I’ve been bouncing this idea around in my head for a while. I thought it would be fun to name some book/movie/video game/etc. protagonists who are evil in general or the evil guy in the story.
I’ll start:
Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange. Murdering, raping, stealing, but oh so lovable. Bloody horrorshow.
Kratos from God of War. He’s out to depose Zeus and the gods of Olympus for his own selfish reasons. He’ll gladly kill anyone as long as it serves his purpose. By far a greater warmonger than Ares ever was.
Oh, one more thing: The protagonists cannot be bad guys turned good at the end of the story. They must be unrepentant about their badness, but someone the reader can still like.
Tanith Lee’s Tales of the Flat Earth books – particularly Night’s Master. Azhrarn is definitely not a good guy, and pretty much a petty bastard, but he’s a magnificent one at that.
Once again, we must discuss *Flashman *by George MacDonald Fraser. Flashman is a coward and a cad, but wonderful fun when telling his story. Plus, he never ever repents.
Rock Hudson’s character in Pretty Maids All in a Row (which is also being discussed in this thread, coincidentally. A wonderfully quirky and bizarre dark comedy from the 70s, with quite the startling twist ending.
Vic Mackey? I mean…even aside from what he did in the infamous first episode of The Shield, which I think would qualify as being as evil as you can get in pretty much anyone’s book, throughout the whole show it seemed like he did WAY more bad stuff than good. For every criminal that he did bring to justice, it seemed like there were 10 innocent people who wound up getting killed, or screwed in some way, as a result of his corrupt activities and the various mistakes of his “strike team” lackeys.
Wanted.
In the 70s DC had titles for Kobra, Joker, and the Secret Society of Supervillains.
Right now, they have Secret Six, and recently did a series of one-shots called Joker’s Asylum, which featured various Batman villains - Joker, Two Face, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, and the Penguin - and even more recently, the Faces of Evil one-shots - Solomon Grundy, Deathstroke, Kobra, and Prometheus.
Just saw Chicago the other night, and Roxy Hart struck me as pretty evil. Cheats on her husband, murders her boyfriend, talks her husband into taking the fall for her, and once she’s in prison, all she can think about is how to parley an act of murder into a showbiz career. All while still shamelessly manipulating her clueless lump of a husband. Never shows an ounce of remorse for anything she does.
He does end up intentionally reforming in the original edition of the book.