Also, this is by no means a complete list. There's no way I could compile a list that extensive, so I'm going to shoot for the ones that aren't huge pop-culture icons, like Batman or Superman (and they would both be on that list).
Rand al'Thor
I decided to kick this list off with Rand because, unlike most characters, he had a span of 23 years and 14 books to grow. When we first meet him, he's just reached marrying age in his village, and has no ambitions beyond becoming a sheepherder like his father.
Rand is unique because, unlike most High Fantasy, he's not just the farmboy that discovers he's the hero of ancient prophecy destined to save the world. That's a part of who he is, but in a lot of Fantasy, we see those heroes quickly vanquish the all-devouring evil and then their story is done. In The Wheel of Time, however, we get to watch Rand grow from sheepherder to ruler long before the series ends. Instead of wondering how a simple farmer could run a kingdom of any sort, we actually get to watch all of the stupid mistakes firsthand, and that makes his struggle more compelling.
Beyond that, we watch Rand slowly turning insane from the pressure and the growing madness inside him stemming from his use of the tainted male half of the One Power (the magic of the WOT world). A lot of the time you're wondering if his use of the One Power is what's causing him to lose his sanity more rapidly, or if it's the constant pressure of having to cover his mistakes and look as strong as possible to keep his subject from turning on him in his weakness.
Another interesting note: Rand is also different in that once he achieves every child's dream of ruling the world, he quickly wants to throw it away and go back to the way things used to be. I've read too many stories where the farmboy rises to power and everything's just hunky-dory, unicorns and rainbows, and having that power is everything they dreamed it would be. The idea of a simpleton like young Rand in any form of political power is terrifying (although he stills does a better job than any politician I've ever known).
Odysseus
I mentioned Odysseus in my first post, but wasn't able to discuss my fascination with him in as much detail as I would've liked. I touched on the fact that he was, by today's standards, the "wrong" way to write a hero because he's too perfect. That's the thing that draws me.
Most heroes in today's fiction are as broken and as humanized as possible (even Superman) to make them easier to relate to. Odysseus, despite his lack in this department, transcends that and makes you care about his struggle. Here's a guy who plays dice with the gods, essentially, and manages to come out on top, despite being a mere mortal. He outsmarts gods! More than once!
Homer constantly refers to him as "resourceful Odysseus" throughout the texts.... Understatement of the century! Odysseus was MacGyver on steroids centuries before a MacGyver even existed, with a little Batman on the side! As soon as Polyphemus (the Cyclops) asks his name, Odysseus already smells a rat and tells him "Nobody", so that when he puts Polyphemus's eye out later and his brothers come running to ask him who did it, he can only tell them "Nobody did this to me! Nobody is to blame!" and they think he's lost it and ignore him.
But, despite all of that, Odysseus does have one thing that makes him truly believable (or two things, rather): Telemachus and Penelope. Referred to by Homer, respectfully, as thoughtful and wise. These two are pretty much his Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen (except Telemachus is noticeably less useless than Jimmy). Odysseus's countless struggles are all made worth it when he finally sees his family for the first time in a decade. Rather than stay on an island with Calypso (a gorgeous nymph who thinks he's the shiz) he spurns her advances because he only wants to return to his family. He's inhumanly steadfast in this and will let nothing keep him away from the people he loves.
John Wayne Cleaver
This kid is probably among the more unique on this list. He's a 14 year old sociopath who fights the urge to become a serial killer ... by only killing monsters.
We're first introduced to John in I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells. It's a first-person narrative, and John tells you from the beginning that he has to set strict rules for himself to follow so he doesn't become one of the serial killers he's fascinated by. But, when a coldblooded murderer comes to his quiet town, John finds that getting so close to the murder scenes is awakening an obsession in him that isn't healthy. By the time he finds out that this killer is actually an ageless monster (or demon as he calls it), John realized that he's in so deep that he has to kill something, and if it's a demon, that should make it acceptable.
The kid is brilliant and very good at hiding his sociopathy from his friends at school. He also works in a mortuary with his mom and aunt, which comes in handy when the murder victims come through to be embalmed. His cold, calculated analysis of each body that comes through is somewhat unsettling when contrasted with his mother's insistence that the corpse still be referred to as "he" or "she", while John argues that there's nothing there anymore and sees no problem with calling them "it".
His most interesting aspect, in my opinion, is that he actually does have a personality, even though he doesn't seem to think so. As a reader, it's easy to see his quirks while he ignores them and thinks he's slipping further and further away from his humanity.
He's a unique hero for sure, and if you haven't read any of his books, I highly recommend them.
Magik (Illyana Rasputin)
She's a character that's very underrated and infinitely appealing. She got her start in X-Men as Colossus's baby sister, then, after she fell through a portal to limbo for a split-second and was pulled back out by Kitty Pride, she was a grown teenager.
We find out later that, although it was only an instant in the normal world, she had spent years in Limbo, where a demon named Belasco took shards of her soul in an attempt to allow his lords into the mortal world to feast. Time and again, she's lost her soul and had to fight to get it back. She's the textbook definition of the tragic hero, making me fall in love with her over and over again.
Illyana is so endearing because she's done a number of questionable things, and not because they were for the betterment of mutantkind, but because she had a personal vendetta against the people she saw as responsible for losing her childhood. Recently, she endangered the entire world simply because she wanted to strike back against the Elder Gods and fully restore her soul. This seems very selfish, but in reality, wouldn't some of us do the same thing, especially if we'd faced her hardships?
On more than one occasion I've gone back and re-read the couple of trades I have featuring Illyana, and every time I find something new that I didn't catch before, strengthening my attachment to her. Is she my favorite Marvel character? Well, no, that slot goes to Gambit, but Magik easily clenches the second slot.
I'd love to see her get more mainstream attention than she's gotten since her creation more than 30 years ago. We have a lot of tragic heroes in our culture, but noticeably few that are as strong and compelling as Illyana, and that's really a shame. She's also a female tragic hero, which is surprisingly rare.
If you'd like to get to know Illyana and don't mind old school comics, then you should check out Magik: Storm and Illyana. Or, if you don't like that style, you can go with X-Infernus; it's out of print now, but you can still find it reasonably cheap if you look in the right places. I'd say those are the two best places to start before you dive into any New Mutants stories.
Aoshi Shinomori
A character from the manga/anime Rurouni Kenshin. Since I was a young teenager this has been my absolute favorite anime, and mainly because of the title character, Kenshin Himura, but putting him on the list would have been too obvious, and everyone who's watched a single episode of the anime or read a chapter of the manga knows Kenshin's story. Aoshi is a very different animal.
When we first meet Aoshi, he's leading a band of mercenaries who've been hired by a drug lord named Kanryu Takeda and we're given the impression that he's a heartless monster, dragging a young woman named Megumi back to Kanryu so she can continue producing poison for him. But, after capturing her and taking her back up to her room to be locked away, we see our first hint that there's more to Aoshi than meets the eye. He offers Megumi a way out, by tossing her a small dagger and telling her she can end her suffering. Now, that might seem cold, but for one, he's actually going against his boss's orders at this point, and beyond that, he's a warrior, and death is a natural end to all things in his eyes, so in offering Megumi the dagger, he really is showing compassion.
After that, there's a big fight in which all of the men in his charge die protecting him from Kanryu, and we find out the their reason for their devotion to him is because, after the war, Aoshi was offered a head position in the new army, but the others were just "simple killers" who would never be able to find any other line of work. Aoshi refused to abandon his men to this fate after recruiting them, so rejected the offer and continued to lead them as mercenaries, while still using the name Oniwaban Group to be recognizable. This light on Aoshi's true nature is astounding the first time you watch the series or read the manga, because it hits you from out of nowhere almost.
We don't see anything from Aoshi for awhile after that, but we know he still has a grudge against Kenshin, and promises to come back and kill him someday. When he finally does come back, he's beaten, but takes a lot out of Kenshin in the process. This proves a problem when Kenshin goes to fight Shishio and ends up getting knocked unconscious, Aoshi blames himself for taking too much out of Kenshin and offers to fight in Kenshin's stead to buy time for him to wake up. He's well aware that he's walking into a beatdown, but his honor won't let him walk away.
He's the ultimate underdog throughout the series, even more so than Kenshin. It makes him stand out in my mind, and on some days I actually like him over Kenshin.
Raziel
OK, here we go. My single favorite video game character in history. Heck, he's probably my favorite fictional character of all time, period.
Raziel is the lead protagonist of 3 of the 5 games in the Legacy of Kain series. OK, technically it's 2 1/2, since he shares lead with Kain in the last game. Since Soul Reaver 1 I've had nothing but love for this guy, and the way he used and manipulated at every turn makes you want to give him a puppy just to see if it can brighten his day a little.
I'll admit, I'm a sucker for a good redemption story. I've been that way all my life, and I honestly can't tell you why. But I can tell you that Raziel's story is among the best and most tragic redemption stories I've ever experienced and is probably my favorite.
When we first meet Raziel, he's telling the story of his millenium serving under Kain. Kain had by this time embraced his vampiric nature and decided to take over and raised six lieutenants to serve under him, each over their own province of the kingdom. Raziel was the first of his brothers raised to vampirism and serves as Kain's right hand.
The way vampirism works in the LoK world is that, once every X number of years Kain would enter a sort of hibernation and emerge with a new power. A few years later, his lieutenant would get the same gift, but through some bizarre turn of fate, Raziel acquired a new gift first. Check out the video below to see what happened.
That voice Raziel hears after waking up belongs to the Elder God, a creature that's willing to give Raizel the power to exact his revenge on Kain. The Elder God wants to keep his Wheel of Fate turning, and immortal beings (like, y'know, vampires and stuff) keep things from running smoothly. So, Raziel becomes a devourer of souls and sets out to exact his revenge.
At first, Raziel is simply a revenge-driven force of nature, plowing through all of his former brother, who have now devolved into monstrous bottom-feeders, just to get to Kain. But along the way he finds out that the Sarafan, and ancient order of priests dedicated to hunting vampires, are a little closer to him than he ever thought. It turns out that he and his brothers were all high-ranking Sarafan, and Kain had thought it delicious irony to turn the very people who hated and hunted him into the very thing they fought against. Raziel didn't appreciate this, as you can tell in the video below, which takes just after the end of the first game, where Kain strikes Raziel with the Soul Reaver, only to have it shatter on impact and become one with Raziel.
Throughout his next search for Kain, all the while lamenting his lost humanity, Raziel discovers new secrets about the Sarafan, proving Kain's words right. He's manipulated at every turn by the Elder God, Moebius, and of course, Kain.
Finally, his journey leads him to a confrontation with his past self, as a fanatical Sarafan. It's here that it dawn on him that he's trapped in a loop, forced to kill himself, be resurrected by Kain.
And that's not even where the story ends. There are about a zillion and seventy-three more twists and turns before the story winds down in the final game, but I've given you enough info here to prove my point.
Raziel's struggle is wrought with bitterness, vengeance, hatred, confusion and desperation. He wants nothing more than for the "powers that be" to stop playing him like a pawn. We find out later that, because Kain threw him into the abyss, Raziel is unbound from the Wheel, and therefor, the only one of them that truly has free will. Even so, because of that, Raziel is manipulated at every turn, causing him to doubt his free will.
If there's ever been a more compelling character in all of fiction, I'm not sure who it is.
Well, that's it. As always, questions and comments are welcome (and encouraged). If you have any ideas about what I should talk about next, let me know! (Also, subscribe! I want to get as many people following and discussing as possible.)
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