If Your Villain Is More Interesting Than Your Hero, You're Doing It Wrong

Its been a hot minute since I've written anything for the blog, but that's because of two things: new schedule changes with a new job and I've been steadily working on a novel project I want to get out the gate this year. It also means diving head first into the land of giant robots, which is the best kind of research.

As for this post's topic, it hit me as I was commuting today. There's a well established complaint among fandom circles that “villains are always more interesting than heroes.” I've noticed this way back when in cape comic circles, but its everywhere in Fandom, and a quick internet search brings up a bunch of discussions about the subject; some useful, some not. Much of it turns into clickbait because that's the hellish landscape of the modern internet. Here's a Reddit thread from a few years ago that's less cringey than a bunch of other articles I've found: https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/2njl1b/is_it_normal_to_find_villainsantagonists_more/

A lot of the standard arguments for this position tend toward: Heroes are boring because they have to be Good, and Good is Bland. Villains get to be more fun. Villains get to be pro-active and heroes have to be re-active. Villains have more complex motivations than Heroes.

Et Cetera Et Cetera Et Cetera

This leads to a few scattered thoughts:

1) If the Bad Guy is so much more interesting than the Good Guy, why not...simply make that your Protagonist? Evil protagonists work, especially in the context of Tragedy. Just ask Macbeth. Or, if the villain isn't actually all that evil, what's to stop him from being the actual hero of the story in conflict with a much more powerful and morally rigid authoritarian who would otherwise be the designated protagonist.

2) The most interesting character to follow around should be the protagonist. They're the one with the most meat to their story, and have the most potential destinations for their character arcs.

3) There's a reason why this conversation happens a lot in comics circles, because characters like Batman and Spider-Man are Brands now, instead of Characters. Batman is: Bruce Wayne. Rich Guy. Dead Parents. Never Kills. Punches Clowns. Any deviation from that, like when he was occasionally replaced, never lasts, because the status quo has to reassert itself. Not for narrative reasons, but because of Brand Recognition. That's ultimately why Spider-Man's marriage was undone, because everybody knows Peter Parker is a young, down-on-his-luck kid who can't catch a break in his personal life, and why Wally West was ditched as the Flash after a critically and commercially acclaimed run that lasted over two decades because Barry Allen was the version on The Super Friends. Villains, by comparison, have more wiggle room for creative teams to do things with. I suspect this has a connection to the cynicism you find in a lot of long-term comic book fans.

4) “Boring Block Of Wood Protagonist” was not how it used to be. It was the exact opposite in most serial fiction stories. There is no one more interesting in The Shadow than The Shadow. There is no one more interesting in Conan the Barbarian than Conan. There is no one more interesting in Tarzan than Tarzan himself. If a protagonist is upstaged by a cat, there's a very serious storytelling problem going on. 

5) But Muh Joker! Muh Lex Luthor! Stop it. Those are good, sometimes amazing (depending on who's writing) villains, but consider this: Lex Luthor NEEDS Superman to exist as an interesting character. Superman did just fine for himself for two years before ol' Lexie showed up in 1940. You don't have a Great Lex Luthor story without even the faintest shadow of Superman hovering over him, because you don't have ANY Lex Luthor stories without Superman existing first. This is true for just about every other great villain in serial fiction except maybe Fu Manchu.

6) “Villains are more interesting than heroes” feels more like a way to excuse bad writing. Respect yourself as an audience member and a customer of storytelling. Your time is precious, demand better from the storytellers you choose to occupy it with.