The Villain's Journey

<p> The villain's journey is rare in popular culture--most characters are fully-formed tyrants with little to no story arc. However a few particularly epic series take the time to develop complex villains including <I>Star Wars Battlestar Galactica Smallville Babylon 5 Game of Thrones</I> and <I>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</I>. Increasingly villains' origin stories have found new popularity through films like <I>Wicked Maleficent</I> and <I>Despicable Me</I> alongside shows starring serial killers and Machiavellian schemers. </p><p> This book examines the villain's decline and subsequent struggle toward redemption asking why these characters are willing to cross moral lines that good characters are not. The first half follows characters like Loki Jessica Jones and Killmonger through the villain's journey: an inverse or twisted version of scholar Joseph Cambell's hero's journey. The remainder of this book examines the many different villainous archetypes such as the trickster the outcast the tyrant or the misunderstood hero in greater detail. Written for writers creators fans and mythologists this book offers a peek into the minds of some of fiction's greatest villains.</p>