Which is harder to create: A great hero or a great villain?

[Ziggy Stardust]

IYO, of course.

[Free-Man]

Villains. We've had a number of successful heroes and anti-heroes in the last 15 years, but I can't think of all that many villains who've managed to have any sort of longetivity.

Even Prometheus is subjected to these over the top plots where he kills everything that moves, but that really just causes me to laugh at him rather than take him seriously.

[Spiffy]

Depends on your threshold for "greatness", I suppose.

That said, my instincts say "hero". Because villains are usually inherently more interesting, there's a bigger hill to climb with making heroes actually "pop".

But again, this based on my own perception of "greatness" (or the lack thereof). jamesfreeman has a valid point that there haven't been that many super-memorable villains recently, but I'd argue there haven't been that many super-memorable heroes either. I think OVERALL, over the course of comic book history though, each hero who makes it tends to have four or five memorable villains associated, ergo, there are MORE memorable villains out there overall. Sure, they're often dependent on that hero for their continued success and placement, but "independence" isn't a criteria being mentioned here.

[jlmoor]

I think it is more difficult to create a complex, interesting villain that is an actual threat. You have to allow readers to connect in some way to make them interesting, but you can't really have them identify or connect too much or the good guys can't win. My favorite character is a villain, well, depending on who is writing him.

[Infra-Man]

Hmmm... I'd say a hero mainly because so many of them wind up being bland or generic, though I suppose the same could be said of many villains. If anything, villains can be more fun and easier to name.

EDIT:
I will say that perhaps creating villain for an existing hero or group of heroes at least allows you to play off existing character traits, flaws, weaknesses, or vulnerabilities, which all lends potential for making an interesting villain. Heroes are usually the starting point, and I've found in my fledgling attempt at a pitch I'm trying to get off the ground that I make better side characters for the hero than the hero himself.

[Gail Simone]

Hero, I think.

It's easy to create a hero, but one that means something to people and sticks in their consciousness is hard.

But I love creating both.

[Free-Man]

Hero, I think.

It's easy to create a hero, but one that means something to people and sticks in their consciousness is hard.

But I love creating both.

Well, I think that a media push is important to helping new characters survive nowadays. It's why I like the Brave and the Bold cartoon. They're using it to push the new Blue Beetle, Firestorm, and Atom, rather than those old Silver Age farts.:tongue:

But that could really be said of any character these days.

[greatmetropolitan]

I'd say hero. I think it's a lot easier to get in the mindset of someone who's given up to feelings of rage or anger or resentment or whatever, than it is to write a compelling hero, where you understand why they're so heroic, and why they do what they do.

Villains are very hard, too. I think new characters in comics nowadays have a tough time of it after their creators leave. A lot of current writers just like to use their old favourites.

[Night Swordsman]

Hero.

Simple: A villan, by choice or accident, takes the easier path to his or her goals. Others free will, choices, or property (or all three) become lesser concerns to the villans desires. The goal is the main concern, and usually the faster the better, no matter the costs.

A hero, on the other hand, puts the thoughts,concerns, and considerations of others before his needs. It is NEVER easy, but completely rewarding to ones self. Patience and Understanding are usually born out of this.

[PatrickG]

My inclination is to say "villain" because I think more than half of the brainpower that goes into creating a good super-hero story goes into establishing the conflict and building a credible threat, which is a smart threat. Typically, the hero's wants are something it's easy for a broad audience to connect with and so you're often in the position of assigning the villain with more unpredictable and original methods and goals.

Establishing a hero is preaching to the choir. The villain, often, involves creating someone whose methods and goals are at cross purposes with what any reasonable person would want and then making it reasonable and consistent from that character's perspective.

I will qualify that, however. I think the greatest heroes aren't necessarily a reflection of the audience's values, desires and experiences. A great hero has their own agenda and is not on the audience's side, necessarily, because great people stand apart. A TRULY great hero's experiences, philosophies and ideas are the result of living a life that the average audience member hasn't lived.

Look at ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. Morrison's take that Superman is, by necessity of who he is, comfortable and confident and happy even in the face of death -- This establishes his Superman as a great hero. This Superman's response to being cloned isn't outrage or discomfort, as a less cosmopolitan everyman might feel, but is the enlightened response of someone who has lived his own fantastic life, someone who says, "Sounds sensible" to that proposal. Morrison's Superman is a great hero, IMHO, because he co-opts that alienness that is typically reserved for villains when he talks about death being PRAGMATICALLY less effective than prison as a means of containing villains. He operates in an alien world and his values are sensible for that world but not necessarily intuitive to readers in our world. And that kind of great hero is even harder to create than a great villain because it presupposes a world with alternate culture, philosophy, physics, psychology, religion and morality.

[Weetomuncher]

I would say hero because they tend to need more longevity and character than a villain as some of the greatest villains in comics have only appeared in a dozen issues of a book, while some heroes have appeared in hundreds of books and still aren't highly thought of.

[NickThompson]

Villain, because it's harder to make people care IMO. A hero will have more parts of their life shown, while a villain will generally only have his work life shown, making it harder to have them not look generic.

[PatrickG]

Villain, because it's harder to make people care IMO. A hero will have more parts of their life shown, while a villain will generally only have his work life shown, making it harder to have them not look generic.

I can see this but, for me, the general tendency does seem to be that the more of a hero's life you see, the more it tends to be generic or directly relatable.

I guess what I'm saying is, you have no choice but to make a villain less generic. Which makes the villain harder on the surface.

But creating a hero who is not generic, whose values, hopes, background and beliefs do NOT reflect those of the target reader necessarily.... That's even harder because you are stuck spending more time with them and because you have to build a cathartic consensus between the reader and the hero which is completely unlike the reader.

Villains are easier to put more work into because you have to.

But try getting social conservatives to root for a gay, polyamorous, hippie college professor. Try getting liberals to root for George Bush. Try casting the devil as hero in a work that targets Christians. Try a character with an alien or antithetical belief system to the audience and make them the hero. THAT is a challenge. And more interesting than doing the same thing with a villain.

I mean, sure, Red Skull is harder to write than Captain America. But try writing about a patriotic American hero with sympathies to Nazis or al Queda. Hell of a lot harder. Or try writing about a patriotic hero who represents a fictional country with a completely made up culture whose views don't agree with standard western views. The outsider hero is harder than the outsider villain.

[NickThompson]

I can see this but, for me, the general tendency does seem to be that the more of a hero's life you see, the more it tends to be generic or directly relatable.

I guess what I'm saying is, you have no choice but to make a villain less generic. Which makes the villain harder on the surface.

But creating a hero who is not generic, whose values, hopes, background and beliefs do NOT reflect those of the target reader necessarily.... That's even harder because you are stuck spending more time with them and because you have to build a cathartic consensus between the reader and the hero which is completely unlike the reader.

Villains are easier to put more work into because you have to.

But try getting social conservatives to root for a gay, polyamorous, hippie college professor. Try getting liberals to root for George Bush. Try casting the devil as hero in a work that targets Christians. Try a character with an alien or antithetical belief system to the audience and make them the hero. THAT is a challenge. And more interesting than doing the same thing with a villain.

I mean, sure, Red Skull is harder to write than Captain America. But try writing about a patriotic American hero with sympathies to Nazis or al Queda. Hell of a lot harder. Or try writing about a patriotic hero who represents a fictional country with a completely made up culture whose views don't agree with standard western views. The outsider hero is harder than the outsider villain.
I see what you're saying, but at the same time I just think that the extra layers we see of the hero allow them to show more things that might appeal to people.

[CJ Lentze]

I'm leaning toward 'neither' or 'both', now, as hero and villain each have a completely different function in the story. I'd agree with Infra-Man that the hero is the starting point when it comes to creating villains; take the rogues' gallery of a well-known hero or team of heroes, and it's like every villain corresponds to a different aspect of the hero or team themselves.

Distribution of attention of writer/reader between hero and villain is never 50% each, either. Not just because a villain can only appear once in every ten to twenty issues of a comic at maximum, but also because -even in the issue the villain appears in - a hero will always have more panel time than the villain simply for being the POV character of a book. Even if we do get to see the villains' thoughts, motivations, past, or personal life in a four-page exposition. Tilt in balance in favour of the hero (good vs evil doesn't end in TRUE stalemate, rather good keeps triumphing) that makes it so that creating a villain is not precisely reverse-creating a hero.

But yeah, I don't think a great hero is necessarily more difficult to create than a great villain. Great writer can do both.

[Tobias March]

I reckon hero. Now the creation of a memorable villain that becomes iconic is a rare thing.

Yet villains can represent numerous conflicting ideas that face the protagonist, whereas the hero must be the product of a coherent central force, or drive (be it moral or intellectual etc.) which can be more difficult to maintain.

Reading Alan Moore comment on Steve Ditko at the moment in Blake Bell's book. He makes the comment that while he didn't agree with the politics of Mr A and so on (as parodied by the decrepidly Randian Rorschach), he at least recognized that Ditko had a viewpoint which he illustrated through his characters.

I think that is essential to a truly 'great' heroic character.

[CassandraL]

I'm not sure, I think both equally because both should be equally good. (Or bad depending on how evil the character is.) I personally love reading and writing vigilantes and anti-heroes - characters that want to do the right thing but due to what-ever circumstance are finding it difficult.

[Charles RB]

I'd assume villain. There's a whole mess of evils and depravities that would work for a story, you can have them do anything, there's all sorts of designs that can say "evil", you can have them play off an existing hero, you can potentially avoid fleshing them out too much (who's bothered that Dr Eggman/Robotnik doesn't show much depth?). And the villain doesn't have to turn up that often, another villain can do so.

But the hero is the protaganist, the guy you're following and thus needs to be fleshed out, the guy who has to keep people coming back all the time, the guy who has to do heroic selfless acts while seeming credible. Tough stuff!

[Ziggy Stardust]

IMO, a villain is easier. For example, some of my favorite villains are Batman's rogues. Why? Because many of them are flawed people, people who faced something tragic in life and just... cracked. They gave in to those little voices that we often hear in our heads. In other words, we're most of us only one bad day away from being a villain.

Other villains just have a power and do the exact opposite of what the hero does. They use it selfishly. And I know I've sometimes thought, "If only I had super strength, I'd unch my boss' head off."

The thing with heroes is that they are mainly an ideal given form. They are usually what we should aspire to be. What we often fail to be.

They face the same day-to-day challenges that most of us face, whether it be work, person issues, tragic losses, etc, AND they then don a costume at the drop of a hat and give everything things they've got to save people they usually don't even know. And they do it again the next day. Some purposefully patrol a city LOOKING to save people, often after a full day's worth of work.

Now, while it means that we root for them and respect them and sometimes even love them, how many of us can truly say we'd live their life if we had their powers?

I think the appeal of a great villain is how easy it is to relate to them, he we can see that given the right circumstances we just might be that villain. But, writing a hero that is relatable is harder due to most of them being someone we would likely lack the moral strength to be.

[Eliseu Gouveia]

I can´t tell, really.


I do think that creating villains is more *FUN* .
I do it almost by reflex, I´m in the kitchen heating up water for my coffeee or whatever and - Bam!, there comes an idea for a new baddie.

Now which is harder.... tough question.

[mgs]

which part? writing one or 'drawing' one? :wink:

and I think it depends, obviously. for me, I have a harder time coming up with the villain. Cause i can't see their real pov or 'sympathize' with them, as is. I can make all kinds of stories for good guys, but the bad guys...they're a bit harder for me to come up with on my own.

[Corrina]

I can only say that villains are easier for me.

That's because they usually have a very clearly defined goal and a plan to meet that goal. They're nicely focused, they don't get too off-track, and they DO stuff.

Whereas a hero doesn't usually plan out "okay, today, I am going to do something heroic that people will remember me by." If they did, they wouldn't be so much a hero as someone seeking the limelight.

[Eliseu Gouveia]

I can only say that villains are easier for me.

That's because they usually have a very clearly defined goal and a plan to meet that goal. They're nicely focused, they don't get too off-track, and they DO stuff.

Whereas a hero doesn't usually plan out "okay, today, I am going to do something heroic that people will remember me by." If they did, they wouldn't be so much a hero as someone seeking the limelight.

They can still be goal-oriented and focused, only with a broader sense.

"- Today I am going to patrol Bludhaven. There´s been burglary incidents reported on the 52th and 33th street, I have to investigate that. And later, I should pay Dr. Meaniemoe a visit and wiretap his evil hotline.".

The difference between villains and heroes is that usually the first ones are proactive (which is always cool in a offense/take-charge sorta way) and the later are reactives (playing defense is never as exciting).