of the Milwaukee group Electron works with called The Challengers. Electron is a “reserve member,” he said, because of his remote location. But the mission, apparel and anonymity of the members of The Challengers is more than enough to place them squarely within a growing phenomenon best known as real-life superheroes.

Tea Krulos, a freelance writer living in Milwaukee, is currently finishing a book about the worldwide movement. He explained the real-life superhero subculture is relatively new, but that it’s spread from its New York roots to places as far away as Europe and as inauspicious as Rochester, Minn.

Krulos noted that, though it’s difficult to generalize such a large group, there are some common motivations among those who have taken up the cause.

“They want to improve their communities, and they’re sick of just sitting around hearing about how bad the world is,” he said. “So they want to go out there and do something to help, and this is kind of a fun, adventurous way to do that.”

For Electron, it’s slightly more personal.

Flashing back to his roots 

Like any superhero, Electron has an origin story.

There’s his childhood, which was spent in cities and towns across the Midwest.

“[I lived] a little bit around La Crosse, over there. A lot of Madison time. Went to Rochester for a while. Did a couple months with a friend of mine in Chicago, way, way, way back. You know, all around Wisconsin,” he said. 

But not in the good parts. “There’ve been a lot of crimes in pretty much all the areas I’ve lived in,” he added.

There are the “countless” times he’s been robbed, including the time when he “went to a friend’s house for a party, came back, door’s kicked in. Splinters everywhere. Nothing’s really taken that I notice right away, except for my DVD player and, like, all my movies. Then I realize: Bastards took my guitar. My electric guitar, the only thing I cherished at that time. Gone. Just gone.”

There’s the family that seems to grow “every month.” There’s the history of friends with drug problems, the guy that overdosed on the floor of his apartment and the close-friend-turned-junkie that he eventually had to turn in to the police. There’s the buddy that was shot, recently. That friend has since recovered, Electron said, but he was robbed through his car window in the process.

There are all of those things, and then there’s this: “My brother died from somebody getting drunk and crashing into a tree.”

Bruce Wayne had Gotham City; Electron has Madison.

The hero Madison deserves? 

Electron spoke several times of his “obligation” to do good. 

“It’s a social obligation,” he said. “Everybody has a social obligation to just do something. I mean, if you’re walking down the street you’ll see it. It’s terrible. There are people living everywhere, just anywhere they can. And it’s not necessarily that they don’t have what it takes; they’re part of a system that just kind of cast them aside. And it’s just not right. We have an obligation to get up and do something outside of the system.”

Pragmatically, Electron’s moral sensibility is completely tied up with the actual law. To act, he said, he needs to see a crime actually being committed.

His first step is always to call 911, then to step in before the police arrive if someone is in real danger. He relies on knowing the rules for making a citizen’s arrest to keep himself out of legal trouble.

“False citizen’s arrest can land you in jail, I hear. There’s a pretty hefty fine. They take it seriously, as well they should. You can’t just have random people arresting people,” he said.

Still, there remains the question of why. Why does he need the mask and costume to do what he does? Why can’t he be a good Samaritan in streetwear?

“The whole reason behind the costume is: I could do the exact same thing in regular clothes, but nobody’s going to see it. Nobody notices it whatsoever,” he said.

Later, as Electron patrolled South Carroll Street, conscientiously stopping at every corner until the light gave him permission to cross, he reflected on that thought, which minutes earlier had seemed like a statement of purpose.

“People need a gimmick before they can get behind something,” he said. “The only problem is, gimmicks scare them too.”